Reflecting on cheating

Well, I am not too fond of blogs, and I find this really awkward, but I guess I'll have to put my best foot forward and get on with it.

I had the article on Student Cheating, by Bill Puka. I think it is really easy to define cheating-taking someone else's work and claiming it your own, taking a test/homework answer off someone else (or giving it to someone else for that matter), bringing in unauthorized materials consciously into an exam and basically along the lines that: I am not doing my work honestly.

But I am pretty sure everyone knows that. What really got my head ticking by the article wasn't the definition of cheating, but how the author tries to justify it. And normally I would be against justifying cheating, but Puka had many points of controversy of our educational system.

He claimed that some times, the reason why kids are cheating isn't out of laziness, but so they can pass the 'system'. That doesn't mean that they don't know the content, it just means that they cannot be tested to know the content through conventional ways of testing: MCQ, matching, fill in the blank, etc. etc. Some people are not test takers, but that doesn't mean they don't know the material.

He also talked about the idea of the faculty and administration playing a role in how they give homework and tests. Rather than making tests to evaluate spit-out facts, tests and homework should be used to help enhance and build learning skills. So he believed that kids should do essays and have peer and one on one editing with the teacher (to prevent cheating). That way, the teacher can help individual weaknesses.

So much of the educational system is meant to help mould kids to fit certain job roles in society, rather than helping them grow into their own being and learn just to help the mind. And by having schools do that and not REALLY teach kids, it isn't a big deal that they cheat. The school system has no meaning to them. So we need to fix the school's function as well (all of this is according to Puka, by the way).

So I just liked how this article took a new twist on the issue of cheating versus just always blaming the kid all the time. And posting this feels extremely weird. And now this post is getting waaayyyy too long, so peace out!

-Safia