Keeping Up The Ruse

Man, have times changed. When I was a kid in school, if you didn't do your work and it was time to turn it in, then you just said that you left it in your locker. The teacher then told you to go get it and off you went. You would walk to your locker and motion like you were actually searching (you know, so you could keep up the ruse). Finally, you returned to class with the innocent, lost look. You'd still get the zero, but you fought the beast off as long as possible. Nowadays, when I tell my students to go get their work from their locker, they just sit there and say, "Yeah I didn't do it; I was lying."

It's nothing that a good strangling wouldn't take care of, but is it any worse than what we did? It just seems that we worked harder for our zeros back in the day.