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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted November 10, 2010 04:28 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 16:34, 10 Nov 2010.
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Cheating
The topic I'd like to discuss is based on a news article I recently read. You can read it here.
In a nutshell:
In a college class of 600, a very large portion of them cheated on an exam by obtaining an advance copy. The professor discovered it after the fact and is making the whole class retake the exam. In addition, he offered the cheaters a chance to come forward and admit their guilt. If the cheaters do, they have to take a 4 hour ethics course, and get a chance to retake the exam. If they don't, they get expelled. Apparently, the prof has some way of determining who cheated and who didn't.
Anyway, what struck me about the article is that one of the students interviewed disagreed with the professor's ultimatum, and his "excuse" was the following:
"This is college. Everyone cheats, everyone cheats in life in general," Ravvin said. "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in this testing lab who hasn't cheated on an exam."
I find this incredible, especially the underlined portion. Do people seriously believe this, and, furthermore, believe that it justifies cheating?
So I throw the following questions out to you, HC, for discussion.
Have you ever cheated in school?
If so, do you feel it was justified?
If not, how does it make you feel that some people have this attitude?
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JoonasTo
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posted November 10, 2010 04:47 PM |
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I haven't cheated.
Cheating in tests is very rare in Finland.
Not that I really care as long as you aren't cheating in a graduation exam or an entrance exam. If it's primary or high school who cares?
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veco
Legendary Hero
who am I?
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posted November 10, 2010 04:49 PM |
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Edited by veco at 16:50, 10 Nov 2010.
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Yes I have cheated a few times but that was in mid-grade, taking my book out of the backpack and reading it under the table. Funny how I never got caught. After that I never cheated for a few reasons:
-preparing cheats for a test where the teacher was strict demanded too much time for my liking - might as well study a bit
-I never really cared about my grades - if I pass that's enough. if I pass with good grades then that's a coincidence
-I didn't have a printer
Back on topic - at least here in Poland everyone cheats, trust me on that. Few exceptions such as myself exist but the general rule is that everyone does it regardless of how good your grades are or how well prepared (by actual studying) you are. Just to be on the 'safe' side.
Do I think it's justified? I have absolutely no idea. From a student's point of view if only a selected few did it, it definetly would be unfair but if not cheating gives a disadvantage againts others then you can get mixed up. Seeing everyone else packing 10 of them in pens, pockets, hidden pockets, sawed under the jacket is likely to make one feel insecure about one's own knowledge/ability and most give in to that feeling. The so called rat-race falsly justifies those judgements to people - thankfully I never gave a rat's *** about it.
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none of my business.
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Elvin
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Endless Revival
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posted November 10, 2010 05:13 PM |
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Heh when I was first told that Americans despise and cannot comprehend cheating I found it pretty amusing. Matter of culture I suppose, just like you cannot imagine another cheating others cannot imagine someone *not* cheating.
During school I never cheated, never needed, never wanted to. In university however I did a few times. Reason? Not because others were cheating, neither to get a good grade. In truth our universities suck @ss. We get books one month before exams - not books actually, coupons that will get us books after we go on a merry chase throughout Athens, the amount of pages to memorize is ridiculous or plain impossible to finish in time leading 99.9% of the students to do a selective study, often schools close because either professors are on a strike(again..?) or some leftist students are protesting, our buildings and seats are often damaged or old, political parties interfere with grading - yes professors do pass people whose names they read from a list, most tests are actually decided in 2-3 VERY specific questions, you cannot be examined in a winter semester class during summer so you'll have to wait a bit, some professors have been apprehended for appropriating large amounts of money(one even bought a ferrari), these being just the ones that were caught. Rotten situation.
Needless to say while I personally dislike cheating and having been through ridiculous amounts of studying all I really want is to get the hell out of this mess. I will do my best but if I have the option to cheat I wouldn't care the littlest bit. If my university had any decent standards I wouldn't even think about cheating but I know many that would. For the record only 1 subject remains, keeping it to get extra days off army during next exams Does that count as cheating?
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shares
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posted November 10, 2010 05:41 PM |
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I agree with it being a culture. If not opinions on honesty and fairness, then on other things. People here wouldn't care a rats ass about things being fair. Being exposed as a cheater though. Mostly because being socially exposed would be too embarrassing, since cheating is supposed to be frowned upon.
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted November 10, 2010 05:53 PM |
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Ok, unless the professor had planted the copy in advance with enough bulletproff misses that would come by cheating, I am wondering how he would do it and figure out who has done it.
