Originally posted by ConservativeJack
Is this the part where Im suppose to feel bad for cheating?

I bet you the teachers cheated, on their wife or husband, on a test before, lied or stolen.

People make a bigger deal out of that type of stuff than they ought to. We live in a capitalistic materialistic society. So someone steals a TV, make another one.

It only bothers YOU if you LET it.

So according to your philosophy I should have just walked away and accepted a maximum grade of 40% for academic work that took several weeks of study and mental labour to produce and had my overall grades affected, thus affecting future employment opportunities?

All because some clueless moron couldn't be bothered to work hard for their own grades and steal others' efforts instead?

I can definitely relate to this thread.

I'm now in 11th grade, the apparently hardest year of high school and it is seriously taking its toll on me.
I have not an ounce of spare time (even if i do have one, i give it to ATS )


I personally have always thought that the educational system is awful.

We spend countless hours doing mindless busy work.

For example, in my Environmental Science class, most of the homework i do is coloring.

and I'm in 11th grade folks.

And with mindless coloring, we don't absorb the material we are supposed to.
If we don't know the material, how are we supposed to deal with a test?

Most kids, therefore, resort to cheating.


We are forced to take classes we don't enjoy, and learn things that we never use in life.
Personally, I get bored with topics that don't interest me in the slightest bit.

I learn more from educational books i pick up which i am interested in.
If i was tested on that stuff, I'm pretty sure I'd do damn good on a test.

Kids resort to cheating because they are uninterested and are forced to do good on tests because they need to get into a good college. It's getting way too hard anyway...

Well, there's my opinion on this.

I don't do any of those things...
Does this mean i'm weird? If yes, is there a pill for it?

When both parents are busy working forty plus hours a week, trying to keep on top of the numerous retirement saving schemes and complex health insurance plans, cleaning the house, maintaining the automobiles, they don't have enough time to spend with thier kids. Of course mass media has more influence, that seems to be the design of the system.

Recently I took some courses at the local community college, and I was surprised at how our education systems have changed. Most of the effort seemed to be geared towards forcing the students to do as much mindless work as possible, and very little towards teaching the critical skills. The whole effort seemed to be towards encouraging students to drop out. The test books were extremely expensive and poorly written. Oh yeah, my observation was that there was wide spread cheating, and it was the students getting the higher grades who were cheating the most. In addition, the tests were written with the new best possible answer technique, where many of the questions offerred no best possible answer with the information supplyed.

Our education systems seems to be more about conformist conditioning than education. This is why so many college grads are clueless these days. It is like they didn't learn anything in college.

Originally posted by poet1b
my observation was that there was wide spread cheating, and it was the students getting the higher grades who were cheating the most.

In UK universities there are numerous ways that you could cheat (should you wish to devalue your own education) with the main being to pay for your dissertation to be written for you, and there are plenty of online companies who are touting for business

A prime example is of two former students I knew who graduated last year, both got a 1st, one through sheer bloody hard work and the other who it is rumoured took the cheat's dissertation-for-hire route.

I know full well that regardless of the final awarded grade, the certificate that'll be hanging on my wall come the summer will be through sheer bloodyminded graft

...no pain, no gain!

Originally posted by projectvxn
Well it seems the math is in. When 60% of student have cheated or are cheating, that means that the vast majority of students AREN'T LEARNING.

Given the lies and garbage they teach in school, perhaps this isn't such a bad thing.

It's not that they are stupid, obviously they are smart enough to get by without doing the work.

Agreed.




[edit on 1/12/08 by RogerT]

why should kids want to join society? disillusionment and disenfranchisement are rampant....kids nowadays are smart enough to see this sham for what it truly is. why should they care?

even ten years ago when i was in HS, some of us were dumb enough to believe that hard work might actually pay off in life.....HA!

in this way, i find it quite easy to reconcile the fact that they "lie, cheat and steal AND say that they are good."

