Hoover Institution: The Death of Honesty.
In talking with teachers, I’ve heard that policing cheating is nigh impossible with the internet available as a resource. Some kids do it and never give a thought to the right/wrong morality, they think everything is free; others do it tentatively, while some go whole-hog and just don’t care. A perceptive teacher has to make judgments from the childrens’ character ... working within the internet culture of ‘cheating’ (some call it ‘repurposing’) to teach larger lessons.
Anyone else care to chime in?
Comments:
I have no great respect for Hoover as a source ... purely using it as a lever for my own anecdote, given above.
I am endlessly curious about how modern schoolchildren and schoolteachers are dealing with the internet.
For instance, how does a teacher handle the following:
“Give me a 3 page book report on the JFK Assassination.”
Now, kids have no way of telling an authoritative source, vs. a completely wigged-out conspiracy site.
What do kids and teachers do in this situation? I really want to know. I’ll keep asking till I find out for real.
Next entry: WaPo: 10 reasons the U.S. is no longer the land of the free. >>
Kunstler nailed this:
<blockquote:>” The clowns and villains who run America have accomplished something really epic: they have vanquished meaning. Nobody knows what anything means anymore. Anything goes now. All bets are off. It’s not reassuring. It leads to bad things happening like blood in the streets. When nothing means anything anymore, some people will actually strive, make an effort, to reestablish meaning in practical economic and political life, because civilized life is impossible without it. So, in those historic moments when civilization is suspended, people will work like hell to restore meaning. Sometimes though, like Germany in the 1930s, you discover that the suspension of civilization is itself intoxicating, and you ride with that for a while."</blockquote>
“Cheating” is not “taught in schools”, as this “libertarian” Hoover dipshit intones, but instead is the result of a series of other inputs.
People “cheat” because it’s worth it.