What was the *right* thing for Hundert to have done?

Thanks for raising an interesting question. I saw this film for the second time yesterday evening and it is well worth a second viewing. I do not think that where ethical questions are as complex as you have raised, there are absolute rights and wrongs. I consider that Hundert evaluated the problems and made a judgement that he felt was right. He could not allow Bell to get away with cheating, but he did not see that the boy, the school and the Julius Caesar competition would benefit from going further and humiliating Bell. I think the question of adjusting the mark is more problematic. But if he, as a teacher, really believed that Bell had the potential to win the contest (without cheating), and he had gone on to win, then who is to say what long term beneficial effects on his character might have arisen? We should all be careful not to rush to judgement. We may come to different conclusions, which we believe are right, but it's always a judgement call.

It was very wrong of Mr. Hundert to have changed Sedgewick's mark and the finalist entry standing because, whatever wonderful impact it might potentially have had on Sedgewick (none, as it turned out), it was totally unfair to Martin. Presumably Martin had studied hard to prepare. So, you really can't justify it, there's a definite victim here...Martin. But yes, it would have been so discouraging to Sedgewick to have missed the opportunity by such a close margin; it's easy to see how Mr. Hundert was tempted and succumbed.

Of course a logical solution would have been to have explained the situation to the Headmaster, announced there was a tie (cheating a bit but I believe the two marks were extremely close) and allowed FOUR finalists in the competition. Of course then there would have been no story!

Asking a competition question Mr. Hunbert realized that Sedgewick wasn't present in class to learn seems unfair but was probably the smartest thing to do, a clever spur of the moment solution, given the Headmaster's comment to not reveal Sedgewick's cheating. Here I think the end kind of justified the means. Also, humiliating Sedgewick during the contest would probably have proved counter productive.

He should have just made the third place position a tie and then had the four of them go for the title. That was the 'fairest' way for him to find out who was the winner since he felt Sedgewick deserved to be up there.

Cindy

Really when you think about it, Hundert's decision to place Billy in the third position was incredibly selfish. Up to this point Billy was studying and being good and Hundert knew that if he had of lost then he would have gone back to his old bad behaviour and made Hundert's life hard again which he didn't want. I don't blame him for not wanting that but he should have realised that that was why he was changing the grade and thus it was an immoral decision to make and that no good would come of it. The marking system was there so he would not have to make those decisions. When he did he placed a huge burden on his soul upon the outcome of future lives really. He made that decision way too lightly and paid for it for a long time.

Meanwhile that brat never got what he deserved because people were too busy feeling sorry for him. He knew how to manipulate people and did it well.

Cindy

I'm going to simplify the issue to the extreme here because a big bell rung loud into my head when I saw the Grand Professor Hundert chickening out in front of the SENATOR. I felt personally insulted and brought down to my human size with
the "you teach him the times tables; teach him the earth is round. I WILL MOLD MY SON... Thanks for coming"
Hundert caved in several times. To me, that was the moment that defined his fate. In spite of all his mastering of those wonderful generals, emperors and philosophers, greeks and romans, he knew we´re living in America. He knew where the power is.
To me, the rest was popcorn and old dreams

If pigs had wings the sh*t of this world would be evenly shared

[deleted]

** SPOILERS AHEAD **



1. Hundert should not have changed Bell’s grade on the essay.

At Hundert's first reading of Bell's essay, Bell didn’t ‘make the grade’, and Hundert changed it, thus cheating Martin. Later, he reviews the essays and looks astounded at why he had given the grades that he had. Frankly, given Hundert’s blinding bias toward wanting to help Bell (for example, how blind Hundert was to the effect that changing this grade would have on Martin!) as soon as Bell started hitting the books, it is quite possible that Bell increasingly got better marks from Hundert along the way that he also did not deserve, and so it is quite possible that Bell and Martin wouldn’t have been so closely matched in their eventual grades had Hundert not become increasingly blind to Bell's probable lack of independent academic prowess.