Fifty years ago the five influences on a child in order of priority were:
1. Family
2. Church
3. School
3. Friends
4. Media

Today it is the same four influences but in this order:
1. Media
2. Friends
3. School
3. Family
4. Church

fmcanarney

Originally posted by tgidkp
why should kids want to join society? disillusionment and disenfranchisement are rampant....kids nowadays are smart enough to see this sham for what it truly is. why should they care?

even ten years ago when i was in HS, some of us were dumb enough to believe that hard work might actually pay off in life.....HA!

in this way, i find it quite easy to reconcile the fact that they "lie, cheat and steal AND say that they are good."

Nice rationalization. If you are looking for excuses, they are certainly easy to find nowadays. Granted, the accepted standards in society have gone down the crap shoot but, you have to rise above it and take responsibility for yourself.

Hard work does pay off contrary to what the recent generation of slackers thinks. This generation is a generation of entitlement. They honestly don't believe that they should try for anything because it is owed to them. I am seeing this first hand in the recent pool of interns that have come to work for the company I work for. 90% of them are feeble and lazy and do not have any drive for success. The remainder actually want jobs when they graduate and are willing to learn the ropes and work for it. This is how you earn respect but you have to respect yourself first.

Recent college grads think that once the mortar board comes off they will wallk into a $60k job. Some kids will but most won't right away. The ones that don't are the ones to watch. The hard workers will succeed and the losers will give up because they feel defeated. They will probably steal if given the chance, they will eventually quit and move back home with mommy and daddy because their parents enabled this type of behavior all throughout HS and college.

I think a lot of it has to do with the media, think about it, all we ever seen on tv is violence, a lot of the music kids listen to is full of violence and sex (rap is the worst, that's all it's ever about except for TI and Kanye West), not only that but then you have these dead beat parents that were young and dumb and decided to jump into a relationship without knowing whether they actually love each other or not, plus a lot of kids don't even know what love is, they think it's a feeling, cause that's what they are taught in school and at home by there stupid parents who don't even know what love is.

There are many contributing factors, the main ones are Media and Parents, the kids are the ones who make the decision and are responsible for there own actions, things will get worse though, they have to.

-Lahara

I am seeing that the OP got a great post going on here! A lot of great conversation and tons of relevant and valid points... Even a teen to let us know first hand!

I think if we start pointing fingers at this or that, we are wrong. Yes, media, rock and rap stars, Madona and all those other resources are perverting morals. But as a parent, we need to at least let our children know that they do. I really wish I could remember who it was but I was a seminar for fatherhood and the teacher said you can only teach the child for the first three to five years, after that, it's their life to live. I can agree to an extent with that, but find that now as mine accelerate twards teen aged, that they will allow me to be a friend and confidant. Rather than the starch and moral spewing parent (that I wasn't good at being anyways).

I am concerned about what our children face on a daily routine. I never had to worry about being shot, raped or stabbed. But reality has stepped off the screen and into or schools.

I applaud the children who walk the straight and narrow, and am not supprised at those who don't.

who the hell is conducted these surveys. i go to a new york public high school and have never seen anything like this.

every time i see something like this in the news i wonder if its fake. i have many friends who attend different schools and none of them took part in this survey.


so exactly what part of new york are they surveying?

This what you call a learned behavior. Government, Corporations, and we ourselves lie, cheat, and steal to maintain a competitive edge. I am not saying it is a good thing. All I am saying is that society sets the example on a daily basis for our students to learn. Who says kids aren't learning?

I stole in high school but I never cheated(because I was smarter than everyone else and would probably have lowered my grade by resorting to copying other people's work).

High school in California was absolutely awful. Absolutely nothing was being taught, the teachers would rather you stare out a window than self-educate by reading a book when you're not paying attention, and a thick "stoner" culture permeated both high schools I attended.

Independent education saved me from the crud that was making me consider dropping out(the busywork, the politics, and the week of learning stretched out to fill a semester) and made me a straight "A" honor-role student that graduated more than a year early. Which was great until I wasted several thousand dollars trying to drag myself through college without independent study and kept going crazy after the second week of every semester.

Parent involvement would have been ideal but that would have implied that my parents were around before 7:30/8:00 every night and that we ever spoke.

What bothers me the most about the schooling system is this: shouldn't people think that locking kids in a room for most of their waking day without moving or speaking create neurological atrophy as a result of horrible under stimulation of the brain instead of neurological growth as the result of widespread stimulation?