But here is the thing: He is attempting to do collateral damage against the ENTIRE CLASS, and he is threatening every single student who has done things the honest way.
I have seen this tactic before: They do not know who has done anything, but they that people actually feel shame for doing something that nobody cares about, and even if they are correct, people can push scapegoats into the road if it gets worse enough, and nobody will break down and actually tell what was going on. So they threat with collateral damage, assuming the people who will get harmed by it knows who cheated, and they will care about it enough to hand them over. Or attempt to pressure the people who did it into confessing.
What happens is that nobody confesses, nobody cares, and there will be blackmail thrown around inside the class for a bit, and then the collateral damage comes regardless and HITS EVERYONE.
And that is what makes it despicable:
*It just produces damage
*No actual results
*If they knew who cheated, they SHOULD have punished them instead of a collateral punishment on the entire group
So.... unless the professor planted a faked exam result so students WOULD use them to cheat, so that they would be identified, I am more interisted in what happens later on: Did he plant, or did he not plant. If he did not plant, why the hell are he doing something completely and utterly despicable for the situation?!
I also read up the link: and to quote "Quinn, who called the scandal "a knife to my heart, calculated exactly who'd cheated, and then gave the entire class a dressing down."
Either the test comes with a finite test score limitation which are suppose to never be reached(only by accident), or the guy got no idea who cheated and assumes there is roughly 200 cheats based on a far to high average(supposedly 1 and a half grade over the highest average ever reached there). The evidence is still flimsy, because a few who has scored ridiculessy high has not cheated, and they will be a part of the "collateral" damage.
Collateral damage works ONLY if people are feeling they are working together, and that they can fail and win as a group. It works for a army because its suppose to work from day 1, the same applies to every single instance where its suppose to be used.
For something as a institution where you only get 1 really large bunch of individuals, it won't work.
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bixie
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posted November 10, 2010 09:12 PM |
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Some of the courses I'm on, like drama and history, you are allowed to "cheat" during exams. In drama, part of the exam is writing detailed and comprehensive notes on a performance you have seen, performed in, or to direct, and then you get to take it into the exam with you. With history, if you write a none-compulsory essay before hand and give it in, then you are able to use the essay in the exam, and re-work it (it's a 2,500 word essay and the exam is 2 days long) to fit the question.
I have never cheated, but I have been given special privileges, due to my dyslexia and dyspraxia, so I can use a word processor within my exams, and I think those help greatly. Ultimately, though, you go into the exam with what you prepared yourself with. with your wits and your mind, and whilst you are in there, you are alone.
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Disturbed-Gnu
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posted November 10, 2010 09:45 PM |
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The danish way of examns is allmost impossible to cheat in.
Even though i managed to get internet acces at my German examn (Babel Fish Translate 4tw)
But i've cheated alot in non-examn tasks and so on..
But cheating is stupid, but you just realise that when you become an apprentice at what ever you whanna do.
I could have used math and english alot today, but didn't listen back then. (I am becoming good at math, but not as good as i could have been)
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Binabik
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posted November 10, 2010 09:49 PM |
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I've cheated before. But the last time I remember doing it was probably around grade 9. It's possible I cheated after that but if I did then I don't remember it. I'm pretty sure I never cheated in college.
In high school and earlier I think the old adage that you only hurt yourself is true. But in college it's just plain dishonest because potential employers might partially base their hiring on grades. It's like lying on a resume and is dishonest.
A lot, maybe most people in high school and earlier don't take education seriously (I sure didn't). But at the college level you should be studying an area that will be your career. Your goal should be to learn as much as possible in your selected area, even beyond the required curricula. So it's not only dishonest to cheat, it hurts yourself. Education should never end whether it's formal education, job experience, or self learning.
It's also a really bad habit to get into. By the time someone is at the college level and they still cheat, I would highly question their character. It's the kind of person I wouldn't even want to be around.
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VokialBG
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posted November 10, 2010 09:57 PM |
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For cheating here you can get expelled. I think it's the normal practice aroung the world.
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mvassilev
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted November 10, 2010 09:59 PM |
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I've never cheated on a test. The closest I've ever come to cheating is copying answers out of the back of the book on high school math assignments that I already knew how to do.
Whether or not cheating is bad does depend on how many other people are cheating. If there are few or no cheaters, then cheating is bad because it undermines the purpose of the test - to see who knows what is being tested and who doesn't. If there are many cheaters, then there's no point to not cheating because the test no longer has value.
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veco
Legendary Hero
who am I?
