Caveon's biweekly Cheating In The News collection includes this description of over-achieving cheaters:
High-tech schemes to achieve undeserved academic success can sometimes be quite intricate. One case involved two senior undergraduates at a major East Coast university. While one was taking the nationwide Graduate Record Examination, he used a wireless transmitter to send images of the test to his accomplice waiting in a van. The accomplice then ascertained the answers to the test questions, sending them back to the exam taker via walkie-talkies. The two young men supposedly invested $12,000 in equipment to implement their plan; they were arrested on charges of burglary and unlawful duplication of computer material.
Raise your hand if you think it would have been a lot easier to just study for the dang test than to go to this much effort. Examples like this give lie to the notion that all cheating is based on laziness. Some examinees expend so much effort in cheating that it can only be from the ego-boosting high that comes from defying authority. A natural outgrowth of the "you're perfect just as you are" false self-esteem lessons taught in our schools, I'd say.
Columnist Trevor Bothwell of The Fence, on the other, keeps the blame on the schools, but insists that the "cooperative learning" lessons are the cause:
For years now public schools have championed the merits of “cooperative learning,” where students are grouped into mini-communes of four or five. The idea here is to encourage cooperation between peers, where the brighter students in the group are expected to facilitate the learning of those less academically adroit.
Aside from the sheer foolishness of expecting any individual student to be responsible for the learning of anyone but himself, “cooperative” methods of learning discourage independent thinking in addition to encouraging misbehavior and cheating. Indeed, these instructional methods are invented by the very same teachers who believe grading papers with red ink is “pretty frightening” for kids, at least according to Sharon Carlson, a health and physical education teacher at JFK Middle School in Northampton, Mass.
From the New York Post comes a tale of today's confused teenagers:
A national survey of 24,763 high-schoolers found 62 percent of them admitted cheating on a school test in the past 12 months, 27 percent stole something from a store during that period, and 40 percent admit they "sometimes lie to save money." In a telling twist, nearly a third didn't even tell the truth on the integrity survey — 29 percent of the students polled by the Josephson Institute of Ethics 'fessed up to fibbing on one or two of the more than 60 questions.
But, despite owning up to dishonest behavior, a whopping 98 percent of the students believe "honesty and trust are essential in personal relationships" — and 83 percent said at least half their acquaintances would put their name on a list of "the most ethical people they know."
Sad to say, they might be the most ethical people they know. Their friends could certainly be worse. The part about honesty in personal relationships is sad on several levels. My guess is what these kids consider inter-relationship "honesty" is being blunt, tactless, and telling the other person exactly what you think of them - which is NOT necessarily the key to a successful relationship. The kinder world of moral individuals who practice social hypocrisy to keep the peace (the "little white lies" that make life easier) has been replaced by a world in which cheating is fine, and so is insulting people to their faces.
Finally, at UT-Arlington, a panel on academic honesty brings out some interesting statements:
Cheaters prosper, Engineering Senator, Nicolas Cornor said. “Martha Stewart, Haliburton, Enron and Microsoft are accurate representations that honesty in the public doesn’t get you anywhere,” the aerospace engineering sophomore said.
Isn't Martha unhappily divorced and in jail right now? Sure, she's still rich, but I'm not sure I'd want to be in her shoes.
Patricia Nickel, testing assessment services coordinator, rebutted by saying students have a responsibility to hold up the university’s reputation even after they leave. “If you cheated your way through school and you don’t really know the material, you are hurting the university,” Nickel said. “These people go out into the work force and represent UTA. If they look bad, we look bad.”
Cornor and Nickel were panelists at the Academic Integrity Debate on Tuesday. The debate was the second event of Academic Integrity Week, sponsored by Student Judicial Affairs...The panelists debated over topics including whether UTA should have an honor code and if cell phones contributed to cheating.
Cell phones should be allowed in classrooms, Cornor said. He said that because professors now distribute several versions of a test, and no student has the same test as the person sitting next to them, the likelihood of someone cheating with a cell phone is slim...
Patricia Nickel, coordinator for testing assessment services, rebutted by saying if people can not turn off their cell phones for an hour lecture, then they should really ask themselves what they are doing here.
I like this Nickel gal.
Posted by kswygert at October 22, 2004 11:29 AM