Timothy Mason's Site

"Cheaters - hmmm.. in my opinion it is going to come back and bite them in the fesse anyway. They are usually the ones that are not passing. I try to group reluctant students with stronger willed students who won't allow them to cheat. I also tell those students to "watch out for so-and-so, he/she doesn't like to use his/her own brain". Maybe this is wrong, but it makes the students aware."

Actually, most students are willing to cheat ; it is more than likely that those who are not passing cheat in less subtle ways than do those who pass - a recent survey found that honours students were systematic in their cheating. They were also good at it, which means that they were not remarked upon by teachers.

Anecdotally, I have come across a number of colleagues who admit to having cheated during their CAPES or Agregation ; they do not appear to be particularly ashamed of this, regarding it as a mark of intelligence. Since purchasing Mr. Eysenck's little book, I myself, of course, have had no need to cheat.

It is possible that efficient cheating is a good learning technique ; a student who has produced a good 'cheat sheet' has probably done the work necessary to pass the exam without needing to refer to it. On the other hand, poor cheating gets you nowhere. Some of my colleagues have capitalized on this ; allow students to prepare their cheat-sheets, and then note which work and which do not. Students discover that good cheating takes work.

By the way, I will venture, for once, to disagree with Marilyn ; although I have no idea whether either the ethical or the cognitive skills acquired in school transfer to what is sometimes referred to as the real world - although, having worked in in advertising company, I am inclined to think there is nothing particularly real about it - I'm reasonably satisfied that we can make only weak predictions about whether one of our students will or will not swing the lead once s/he enters work. Apart from those very few who are recognizably damaged by life, people are capable of most radical change when they leave school.

Regards, and an excellent New Year to all

Timothy Mason

I do not know who has said, on this list, that cheating is right, or that it is to be condoned. I have not done so, although it is conceivable that I have expressed myself loosely enough to be thus interpreted. However, as I am always willing to rise to a challenge, I shall do my best to demonstrate that the above is probably wrong, in the full knowledge that virtually no-one on this list will agree with me.

In the first place, I will note that school itself is vast enterprise in hoodwinkery ; under the pretence that it furnishes a good for all, it imposes on the majority a fundamentally unfair and unjustifiable system of sifting, sorting and etiquettage which distorts and undermines most of the values to which we pay lip-service. It does this at considerable expense to the participants, whether willing or not ; in return, it provides very little - the amount of useful or even interesting information that the average schoolchild picks up in the decade between the ages of eight and eighteen could probably be inscribed upon the back of regular-sized post-card, still leaving room for a shopping-list. Recent findings on the efficacity of home-tuition demonstrate quite clearly that children learn more, more quickly, more enjoyably, and more thoroughly, in their own homes than they do in school.

To a great extent, the educational mission of the school is undermined by the institutional obsession with success, failure and ranking. Studies too numerous to mention have shown clearly that ranking is anti-educational both because it distorts the activities of the teacher and the use of class-room time, and because it perverts the minds of the young. Ranking, then, is an unjust and pernicious misuse of time and resources. Under these conditions, the pupil who subverts, or refuses to ascribe to the prevailing practices, who, in other words, cheats, shows a clear understanding of the nature of the institution to which he and his fellows have been subjected.

That the majority of pupils do share this understanding is plainly true : most pupils cheat if they feel that they need to and if they believe that they can get away with it. Cheating is endemic to the educational system. If we agree with S, we have to face up to the fact that the majority of our con-citizens do not ; doubtless this will leave us with a warm feeling of righteousness, and the giddy sensation of looking down upon the worthless masses from the heights of a moral pinnacle. It does little to help us attain any understanding of the underlying mechanisms that lead to pupils indulging in the variety of behaviours which we label 'cheating'.

If we *do* believe that lying is a moral wrong, we would do better, rather than unleashing our wrath upon the children who are doing their best to come to terms with a morally bankrupt system, to look to reforms to that system which would encourage truthfullness and open-dealing. It certainly does not seem to me that resounding declarations of principle, however worthy, will do much to change things. If we descend from these philosophically vertiginous slopes and reenter the classroom once again, we need to ask what policies we should adopt vis-à-vis trickery of one nature or another.

One thing we should do is to substitute, as far as possible, formative testing for summative testing, and to make it clear to the children that our tests have no incidence upon classroom ranking, report forms, failure or whatever. From my reading of this list, I fear that most teachers seek ways to 'make marks count' rather than to test formatively ; this can be understood in view of the perversion of the educational process to which I referred above. Unfortunately we are, of course, legally bound to introduce some element of summative evaluation into our schedules ; it is my impression that this has come to count for more and more of children's work-load over the last forty years or so, and that if there has been any increase in the propensity of children to cheat, it may well be due to the increase of summative testing within the school.

Be that as it may, I would not advise teachers to either encourage or allow cheating during tests - on the other hand, I would wish to avoid, as far as possible, the test of the closed-book, empty desk variety that encourages surreptitious recourse to cribs. But first and foremost, I would suggest that we avoid moralizing about the whole business ; it is difficult to justify, either philosophically or pragmatically.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

I think 'cheating in school' is, most of the time, a technical error, rather than a moral failing. Nor do I believe in the efficacity of punishment, or, as one contributor appeared to suggest, of shaming. X wants to make it a moral issue ; I see it as simply the kind of behaviour that school secretes quite naturally. The oppressive nature of school doesn't 'excuse' that behaviour in my eyes, for no excuse is needed. School produces cheat sheets, just as, and at the same time as, it produces grades.

As a teacher, I work within an institution that functions according to a set of rules. I apply those rules, whether I agree with them or not, because that is my job, and because I would and do consider an injustice to occur if rules are not applied by the officers of the institution in a uniform way. But I do as much as I can to avoid putting children in situations where they might be encouraged to cheat, and if I do catch one cheating, I make very little fuss about it ; I am encouraged in this by everything I know about punishment, both from my own experience, and from whatever slight familiarity I may have with the academic literature.

As to cheating within institutions of higher education, I would regard the circumstances as being somewhat different. There is neither a legal nor a de-facto obligation on young people to go on to college ; if they have done so, then it is because they have exercised a certain degree of choice. I still don't regard it as a particularly heinous offence, and usually deal with it - on those rare occasions when I have been confronted with it - in private. If, however, it occurs during a finals exam, the rules are quite clear, and are to be applied. This is an institutional matter rather than a moral one

This gets more and more interesting. I now see that we have moved from cheating on school tests to murder. Let us by all means follow this tempting opening ; a large percentage of killings in the United States - the percentage differs from one state to another - are regarded as being justifiable, for one reason or another. for example, in Texas, up until 1974, it was regarded as justifiable homicide for a husband to take the life of anyone taken in adultery with the wife, provided the killing took place before the parties to the act of adultery had separated. Although this law has now been repealed, juries in some states are so reluctant to convict in such cases, that prosecutors do not bother to pursue them.

Indeed, homicide often goes unpunished ; Daly and Wilson investigated a sample of homicide cases in Detroit (1972), finding that of 121 solved cases, 57 resulted in no conviction, and that of 64 convicted offenders, only 2 were found guilty of first-degree murder. Wilbanks' study of homicide in Miami found that the majority of solved homicides in 1980 did not lead to any prison terms whatsoever. More than 100 cases resulted in no charge at all, prosecutors being convinced that there was sufficient justification.

If so dramatic an act as taking a gun or a knife and ending someone's life can be treated with so large a degree of tolerance and understanding, it is difficult to see why anyone would wish to apply moral absolutes to the peccadilloes of school-children. Indeed, if we extend a similarly broad understanding of underlying motivations to such behaviours as prosecutors and juries do to homicide, we will probably be willing to dismiss a large percentage of them as, in one way or another, justified.

The fact that a large number of killings go without either prosecution or punishment has very little to do with the leniency of judges. Many cases do not even come to court, and others are not prosecuted with full force because prosecutors know they will not secure convictions on such a basis.

Why is this? Well, it is in great part because the Law, although often enough an Ass, is not ass enough to believe that there is any great advantage to be drawn from declaring one kind of act or another as being an absolute wrong ; whatever people might say to social-scientists wielding clip-boards, when placed in the judgement seat they recognize the complexities of human social actions and take them into account.

Are teachers to be any more absolutist in this regard than are prosecutors, judges, and juries? There would seem to be no reason why they should be ; on the contrary, we are dealing with children, who, as child-development psychologists will inform you, achieve the capacity to reason in abstract terms about morality only in their adolescent years. Pedagogical prudence alone would suggest that we approach these matters with a light step, and that moralizing about them is more likely to make them worse than to ameliorate them. (Indeed, excessive moralizing is a characteristic of adolescence rather than of adulthood).

So what to do about cheating in class? Well, as prevention is always superior to cure, one should first take care to set activities up in such a way that cheating can only be a minor issue. One can also demonstrate, as my much misunderstood colleagues attempt to do, that cheating is, in many cases, inefficient. And when it does happen, react calmly in such a way that no labelling occurs, and that the pupil understands what you are doing. If, on the other hand, you wish to regard the crib sheet as an indicator of incipient criminality, and if you see your role as that of sherif, jury and hanging judge, then I have little to say to you ...

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

Well, if you want to refer to the French educational system, allow me to recount a little anecdote. In the French secondary system there are two grades of teachers (in fact, there are more, but I don't want to overcomplicate things here) - the certifié and the agrégé. You become a teacher by passing one or the other of the two competitive exams - the CAPES or the agrégation. A certifié will spend the rest of her career teaching a minimum of 18 hrs a week for a salary which is a smidgin above the median. An agrégé will be teaching 15 hrs a week for a rather better salary.

If a certifié wants to become agrégé, she has to pass the exam - which has very little to do with teaching and much to do with distinction (Bourdieu's work is based on his observation of the French system, which is rather like the Chinese mandarinate). Virtually nothing she does on the job will be taken into consideration, and you can be as good a classroom teacher as you like ; if you don't pass the test, you won't rise in grade.

The agrégation is a highly competitive exam. There is a firm belief among candidates that you are running against the other competitors. It follows that anything that lowers the chances of the others is good for you. Thus it is that one of my colleagues would proudly tell the story of how, when he was studying for his agrégation, he would always make sure that he was first in line when the library opened. Why? To get in a long day's study? No. To get the necessary books before they were taken by other candidates? Well ... yes. But not, he informed me, to read them. He'd already done that. No - it was to stack them on his desk, unopened, so as to ensure that the other candidates could not get hold of them.

Now, this is not an isolated case ; I have lost track of the number of times, once the evening had worn on, and the wine had done its work, that an agrégé - or a certifié - would proudly announce how he or she had cheated on the teacher's certificate. They saw nothing wrong with this ; it was part of the game. And some of the tales involved far greater dishonesty than the one I have outlined above - distasteful as it is.

Cheating is built into school systems. Teachers may try to stop children from doing it, but by setting up and enforcing a system where marks on exams and tests are taken as an indication of inner worth, and by stressing the idea that those who do not pass the exams and the tests are to be thrown into the deepest of deep pits, they give off the signals that lead the young into temptation - just like coach lets the boys know that they are expected to commit 'professional fouls'. Parents don't tell children to cheat ; teachers *implicitly* tell them they should, while explicitly telling them not to get caught. School lesson? Play the game - clever people cheat good.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

Ah - so it's us wicked French who cheat, while USAnians are clean, clean, clean? I find that very very unlikely to be the case.

First, to get one thing out of the way, honesty is not a deep-rooted Anglo-Saxon trait : cheating was certainly endemic in English schools when I was a lad, and I have no reason to believe that this has changed. And it went right up the scale ; I knew people who cheated on their degree finals.

Now it could be that in the States, cheating is so much a part of the system that it has become invisible to you. First, look at the way you grade ; teachers use a narrow band upon the scale, right at the top - there is, then, an illusion built into marking schedules that everyone has mastered the bulk of the material - a systemic conspiracy designed to give the illusion that schools do what we pretend to believe they are supposed to do. And then, once the mark is given out, you have a round of negotiation, where pupils/students come and persuade teachers to raise their grades. (I did not believe the extent to which this is true when I was first told about it, but talking to American teachers and pupils, I have had to conclude that it is a regular and pervasive feature of the system.) Some negotiation takes place over work-load and marking in all educational systems, but USAnian schools seem to have got this down to a fine art.

(One may catch a glimpse of how this works from C. Werthman's essay on how gang-members work their way through school - this is from the Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1963 - pp. 39-60. Old, sure, but I have seen no reason to believe that things have changed that much).

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

(Both these links have now gone but if you search Google for Gary Neils you will find an interview of the author of the first text about the problem)

Have a look at : http://www.hawken.edu/odris/cheating/cheating.html . A paper entitled 'Academic Practices, School Culture and Cheating Behaviour' by a school administrator starts from the observation that cheating is endemic in American schools. As the author says : "statistics indicate that cheating in schools is not deviant, it is normative. It is the non-cheater who is in the minority." And for those who believe that the problem only occurs in the public schools, the author provides evidence that the private schools may encourage cheating on a vast scale.

And then, see here : http://www.edmatters.org/2001sp/40.html for an article on how it is that, if the pupils don't cheat, why, their teachers will do it for them.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

I would like to point out why you found the heading you objected to. I have argued - and will continue to do so - that cheating is an unavoidable characteristic of any educational system that is involved in triage, and that one of the things that children learn in such systems is that dishonesty can pay big dividends. I gave examples from the French system, because that is the system with which I am most familiar. The response of several correspondents was that while it might be true of the French, American institutions were different - and one person challenged me to find American and British examples. What you saw this morning was my response to this ; I do not believe that American schools are necessarily any worse - or any better - than French ones.

As to what might be done about it all - well, one of the urls that I sent in through recent posts does make some suggestions, most of which seem reasonable. However, I would judge that the only full solution would call for a radical re-thinking of how we should bring our children up. This would involve taking seriously Freire, Freinet and the home-schooling movement - although I have grave misgivings about the latter for reasons that it would take too long to explain here.

Finally, I would say that I don't really hold it against pupils that they should cheat, and would not recommend any drastic action. One of the best tactics against cheating is to show how and why it does not work in a full learning environment. Tell your pupils that they can bring in a cheat-sheet to the next test or exam. Then show them that those who have done the work have good cheat-sheets, while those who have not don't. This means devising *meaningful* tests.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason

'The Cheating Game ; Everyone's Doing It' , reads the headline from U.S. News. You can see the full article here : http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/991122/cheating.htm .Teachers and administrators are also involved - http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/000612/cheating.htm .

I will now assume that we can agree that cheating is no less prevalent in the US than in France, or - indeed - anywhere else (an article from 'The Middle-East Times' - http://www.metimes.com/issue26/eg/3cheating.htm tells us something about what happens in Egypt).

As I have suggested, cheating is endemic in educational systems. Some observers claim that it is worse now than it ever was, blaming the increase on higher pressure for good results, on standardized testing or on a general slip in moral integrity. To the extent school certification has become more and more important in determining subsequent life chances, the belief that cheating is on the up may well be accurate. However, part of the increase may be perceptual rather than real : cheating becomes more of an issue for the same reasons.

Y wonders how people can cheat in the agreg ; well, they can cheat in the agreg the same way they can cheat in any other exam - cheat sheets, long sleeves, casting an eye on a buddy's paper - or even, today, the silent pager. Some years ago, CAPES candidates were able to consult a bilingual dictionary that had been stashed in one of the loos - the use of portable toilets inside the exam hall may have put paid to that one, but human ingenuity will find a way (like the battle between the locksmith and the burglar, the struggle between invigilator and the dishonest candidate is a permanent one, and no end is in sight).

Today education has sold itself as a certification machine. We tell pupils that they should study our subjects because they will get them a good job, give them the grades they need to go to a good school. In short, educators themselves are selling education short. We wanted people to stay longer in school. We wanted them to learn more. Instead, we've ended up with a system in which, basically, the pupils have to jump through a series of hoops. With our fixed objectives, our multiple-choice exams, our distinction between up-bringing and learning, we have forgotten what school might have been about.

What could it have been about? Well, it could have had to do with inquiry, adventure, surprise and discovery. It could have been about the induction of the young and unsocialized into a world full of meaning. It could have been about the recognition of worth in every person and in all inquiry. We have reneged on those possibilities. We have done that collectively. We do it every time we administer a MCQ, every time we announce a set of marks to the whole class - starting with the highest and going down to the lowest (yes, teachers still do do that). We do it by believing in the utility and meaningfulness of marking. School gives the message : 'you are your grade'.

People resist that ; they either cheat, or they reject the whole idea of school, as do so many young people in the UK. I don't like either solution - but I would say that neither of them derives from some permanent moral flaw on the part of the children, but from a permanent structural flaw in school systems. There is, and always has been, a tension between learning and triage ; in recent years, it has been the second term which has become the driving force in the development of education - despite the liberal or libertarian rhetoric. It has done so to its own damnation ; more and more people are waking up to the fact that the test marks don't tell us much about ability, capacity or any of the other virtues that might make a difference to a young person's contribution to the society she lives in.

Even in France, the powers are more and more interested in apprenticeship rather than schooling. I'd agree. Why? Apprenticeship puts the adolescent or the child under the guidance of a mentor. The teaching profession over here has refused to play that role. In conditions where there are thirty or forty children to a class, it may be difficult to do. But unless we can find a way of doing it, mass schooling will turn out to have been a costly error.

Best wishes

Timothy Mason