How Should I Punish Them?
I conducted an experiment today, an experiment designed to expose the cheaters in my classes. I heard of this trick from a veteran teacher who had known another teacher who did this, so there's good precedent for this trick. You may think I'm cruel. But now I know some students who should not be trusted. Yet I also need advice on how to deal with them.
This is what happened. I have four classes of the same subject and level. I came up with a wicked hard quiz for them. I gave the same quiz to them all. The first two questions were easy enough if they had studied, just to keep them from getting too suspicious. But let me assure you that the other four (which included an extra credit question) were absolutely impossible. Only someone with a photographic memory could have answered them correctly without having cheated. I made sure of this. They were all questions related to material found in graphs, sidebars, and insets in the text, which I know few students read. Some of them were numbers questions, along the lines of "How much did Americans spend on Christmas trees during the 2005 holiday season?" and "How may copies of Little Women had beend sold by 1893?" and "How much did Rockefeller give to research mouse intestines?" Another question (and this was the real one) asked students to identify the two states that had a poll tax and literacy test for voting, but no grandfather clause or property tax. This question ensured that even the most rabidly fanatical numbers people, who might happen to have read the sidebars and remembered the figures would not have been able to answer it.
At the end of the first class I posted the answers. Then I gave the quiz to each of my three classes at the end of the day, after enough time had passed for those students who wanted to cheat, both talkers and listeners, to commit their sins. Sure enough, several students accurately reported the numbers and states. A few of them had a couple right, but not all. This suggests that: A. they were trying to be sneaky and pretend they hadn't really cheated by purposefully missing a couple, or B. had only cheated by learning that they should study the sidebars and graphs really hard, so had crammed some figures into their heads but not all of them, or C. their friends who fed them answers didn't have time themselves to remember either all of the questions or all of the answers, so they could only be of limited help. Again, it is conceivable that a student could have legitimately answered one of the questions correctly without having cheated. It is theoretically possible someone could have remembered more than one, but highly unlikely. And it is absolutely incredible that someone without a photographic memory could remember several, or all of them.
That some gave the correct answer to several of these impossible questions is, quite frankly, both a disappointment for how it reveals their character flaw, and is also an insult to my intelligence. I continue to be amazed at how some of these students operate. How stupid do they think I am? Did they really believe I would think they are brilliant scholars by correctly identifying South Carolina and Missouri as the two states that fit the aforementioned question, and not suspect cheating? I feel like I'm in an insane asylum or something, for insanity is the best descriptor I can use for such blatant dishonesty.
Now the question remains: how shall I punish them? And should I reward the honest ones? My general idea was to not count the quiz at all, and make it a stern warning against cheating in the future. Yet that probably wouldn't do much good, as the exposed cheaters have no reason not to do the same thing again, unless they can somehow be shamed in front of their peers out of repeating their transgression.
I might add that a lot of students were very frustrated with the quiz, and understandably so. Some of the honest ones--though not trained to refrain from profanity--ones are probably cursing me in their mind even as I write, thinking how awful a teacher I am to give them such an impossible quiz. They have yet to hear me tell them how proud I am of them for their honesty, though maybe they just didn't have the "right" friends to help them cheat. Should I name this group and say how pleased I am with their performance, by omission condemning the others? Should I give zeros to all the cheaters and 100s to all the others? Should I give them a stern rebuke and tell them they've lost my trust, and that in order to rebuild a relationship a written apology might be in order? Or should I make all the cheaters stand in the corner and write on the blackboard "I will never cheat again" 200 times after school? As you can see, myriad possibilities concerning how I could proceed, some more ridiculous than others. I have yet to decide. Any suggestions?
This is what happened. I have four classes of the same subject and level. I came up with a wicked hard quiz for them. I gave the same quiz to them all. The first two questions were easy enough if they had studied, just to keep them from getting too suspicious. But let me assure you that the other four (which included an extra credit question) were absolutely impossible. Only someone with a photographic memory could have answered them correctly without having cheated. I made sure of this. They were all questions related to material found in graphs, sidebars, and insets in the text, which I know few students read. Some of them were numbers questions, along the lines of "How much did Americans spend on Christmas trees during the 2005 holiday season?" and "How may copies of Little Women had beend sold by 1893?" and "How much did Rockefeller give to research mouse intestines?" Another question (and this was the real one) asked students to identify the two states that had a poll tax and literacy test for voting, but no grandfather clause or property tax. This question ensured that even the most rabidly fanatical numbers people, who might happen to have read the sidebars and remembered the figures would not have been able to answer it.
