I hate cheating. It's one of the things I have never understood and something that angers me to the core. When something requires you to have your own ideas, the thought of stealing someone else's seems like a profound insult to your own brain and the capabilities of it.
It's not like I don't understand the draw - sure, it's easy. Especially with the internet, cheating can be as simple as copying and pasting from wikipedia or whatever website comes up in the top 5 google search responses. You can also then e-mail this to a friend and both of you are done with the assignment, and you can go on and do other things.
But I find that having opinions about something is just as simple as seeking out someone else's. In fact, it's much simpler. It doesn't require a computer, an internet connection or even a piece of paper and a pen. It only requires the one thing that we use everyday: our minds.
In my humble opinion, the majority of the blame for the plagiarism epidemic can be placed on the very people who allow it or ignore it. It is not acceptable to me to pass of cheating with a 'well, kids these days, that's just what they do.' No way. There is nothing inherent in kids that makes them think copying and pasting an entire paper from the internet is okay. Either they have gotten away with it in the past, it has been ignored, they have never been seriously reprimanded for it, or they have never been taught that this is not the right way of doing things. If all teachers, parents and peers taught and reinforced the idea that cheating is not just 'bad,' but rather it is disrespectful, cowardly and irresponsible, and not just something that happens, I think I could be a happier person.
Given that I cannot control the actions of those around me completely, I guess I live in an idealized world. However, I would not have become a teacher if I did not believe that I couldn't have at least some effect on some people. I guess I will start with myself and hope that through my teaching I can make a tiny, yet not insignificant dent in this problem. And yes, people, it is a problem!!! Let's attempt to fix it and change the perception.
Okay, I'm done with the rant. It's my birthday today, so I'm going to go ahead and me a happy person now. Yay.
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2 comments:
Happy birthday, Stephanie!
I have no advice for you, Stephanie, except to trust your gut. I think that anything that really matters to you is great material for your teaching, whether it has to do with your subject area, how we treat one another, classroom behavior, or how we think about things. It connects a with something I like about the simulations...kids need to gain experience in seeing how people describe their movement from their passions to their actions. Sometimes being in character can eliminate some of the self-consciousness that would otherwise occur. In your example, your students will get the opportunity to find out that some things are important enough that they might consider NOT doing something that would be relatively easy for them to do and, more importantly, to hear a cogent argument for why.
That's a good deal for those kids, I think.
I caught a student cheating recently and it was so very disappointing. Especially since it was a student who has the talent to get a high A if she wants.
And Happy Birthday!
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