Gretchen
On Mon, 12 Aug 1996, Steve Finley wrote:
> Mark Gellis' was the best response yet to this situation, I thought
> (probably because it was almost exactly what I would've done, which
> naturally made it perfect). We Academic Rhetorician types have
> all this stuff to say about how the student in question was creative,
> ahead of his time, subverting the dominant set of rules in a way that
> demonstrated how far ahead he was of the rest of the class and how he
> was in touch with the potential of this technology, ad barfinitum. Fact is,
> as you said, most likely he knew he was pulling a fast one and had none
> of this more noble stuff on his mind at all, and rewarding him as some
> sort of cutting-edge prodigy shows you just how out of touch some of
> these teachers are with what students actually do. I don't think we
> should always assume the worst about students, but likewise we
> shouldn't assume that every time they fail to reach the minimum
> length on an assignment, it's because (e.g.) we oppressive fascist types
> should'nt be giving minimum lengths on papers anyway, and our
> student-genii are taking a minimalist approach in conscious protest
> of the Man, man. (I've heard it put in a much more vulgar way than
> that; the slightly gentler version is that with some teachers of the
> all-students-are-geniuses-in-everything-they-do variety, every time a
> student makes a certain bodily noise, it's Shakespeare.)
>
> Students are, IMHO, like your own kids: they're capable of genius from
> time to time, and much of what they do does have a sort of design behind
> it, but sometimes they're just mean little s***s who do stuff just to see
> if they can get away with it and for purely selfish interest. It's not
> fair to assume that your kids always do everything out of
> selfishness, and it's not smart to assume the opposite, either. Same
> for students, I think.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >From Mark Gellis:
>
> "Personally, I would give him 24 hours to do a rewrite, and make it
> absolutely clear that what he did was unacceptable, considered cheating
> by many, but that I was giving him the benefit of the doubt and the
> chance to prove he was capable of doing the work. And then I would
> dock the grade for lateness.
>
> Harsh? Perhaps. But odds are the kid thought he was pulling a fast
> one, not actually cheating, but using a loophole. As a teacher, the
> purpose of a test is just that, to test, to determine whether people
> understand concepts or have learned to employ certain skills (essays
> are, for this reason, nothing more than "take-home exams") under a
> certain set of circumstances. This kid did not complete the
> assignment in a way that proves his knowledge; therefore, one
> cannot assume the knowledge exists and one cannot give the student
> the same credit one gives to a student who has clearly demonstrated
> what they know."
>