"Jan" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...
Quoted message said:Intregrity a thing of the past. Kids picked it up from adults.
Like the *gang* here on this ng.
Sad that.
Jan
Cheaters Amok
A Crisis in America's Schools - How It's Done and Why It's Happening
ABCNEWS.com
April 29- Angelo Angelis, a professor at Hunter College in New York City,
was
Quoted message said:recently grading some student papers on the story of Paul Revere when he
noticed something strange.A certain passage kept appearing in his students' work, he said.
It went like this, Angelis told Primetime's Charles Gibson: "Paul Revere
would
Quoted message said:never have said, 'The British are coming, the British are coming,' he was
in
Quoted message said:fact himself British, he would have said something like, 'the Red Coats
are
Quoted message said:coming.' "
Angelis typed the words into Google, and found the passage on one Web site
by a
Quoted message said:fifth-grade class. Half a dozen of his college students had copied their
work
Quoted message said:from a bunch of elementary school kids, he thought.
The Web site was very well done, Angelis said. For fifth graders, he would
give
Quoted message said:them an "A." But his college students deserved an "F".
Lifting papers off the Internet is one of the newer trends in plagiarism -
and technology is giving students even more ways to cheat nowadays.
Authoritative numbers are hard to come by, but according to a 2002
confidential
Quoted message said:survey of 12,000 high school students, 74 percent admitted cheating on an
examination at least once in the past year.In a six-month investigation, Primetime traveled to colleges and high
schools
Quoted message said:across the country to see how students are cheating, and why. The bottom
line
Quoted message said:is not just that many students have more temptation - but they seem to
have a
Quoted message said:whole new mindset.
Get Real
Joe is a student at a top college in the Northeast who admits to cheating
regularly. Like all of the college students who spoke to Primetime, he
wanted
Quoted message said:his identity obscured.
In Joe's view, he's just doing what the rest of the world does.
"The real world is terrible," he told Gibson. "People will take other
people's
Quoted message said:materials and pass it on as theirs. I'm numb to it already. I'll cheat to
get
Quoted message said:by."
Primetime heard the same refrain from many other students who cheat: that
cheating in school is a dress rehearsal for life. They mentioned President
Clinton's Monica Lewinsky scandal and financial scandals like the Enron
case,
Quoted message said:as well as the inconsistencies of the court system.
"Whether or not you did it or not, if you can get the jury to say that
you're
Quoted message said:not guilty, you're free," said Will, a student at one of the top public
high
Quoted message said:schools in the nation.
Mary, a student at a large university in the South, said, "A lot of people
think it's like you're not really there to learn anything. You're just
learning
Quoted message said:to learn the system."
Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson Institute for Ethics, the Los
Angeles-based organization that conducted the 2002 survey, said students
take
Quoted message said:their lead from adults.
"They're basically decent kids whose values are being totally corrupted by
a
Quoted message said:world which is sanctioning stuff that even they know is wrong. But they
can't
Quoted message said:understand why everybody allows it."
An Issue of Expediency
Even if the world were more ethical, students still have reasons for
cheating.
Quoted message said:Some said they cheat because they're graded on a curve - so that their
score
Quoted message said:is directly affected by how other students do.
"There's other people getting better grades than me and they're cheating.
Why
Quoted message said:am I not going to cheat? It's kind of almost stupid if you don't," said
Joe.
Quoted message said:
The pressure for good grades is high. "Grades can determine your future,
and if
Quoted message said:you fail this then you're not going on to college, you're going to work at
McDonald's and live out of a car," said high school student Spike.A business student at a top state university, said, "Everything is about
the
Quoted message said:grade that you got in the class. Nobody looks at how you got it." He
graduates
Quoted message said:in a few weeks and will go on to a job with a top investment firm.
Others see it as a sort of moral relativity. Some students feel it is
perfectly
Quoted message said:OK to cheat in some situations and in some courses.
"You'll have an engineer say, 'You know, what do I need to know about
English
Quoted message said:literature? I shouldn't have to take this course,' " said Don McCabe, a
professor who heads the center for academic integrity at Rutgers
University in
Quoted message said:New Jersey.
For Mary's classmate Pam, it was a different sort of prioritizing. "You
don't
Quoted message said:want to be a dork and study for eight hours a day. You want to go out and
have
Quoted message said:fun."
And some professors make it easy, students said. They overlook even the
most
Quoted message said:obvious instances.
In fact, McCabe says, a survey of more than 4,000 U.S. and Canadian
schools
Quoted message said:revealed half of all faculty members admitted ignoring cheating at least
once.
Quoted message said:
Tech WarStill, one of the main elements of cheating is doing it in secret. There
are
Quoted message said:the tried and true methods:
Many sororities and fraternities maintain a file of term papers for
reuse
Quoted message said:- take one, turn it in.
The old rubber band trick - stretch one out and write everything you
need
Quoted message said:on it, and when it shrinks back to shape, no one will be the wiser.
But students today also have more technologically sophisticated options
open to
Quoted message said:them:
A favorite device is the graphing calculator, which most professors
allow
Quoted message said:students to bring into an exam . and into which students can download all
kinds of material.Another is an iPAQ - a handheld computer similar to a Palm Pilot -
which
Quoted message said:can also download information.
Cell phones - to take pictures of notes, or among the more wily, to
text-message friends for answers.Even a two-way pager can be used to cheat. For one student whose campus
has
Quoted message said:wireless Internet access, he used it as a mini-computer to access the
entire
Quoted message said:Internet during his test.
And then there are Internet-based clearing houses for term papers, such
as
Quoted message said:Papers4Less, Cheathouse.com and Schoolsucks.com.
Fortunately, educators have technological options too. Schools have been
subscribing to a service called Turnitin.com, which can help teachers
compare
Quoted message said:students' papers to all the available literature in its database.
"It's typically 30 percent of all the papers submitted have significant
levels
Quoted message said:of plagiarism," said John Barrie, founder of Turnitin.com.
Where Is the Tipping Point?
"We are in a crisis," said Josephson. But he added, "I don't think it has
to
Quoted message said:stay that way."
He said he was waiting for the tipping point, like Enron with business
ethics,
Quoted message said:where there would be a sea change in attitudes towards cheating.
An ABCNEWS poll found hopeful signs - but worrying ones as well.
In a random sample of high school students aged 15 to 17, 36 percent
admitted
Quoted message said:to having cheated themselves - fewer than in Josephson's survey.
But seven in 10 kids also say they have friends who cheat, and only
one-third
Quoted message said:of students have ever had a serious talk with their parents about
cheating.
Quoted message said:
"We need to promote integrity. We need to get students to understand why
integrity is important - as opposed to policing dishonesty and then
punishing
Quoted message said:that dishonesty. Because they can beat the system," McCabe said.
Josephson emphasized that college teaches students many things: how to
learn,
Quoted message said:behave, overcome challenges, and succeed.
"And if they approach it honestly, they'll learn far more in college than
they
Quoted message said:think they can," he said. "But more than that, they'll come out of it
better,
Quoted message said:stronger people."
So, what's your point, Jan? What does this article have to do with the topic
of this newsgroup, and why did you post it?
--Rich