2. However, prior to this, Hundert was already giving Bell unfair advantage –

He gives Bell his own book with hints about what questions to study and he convinces the librarian to allow Bell to check out a book that no other student was allowed to check out. So, Hundert was already sliding to this inevitable changing of Bell’s grade prior to doing so, thus illustrating the gradual slide that some people make from 'little' evils to 'larger' evils once they start compromising their values.


3. If Hundert hadn’t moved Bell into Martin’s deserved spot for the contest, the story would have ended there. However, going forward:

4. Hundert sees Bell cheating at the contest.

He rightly informs the Headmaster who tells Hundert to ignore the cheating. Hundert is put into an even more incredibly crushing ethical dilemma as everything in his immediate environment is practically screaming at him to allow the cheating to pass. He has his direct supervisor tell him in no uncertain words to do so (remember that Hundert has followed this man’s lead over the course of his career and fully expects to step into his shoes when the headmaster retires/dies); he has Bell’s father in the audience, who is not only powerful in regard to potential repercussions he could bring to bear upon the school if his son is ‘outed’, but also in regard to how he might treat his son for humiliating his father in public (and, I don’t think the father would care that his son was cheating as much as he would care that he was stupid enough to get caught); and, Hundert has all his hopes and dreams for the boy in his hands, he feels, and as he has become complicit in putting Bell up there on the stage, he would feel some responsibility for putting the boy in that pressure-evoking situation.

However, the most important moral decisions often have to be made in the harshest of circumstances and sometimes at a risk of personal peril. Hundert should have gone up to Bell, whispered in his ear to sit the rest of the contest out, and then explained to the father later why. If Bell would have insisted on standing, then Hundert should have called him out publicly on his cheating, stopped the contest, and 'redid' it later with students who had honestly earned their positions in the contest.


5. Hundert wimps out again morally by not telling Martin until decades later about cheating Martin out of his rightful place in the contest.

For all those years, Martin probably lived with ‘I was not good enough’, and although we are not privy to how this may have affected him over the course of his life or in his relationship with HIS father, given how devastated he appeared when he thought he ‘didn’t make the grade’, I assume it DID at least somewhat adversely affect him later. Even if Hundert could not bring himself to tell Martin at the time, again, Hundert should have stopped the contest once he was on to Bell’s cheating, Bell would have lost his place, and Hundert could have redone the contest, this time with Martin in his rightful position.


6. Hundert then catches Bell cheating AGAIN several years later.

As an aside, I was struck by how Bell had ‘taken over’ the contest by hosting it and paying for it, thus already trying to wrench further control and power away from Hundert. At that point, however, as it was *not* the actual contest held at the school and as it was in Bell’s home for what appeared to just be 'fun' (until he uses it as a launchpoint for announcing his campaign but Hundert didn't know in advance that Bell would do that), I don’t think calling Bell out publicly in this instance had any real moral weight. Hundert *did* know the low values of Bell -- that Bell hadn't 'changed' in that regard other than becoming richer and better at cheating -- and finally that Bell was going to run for Senate on a platform of mouthing values that he really didn't believe in (with Bell using some actual language of morality he had learned from Hundert); however, I don’t think it was Hundert’s responsibility at that point to badmouth Bell to try to keep him out of the Senate, nor is there any reason to think that an older teacher would have much weight in modern day when making such a claim.

However, for Bell, all of this is a bit bittersweet when his own son, whom he seems to want to have a better relationship with than he had with his father, inadvertently learns some ugly truths about Bell.




"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois

I almost wonder if you could also make a case where if Mr. Hundert did everything that could have been done in the situation, you could ask if he *said* the right things to Bell?

For me the real turning point of Bell losing all his momentum is when Mr. Hundert said that not calling Bell out had nothing to do with his father. If Mr. Hundert had said something along the lines of "I didn't think alerting the entire audience to your cheating would have benefited you." could it have changed anything? Would Sedgewick have continued studying if Mr.Hundert had made him believe it wasn't Bell's father's influence?


All hypotheticals, but it's something I keep returning to when I watch that movie. Also, sorry if my wording is wishy-washy, I hope you get my point.