Wednesday, January 26, 2011

cheating - my take as your teacher

When you cheat on a test it makes me like you less. A lot less. Not only have you shown me a lack of integrity you have also made my job a lot harder. The dislike is directly in proportion to how much harder my job has become.

When you're a university student and you cheat it affects your ability to continue studying at uni. It calls formal protocol in to play - a report to the Dean who files a report with the Registrar and also with the Academic Committee and next the accrediting agency... then a formal review board is assembled to determine the possible extent of the cheating which then leads to either a less formal resolution at an Examination Board or a highly formal hearing. And more formal protocol after that.

I'm not a formal person and have well established distaste for such formalized proceedings... there are way too many in the above process for my life to be enjoyable during that time. And I hate failing students - I hate cause distress for my students, actually. If you work hard and are determined I am here to offer all the support and guidance you can ask for. Failing students hurts. Almost as much as these darn formalities. And you, foolish student, are the sole cause and creator of the situation.

People need to be assembled, reports to be written, notes to be taken and submitted, records to be kept, more meetings to be held, witnesses and justification to be heard (yet to no avail as the cheating is too damn obvious), teacher testimony, evaluations, determinations, reports to be issued, failing marks to be generated, horrible formal repercussions to be dealt... and all because you were too lazy to actually do the work the right way when it was assigned.

And... on top of that, you've failed. Not just the exam, but as a student. Your job is to learn and you haven't done that. And you no longer have friends or allies in your camp cause the cheating stench rolling of the folds of your cheating body is overwhelming - no one wants to get caught up in the taint of it.

Cheater.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ha, ha, ha.
Very unrealistic, specially the end. Here is Czech republic the paradise for cheaters.

But of course you can try the hard path of the just war.
If you don´t know what to do with all the time.

Anonymous said...

Hm, what do you mean with cheating-in an English class? Because I have attended several English courses and we haven't written any tests-that's the only possible situation which I can imagine where someone can be cheating... Or downloading some essays from the internet...
Or tests at the end of the school year-so you mean using notes hidden in a sleeve or written on a hand?

could you pass the peace please said...

Cheating within the context of a university degree program rather than in a language school English class. Cheating has evolved from notes hidden on a sleeve, written on an arm or taped to the bottom of a shoe - but I'm not going to detail the evolution as I don't want to inspire any potential future cheaters. :)