![]() ![]() I took 9 AP tests in high school, scoring 5s on all of them except the one I self-studied for, on which I earned a 4. That is supported by my performance in AP testing. I never cheated in a subject that I did not learn on my own terms. I cheated because the grade I would have otherwise been given was not reflective of my true learning. But my contention uses identical reasoning. A grade earned by cheating is not a grade reflective of our true achievement. It boils down to this: we are told that cheating is wrong because we are attempting to earn a grade that we do not deserve. I have thought about that episode literally every day since it happened, and from those thoughts I have come to terms with my philosophy on cheating and how that fits into my greater perspective on education. But the one time I was caught cast a chilling shadow over my school, a shadow that briefly illuminated the overwhelming extent of cheating in my school, a shadow that no educator was then willing to confront. Now, I was talented enough in my cheating to be mostly hailed as one of the smartest and most ambitious students in my graduating class. To most educators, my true story is a disgrace to the system I'm the one who got away. Not only that, but I graduated as a valedictorian, National AP Scholar, Editor-in-Chief of the school newspaper, and I was accepted into the honors program at. Here’s a condensed version of his letter: I had naively assumed that my readers and my students were operating from the same ethical starting place: that cheating is wrong. The day the article was published, I received an email from a college student who wanted to provide his perspective on the cheating question. But just when I thought I had succeeded in divorcing character from practice for the sake of discussion, the folly of my strategy was made shockingly clear. I specifically avoided a discussion of the question of student ethics and character in my article, not because I wanted to exonerate students from their share of the blame, but because I hoped to focus on pedagogy’s role in academic dishonesty. This is a misguided approach to learning, and it encourages students to cheat. ![]() Currently, teachers assess students’ ability to reproduce examples and mimic lessons rather than display mastery of a concept. Why is academic dishonesty so widespread? I wrote an article earlier this month that placed most of the blame on classroom culture. Ninety percent of students admit to having copied another student’s homework. Sixty to 70 percent of high-school students report they have cheated. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |