新編大學(xué)英語(yǔ)第四冊(cè)u(píng)nit4 Text A: Cheating: Alive and Flourishing

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UNIT 4 IN-CLASS READING; New College English (IV)

Cheating: Alive and Flourishing

1 Trying to get a handle on scholastic cheating is as frustrating as surveying American eating patterns. Everyone says he is watching his weight yet the streets are full of overweight folk, and the snack-food industry reports record sales.

2 Talk to students, and you get the same kind of contrasts. Most say that, yes, they cheated when they were younger, but no, they would not dream of cheating now, and no, cheating is not a big problem at their schools.

3 But talk to their teachers, and a very different picture emerges, one that shatters the myths about who cheats and why. It is a picture of cheating among top students' at top schools, of habits that take root in elementary school, bud in high school and flower in college, of parents who care more about their children's success than about their moral development and of a problem that is more likely to get worse than to get better.

4 Several schools are trying to cut down on the opportunity to cheat by giving more open-book exams. Others are holding seminars for their teachers to discuss 'the 'cheating phenomenon soften with students invited to attend. But psychologists say that the roots of the problem must be dealt with in the home. It is there, they say, that children must be helped to develop enough self-esteem to make occasional failure an unthreatening prospect and enough of a sense of right and wrong to overcome the urge to cheat.

5 Unfortunately, teachers say, too many parents are abdicating 'that responsibility. "Students just aren't brought up to see cheating as dishonest," said Patrick' L. Daly, who taught high school in the Detroit area for 30 years before retiring last year, "To them, shoplifting is dishonest; writing a couple of math formulas on their hand is not."

6 "A child cheats on an exam and his parents get outraged," said Young Jay Mulkey, president of the American Institute for Character Education, a San Antonio-based foundation that helps teachers develop students' self-esteem. "Yet he keeps hearing his folks talk about cheating on expense accounts or income taxes. The inconsistency drives children crazy."

7 Perhaps most troubling, teachers and psychologists say, is that it is often the most gifted students, the ones who presumably could get goad grades without cheating, who are the worst offenders. They are the 'ones who believe that getting into a top college or later, a top graduate school is the most important goal, and will do anything they must to attain it. At first, the pressure is from their parents; eventually, those values become their own.

8 Poll after poll shows that college students, not just high schoolers, are making cheating a way of life. Campus newspapers are full of articles dealing with the subject. Last fall Dartmouth College, for one, devoted almost an entire issue of Common Sense, its new student paper, to the growing problem of cheating on campus. Universities are holding special seminars at which professors and students discuss the problem. At least one school, the University of Illinois, issues a pamphlet for its faculty that describes some of the more ingenious methods students may use to cheat (written crib sheets attached to cap visors, oral ones playing on a Sony Walkman) and ways to stop them. Several others are tightening their computer security, after having discovered that computer hackers were breaking into electronic college files in order to alter their grades.

9 Yet despite the precautions, students still offer papers written by term-paper companies or by other students as their own. And they still seem to find peeking at each other's tests to be irresistible.

10 Is cheating human nature, or do parents and teaches encourage it by their own attitudes?

11 No one seems much bothered about cheating in youngsters, anyway. "My little boy doesn't like to lose, when be plays games, so he cheats," said a mother of a nursery schooler. "I did the same when I was his age." What if the cheating on games turns into cheating on tests? "If I thought he wasn't studying, I might get concerned," she said. "But I can't lay a guilt trip on a child for cheating it is too tempting, too common and too much a part of human nature."

12 Even the most outspoken opponents of cheating are lets critical of youngsters who cheat. "I wouldn't be comfortable with an honor code like ours in grammar school or even high school," said Mr. James R. Socas, chairman of the honor Committee' at the University of Virginia. "Our system really says, 'You are on the threshold of being an adult, of taking responsibility for your actions.' Young people must be allowed to 'make mistakes." Did he cheat when he was younger? "Sure."

13 Increasingly, professors are turning to open-book exams that test students more on how well they have learned to apply concepts than on how well they have memorized unimportant facts or formulas. The approach serves a dual purpose: it fosters conceptual thinking and makes crib sheets and peeking useless.

14 "I give open-book problems without unique solutions," said Stanley R. Liberty, dean of the engineering school at the University of Nebraska. "Students know there's an unbelievably low probability of two people coming up with the same approach."

15 Cornell University, meanwhile, has set up a faculty sub-committee to create a campus-wide dialogue on the "pedagogical" goals of exams. "Talking about cheating would cause trouble," said Larry Walker, vice president of academic. "I want professors and students to discuss ways that exams can be used as a learning device, not an evaluation tool."

16 For the most part, academicians seem optimistic that changes in teaching methods and in exams will cut down on academic dishonesty. But teachers and child psychologists say that the only way to stop students from cheating in college is to keep them from developing the habit in high school. They are worried whether, in a society where two-income families and high-pressure jobs are prevalent, that is an ever more elusive goal.

17 Said Beverly Betz, who teaches at New York City High School, "Parents have got to make their children feel that if they don't do well on a test it's not the end of the world, but just an indication that more work needs to be done."