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When I was a kid cheating was pretty straight forward. If you’re reading this blog I imagine it was the same for you. If you copied another student’s work, wrote answers on your hand, or plagiarized someone’s work you were branded a CHEATER!
Do you have one of these hanging in your classroom, or remember seeing one when you were a student. Of course there is still some relevance, but as an educator these rules kind of make me cringe.
Should the same rules apply today? As a teacher I used to have a rule that if students had their cell phones out in class they would receive and automatic zero on their assignment/test. Of course the fear was that students could text answers to one another or even send a picture of the assignment or test to someone else. What I didn’t consider (or was too afraid to consider) was whether my assessments were cheat future proof.
Since then I see that this is still a common problem across education. Instead of teachers creating assessments that deemphasize skill mastery, many still opt for the easy to assess “right or wrong” style of assessment. Of course there is a place for this (maybe), but I can’t tell you the last time I had to demonstrate mastery of a skill as an adult, and especially by myself? In fact, much of what I do today relies on the work of others. Moreover, by far the best teachers I’ve ever worked with steal and copy great ideas from others for their own use. Even this blog…I’m constantly looking for new ideas to make Learn[ed]Leadership more interesting and appealing. Of course, I won’t plagiarize, but that won’t stop me from copying others (code, layout, ideas, etc). In fact, the more I copy and from others the more I learn and get better.
So I’m sure I have more to say about this, but will open it up to your thoughts. What do you think? Is Cheating the New Life Skill? Share your thoughts below. Subscribe to Learn[ed]Leadership’s Monthly (or so) Newsletter (click here) (I had two new sign ups yesterday, it made me feel so special…it’s like a virtual hug) and don’t forget to like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter. Oh and if you’ve made it this far you might as well scroll back up to the top and rate this blog out of 5 stars.
