They unwittingly gave me the confidence that I could do what they do, and indeed do it better, but they also deprived me of the intellectual formation that I had to spend years developing on my own. They set me forward, and they set me back.
To cheat students is bad enough; to corrupt them is far worse. The latter is happening now in classrooms at all levels throughout the land. To speak of a decline in standards would be an understatement: perversion of standards.