Please envision this little scene from my classroom today (my “Arrrrgh” class period of the year, no less.):
We are going over a vocabulary practice assignment that was last night’s homework, due at the beginning of class today. I frequently do this unannounced so that the kids will give it an honest shot (would YOU actually try hard on your homework if you knew you were getting the answers the next day?) to ensure that they can correct their crappy answers and salvage their homework for future use as a study guide.
We are almost to the end, and a student we’ll call “Kid X” makes an audible comment to another student twenty feet away on the opposite side of the room (we’ll call him “Kid Y”):
“Hey Kid Y, you actually got most of these right!”
To which I, with all of my teacherly wiles, snap back at him “.Excuse me, how do you know what his answers are?” Kid X looks at me, dumbfounded. I can see the thoughts She can’t possibly know that I copied his answers. She’s just a dumb teacher here to entertain me for fourty-five minutes between study hall and football practice flash across his fifteen year old face. “Um, just ’cause I know what he put.” Smile. Dimples. Glint in the eye. All his female peers fall for it. His mom falls for it. Hell, she emails me twice a week basically asking me to powder his ass after he uses the restroom without a pass and shows up to class late.
“Note to self.” I say aloud, being sure to make eye contact with both of them.
It’s not surprising to me that kids cheat. I have been teaching four four years, and I have witnessed and intervened in a myriad of cheating scams (most spectacularly, last year a kid turned in the ENTIRE lyrics to the song “Asshole” by Dennis Leary, copied in prose form, as his American Identity essay. Dumbass.) , but what has surprises me, dumbfounds me, and downright disgusts me are the following three things:
(1) They don’t think it’s wrong. They have no concept of intellectual property, academic integrity, or any of that. I try to teach them about it and challenge them to think about it, but there is very little groundwork for me to build on. They see people do it all around them, they are inured to it.
(2) Even those of them who think cheating is wrong don’t seem to understand what exactly constitutes “cheating.” About 80% of kids polled for the school newspaper which I am now the adviser of say that copying homework is not cheating. This is a huge problem. Are all of my colleagues inundating them with pointless work with no value other than simple completion (as the kids I’ve talked to about it have reported)? I HIGHLY doubt it. Are the kids being lazy and whiny? I regret my negativity, but my observations make me see that that is the more likely case. In addition, between texting and emailing, cheating has gotten insanely easier since my not-so-long-ago high school days. Oh yeah, and then there’s trying to get kids to write REAL research papers without just copying and pasting crap from Wikipedia and other junk websites. i actually had a kid turn in his senior research paper as “chunks” of five websites, each “chunk” still in the original font from the original website. Jesusfuckingchrist. At least he did the citations correctly.
Finally, (3) PARENTS ENABLE IT. Encourage it. Sometimes, unforgivably, even participate in it (sometime I’ll tell you the story behind THAT). In the five instances in which I have had to contact parents of cheating kids, four times I was told by the parents that it wasn’t a big deal and that I should offer their precious little offspring another chance to complete the assignment. And while I’m on that tangent, I’ll point out the number of parents who call off students from school when they have a test they have not studied for, or just “need a day off” (even if he/she has already had one or two of those by Thursday of that week). This is part of why I don’t think I’ll ever have children of my own. If I somehow end up like one of these parents, I’ll have to kill myself as a matter of principal.
And with that, here is a personal revelation I have had over the past two weeks or so: I am officially a crabby teacher these days. I think a great deal of it has to do with my very different new job (which, as soon as I am calm enough, I will settle down and explain to everyone), but either way, here I am, wasting my entire evening typing in my underwear about how nuts my job is driving me. I do not want to be this kind of teacher. Statistically speaking, if one in my profession reaches this status within the first two years of his or her career, he/she will switch to another career promptly. But I’ve missed that easy-out window. I know I am here for the long haul. I am still positive most of the time, and I still avoid all of the teachers’ lounge bullshit bitching. But I swear, this job is starting to eat my soul. I totally understand how something like 20% of all new teachers get out of it by their fifth year.
Any advice from veteran teachers on (a) how you handle the RAMPANT cheating problem in our schools, and/or (b) how to NOT become the grouch moping in the teachers’ lounge, spewing daily hatred for the kids he/she got into this profession to help?!
Believe me, people get even dumber when they get to college. And the cheating gets worse.
Study group? No such thing.
Group project? Doesn’t exist?
Sit around and watch while someone else does all the work and then demand that it be emailed to you before class? BINGO.
I definatly agree with working girl. Especially in college people try to just get ina group with someone smarter than them and basically become a lazyass that has someone else do all their work. I’m really worried about this when I start teaching too, since I have been told by many people, including my mother, that I tend to be too nice and forgiving to other people. I think it is an awkward situation to be in and ties into the whole debate over teaching kids morals or not in high school. Some kids may not be developly at a cognitive level where they can comprehend that cheating is wrong, which is a nother whole other issue in itself. Good luck. I say just be a badass- have the rules like the have in college. Sometimes going to the extreme is good, but you also want to have student’s opinions. Maybe have a class discussion where they define what they see at cheating and work from that.
Have fun in turkey- gobble gobble.