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posted November 10, 2010 10:12 PM |
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Quote:
It's also a really bad habit to get into. By the time someone is at the college level and they still cheat, I would highly question their character. It's the kind of person I wouldn't even want to be around.
I can smell a huge fan of our universities
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Binabik
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posted November 10, 2010 10:24 PM |
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I'm talking about within my own culture. If everyone (or most) within a culture does it, you can't really make much character judgment from it. But it still hurts the person who cheats no matter what culture it is. They are supposed to learn the stuff for a reason.
I suppose that in almost any degree there are required classes that aren't important. In those cases I don't really care.
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Adrius
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posted November 10, 2010 10:42 PM |
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School is about learning stuff.
You can learn a lot by cheating and manipulating (or rather just using a certain social influence, manipulation has such a bad tone...) your teachers. Might not be what you're supposed to learn, but at least you're learning something
The times I've cheated I've thought of it as defeating the system. It's not dishonourable, it's just a different way of completing the task.
Most of the times I don't have to cheat though, and the higher you go in your education the more severe the penalties of being busted become.
Most of the time it's not worth the risk, at least not for me.
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baklava
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Mostly harmless
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posted November 10, 2010 11:14 PM |
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Meh. There's far too much real immoral stuff going on around me all the time for me to worry about the ethics of cheating on school tests.
While we're at it, it's highly immoral for teachers to be dicks, too, yet most of them were, during my schooling.
But, I admit, that had nothing to do with cheating. I never did that, when I learned things I was interested in. Things I wasn't interested in were the issue. They fell into two basic categories:
1) Excruciatingly boring theory (I strongly believe that too much of social sciences can lower a man's IQ)
2) Somewhat interesting, but invariably practice-demanding problems (such as maths or physics. I was an exceptionally lazy individual - I don't even know why I just used the past tense - and schools here are kinda tougher than in most of the civilized world, for some obscure reason. Natural sciences require work, which I was none too fond of).
Both of these were made much easier with the introduction of cheating.
I don't consider it unfair. There's the element of risk, strategy and tactics about various ways of cheating, even, in some cases (such as mine), the ethical obligation to help folks around me, which is a particularly burdensome trait.
Still, now I'm in university and I don't feel like cheating. I'm not willing to risk that much, and besides, I just got here, and haven't figured out how things work yet. Who knows.
Cheating's wrong if you're learning to be a surgeon and you decide to skip those boring parts about stopping people from dying. But this way? Nothing against it. What's immoral is making folks who actually studied for the test retake it (which, much like all those software companies bullying honest customers, teaches a man some very important lessons in life). The professor should take responsibility that his test somehow leaked. A student who was given the leaked test and checked it out, didn't do anything immoral in my book.
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Adrius
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posted November 10, 2010 11:16 PM |
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True dat. I've never cheated in a subject that I found interesting.
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Doomforge
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posted November 10, 2010 11:48 PM |
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I cheated a lot lately. Why? Because I feel it insults my intelligence to be forced to learn by rote such things as "types of rail switches" which of course has to contain 949043460 types categorized by some obviously-bored Professor. What's the use of that in life or work? I'll tell you: None. Zero. Nihil.
Thus I don't feel bad about it. The education system here sucks buffalo balls.
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Lord_Woock
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posted November 11, 2010 12:08 AM |
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I'm a philosophy student and we just about only get oral exams, except formal logic in the first year. Cheating on those is tricky.
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Fauch
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posted November 11, 2010 01:12 AM |
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Edited by Fauch at 01:13, 11 Nov 2010.
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lol sure, unless teachers don't expect to hear what YOU think.
never cheated, because I thought education was very important. though, when I re-think about it, and when you see all the problems in the world, education is just a joke. if it works, then, why do people have problems all the time?
you could say that some people don't want to study, but we are all differents, and all expected to study the same way...
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Salamandre
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posted November 11, 2010 01:24 AM |
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Quote:
I cheated a lot lately. Why? Because I feel it insults my intelligence to be forced to learn by rote such things as "types of rail switches" which of course has to contain 949043460 types categorized by some obviously-bored Professor. What's the use of that in life or work? I'll tell you: None. Zero. Nihil.
Most of informations from school classes are not really needed in real life. What is important in school is to learn the attitude of respect, discipline and curiosity toward various life aspects and toward teachers as well. This attitude, IMHO, is capital later in real life, not the 949043460 rail types. Cheating is lowering your natural defense and becomes a natural way of life later. Didn't you claim that downloading others work for free is normal and natural lately?
Now we know why
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