At the end of the first class I posted the answers. Then I gave the quiz to each of my three classes at the end of the day, after enough time had passed for those students who wanted to cheat, both talkers and listeners, to commit their sins. Sure enough, several students accurately reported the numbers and states. A few of them had a couple right, but not all. This suggests that: A. they were trying to be sneaky and pretend they hadn't really cheated by purposefully missing a couple, or B. had only cheated by learning that they should study the sidebars and graphs really hard, so had crammed some figures into their heads but not all of them, or C. their friends who fed them answers didn't have time themselves to remember either all of the questions or all of the answers, so they could only be of limited help. Again, it is conceivable that a student could have legitimately answered one of the questions correctly without having cheated. It is theoretically possible someone could have remembered more than one, but highly unlikely. And it is absolutely incredible that someone without a photographic memory could remember several, or all of them.
That some gave the correct answer to several of these impossible questions is, quite frankly, both a disappointment for how it reveals their character flaw, and is also an insult to my intelligence. I continue to be amazed at how some of these students operate. How stupid do they think I am? Did they really believe I would think they are brilliant scholars by correctly identifying South Carolina and Missouri as the two states that fit the aforementioned question, and not suspect cheating? I feel like I'm in an insane asylum or something, for insanity is the best descriptor I can use for such blatant dishonesty.
Now the question remains: how shall I punish them? And should I reward the honest ones? My general idea was to not count the quiz at all, and make it a stern warning against cheating in the future. Yet that probably wouldn't do much good, as the exposed cheaters have no reason not to do the same thing again, unless they can somehow be shamed in front of their peers out of repeating their transgression.
I might add that a lot of students were very frustrated with the quiz, and understandably so. Some of the honest ones--though not trained to refrain from profanity--ones are probably cursing me in their mind even as I write, thinking how awful a teacher I am to give them such an impossible quiz. They have yet to hear me tell them how proud I am of them for their honesty, though maybe they just didn't have the "right" friends to help them cheat. Should I name this group and say how pleased I am with their performance, by omission condemning the others? Should I give zeros to all the cheaters and 100s to all the others? Should I give them a stern rebuke and tell them they've lost my trust, and that in order to rebuild a relationship a written apology might be in order? Or should I make all the cheaters stand in the corner and write on the blackboard "I will never cheat again" 200 times after school? As you can see, myriad possibilities concerning how I could proceed, some more ridiculous than others. I have yet to decide. Any suggestions?
posted by redsoxwinthisyear at 9:43 PM
5 Comments:
Lets see...how about slipping such a character test quiz in each month for the rest of the semester record your findings. Give them a little speach about getting extra credit for a certain academic related Character, which shall remain unnamed. Make the extra credit worth the value of all the quizes. Give them hints as to the character trait...don't give it totally away as in, "he who has an ear, let him hear". Throw in some Redsox tickets for the top 4?
beat them all...
Announce in class those who passed the test and then have the "honest" ones come forward. Praise them up and down and give the evil Chad eye to all the others.
I'm not sure that praise for the good students or punishment for the cheaters would be of much use. The problem is deep-seated and I tend to think that surface attempts at behavior modification would be ineffective.
I wish I could remember the name of the movie I saw recently, it's been out on video for a while, about the West Point cheating scandel that occurred around 1950. 70 or 80 cadets, as I recall, were expelled for exactly the kind of cheating you described. Maybe you could work into your curriculum a discussion of that incident, demonstrating that bad habits that seem innocent at first can lead to life-altering problems. Other real-life examples could be useful as well -- Joseph Biden's plaigerism that cost him a good shot at the presidency; Clinton's perjury that resulted in his impeachment -- there are other examples I'm sure, but those are the only ones that come quickly to my mind right now.
Notreallynecessary, you're probably right about behavior modification not working well with this deep-seated issue. But I tried to make a stand. More on that in an upcoming post...
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