The last
thing I want to think about, cheating. My job is to help people learn. Period.
Cheating is not relevant to how I see my job at all.
Now, I work
like most other teachers (I imagine). I give tests, all different kinds. Part
of my job is to give concrete, usable feedback and it’s easier if we have a
clear, limited task to comment on. Homework is shakier – I quickly end up
giving comments on someone else’s French. Not useful.
I also need
to give grades. They should be fair. Norway has no SATs or anything of the
sort. Institutions of higher learning have to make up their own entrance
requirements or simply use high school grades, so most do the latter.
Understandably. This means that my grades have to be fair, so that’s another
good reason to give tests.
Norwegian
students are randomly selected for a small number of exams only, so that means
that it is the grades that I give them that are important, so I shouldn’t
really be surprised that many of them want to cheat. The sudden flood of
cheating this year did surprise me, though. I can’t imagine that they have
suddenly become worse at cheating, so presumably they are cheating more. There
have been some pieces in the media lately about cheating at school, and some of
my colleagues are talking about it, so we could be dealing with a sea change
here.
Teenagers
have traditionally had a dim view of the usefulness of school and in a system
such as the one here, it’s the grades they are after more than the learning.
This clashes with the way I see things: For me, the goal of French class is to
improve your French. If that is the case, then submitting something that you
didn’t write on a test is meaningless. If the goal is to get good grades, it
can be a reasonable, even rational, choice.
So I need
to admit to myself that I am part of a machine that is bigger than me and that
has goals and functions that I do not approve of (sorting pupils, in this
case). I can quit or change my practice. For the short term at least, I will
have to choose the latter. I can clearly no longer ignore rampant cheating. It
is grossly unfair to those who do not cheat. By not being concerned with
cheating, I am effectively punishing those who do nothing wrong.
In
practical terms, this means changing evaluation strategies. A wider variety of
oral evaluation is one step. Tighter control of written evaluation is another -
an unavoidable one. Since use of translation programs and communication are
typical cheats, many of my colleagues argue for simple use of pen and paper,
but my trouble is that I have great trouble reading my pupils’ handwriting. Seriously. There
is always at least one paper that is completely illegible. And even for the
papers that are legible, what do I do with them? Mark them and then give them
back? Then they lose them and I am at a disadvantage when they come to me later
and ask for coaching. I need some kind of portfolio of student output and paper
makes this a challenge.
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