I don't agree with this at all. Assessment is completely necessary to understand where a student is at, and plagiarism renders assessment ineffective.
Industrial mass-produced "assessment" is only necessary in a mostly-anonymous, un-personal system. If you have time to actually talk to a student, you can figure out pretty quickly how well they understand something. I think of it like stack overflow. If someone borrows ideas and code from there for a code review, I'm fine with that, as long as they understand how the system is doing. Being able to do research and fi…
Yes, if we had unlimited resources and could give each student an individualized exam, oral and written under supervision, then plagiarism detection of tech wouldn't be necessary, but if you're trying to stretch a budget...
Hey so this is awesome, and I'd like to add a few points. (I used to teach HS Math in NYC Public Schools). - End scanning[1]. Scanning is the practice of forcing students to put their possessions through x-ray machines and walk their bodies through metal detectors. Like, airport security. - Wrap your head around that for a sec. Everyday, you trek to school, and are immediately put in a hostile environment where you m…
This, sadly, conforms very well with my experience of lower-income/higher-minority schools. I was a volunteer teacher (for a program teaching young ones to code with Scratch, once weekly) at a number of West Philly grade 1-12 schools for a few years, and the environment in those schools was obviously to the detriment of the students. Wonderful kids, but it's no wonder that so many won't make it to a better life when they're taught nothing of value, but are taught that they're to be feared, derided, and not cared for from a young age. I kid you not, the average SAT math score from one school I taught at was in the 300s (and of course, less than 10% of those graduating took the SAT/ACT) — you can score a 300 on the SAT math without answering a single question correctly. The students were taught nothing at all. There was constant cacophony of teachers yelling all the time, I saw multiple police in the halls every day, had to be scanned myself going in. The whole thing was ridiculous, and it's only clear purpose was to imprison those wonderful children in the poverty and destitution they were born into
Those kids need better outlets, and more support; cop shit turns it into a power struggle that entrenches their adversarial mindset. Source: I went to a "bad" public school, take issue with abusive authority, and had a mix of bad-cop and supportive teachers. It's the supportive teachers who rolled their eyes and moved on from my antics, and rewarded efforts I put into the class (regardless if they were trollish misin…
The disruptive students I'm thinking of were basically juvenile delinquents, not future math PhDs who trolled on homework sometimes. The girl who dropped acid in economics class, the girl who peed on the floor in math class, the guy who beat the shit out of another guy in the cafeteria, the two girls who were literally ripping each other's hair out in the hallway until my history teacher pulled them off of each other…
Don't take this hindsight for granted. Nobody would have said I was a future math PhD, and several of my teachers were quite convinced that I'd never amount to shit. I was a bad student, and got in trouble for all sorts of shit. Numerous teachers gave up on me very early in my education: my third grade teacher moved my desk to face the corner as a "permanent" punishment because I was disruptive. It was a collaborative effort between my parents and a few good teachers to even get me through high school, and I had no interest in higher education. It was only after a few years bored as fuck in web development that I started to wonder if I could make something more of myself, that I went back to school.
Haha I just vouched it back from the grave... [EDIT:]... and now it's [flagged] again. I suspect flaggers may not have actually read TFA. It was published in February, so it doesn't specifically refer to recent public demonstrations. It's pretty clear which side the author would take...
the fact that this gets flagged tells me people didn't even read the article and just got offended by the title.
"Don't move the ancient barriers" is an old proverb that cautions us towards careful consideration before we thoughtless tear down the walls around us before considering their core purpose. What has changed in the heart of humans that no longer necessitates these controls? Why do we discourage cheating? Why do attempt violence prevention within our schools? Why do we train personal responsibility as a guiding force of character?
Fair enough, if you have more effective methods of achieving these goals, then describe how they better meet the need and let us evaluate them on their merits and try them.
I was gonna say. The author never elaborates on it, but this is a profoundly silly take. Plagiarism is not just unethical, it also is (in my experience) a pretty good indicator the student didn't learn the subject matter. If you know what you're talking about, it's relatively easy to put it into your own words. Students that I've caught plagiarizing either: a) Can't actually explain what they were writing about b) Di…
While plagiarism is unethical, nearly all means to combat it (detection software, esp. Turnitin) is also unethical; two wrongs don't make a right. Under the ToS of all plagiarism detection software (at least that I've looked at), the student's work is added to the corpus against which all texts are tested against. This is what you would _obviously_ do if you were building a plagiarism detection app, however that mean…
> Also, I should mention that if someone wanted to cheat, they wouldn't plagiarize; they would simply get someone to write a paper for them. This service is far, far more common that you would believe.
When I was in school students did plagiarize a lot. It went out of style as software was introduced. I distinctly remember the panic'ed buzz as students discovered the teacher (or professor) was using detection software. The services you're talking about are common precisely because of plagiarism detection software.
I'm not disagreeing with your points about morality of it though, just the efficacy.
"Don't move the ancient barriers" is an old proverb that cautions us towards careful consideration before we thoughtless tear down the walls around us before considering their core purpose. What has changed in the heart of humans that no longer necessitates these controls? Why do we discourage cheating? Why do attempt violence prevention within our schools? Why do we train personal responsibility as a guiding force o…
I'm pretty sure that neither "ed-tech that tracks our students’ every move" nor "plagiarism detection software" can be described as an ancient barrier.
I'm not sure many of the rest of the list can be either, to be honest.
I'm all for limiting data collection from kids, and for making our schools less like jails. But I don't think the author does a good enough job defining "cop shit" for discussion. "Anything that presumes an adversarial relationship..." is an elegant description that might work for adult relationships, but it's harder to say what presumptions are baked into the structures you use with kids. My experience as the parent…
Yes it's true that badges appeal to children. I remember they appealed to me when I was a child. I'm wiser now, and I realize they were never beneficial to me or to the other children who got fewer gold stars. Adults owe it to children, not to exploit their weaknesses in ways that are not beneficial.
This is an extremely important topic. OP I think you are sort of shooting yourself (and the topic) in the foot with the use of "shit" -- can you not use a more descriptive word please?
"Cop shit" is excellent idiomatic English for conveying what they mean. The title is clear, accurate, and attention-getting. My general experience is that people who get wrapped around the axle over a word also wouldn't have engaged with the topic if a different word were chosen.
The title is far from "clear" or "accurate". Attention-getting for sure.
I had no idea what the premise of the article would be without clicking on it. The article's thesis: "abolish cop shit in the classroom" would make a more accurate title (albeit still inflamatory to those sensitive to the language).
It's considerably worse than "not relevant". It's a cheap rhetorical trick, blatantly misrepresenting what someone is saying to try to turn that person's statement against a position that the person supports. It's usually done in the form of a drive-by one-line comment. And it deserves to be downvoted to oblivion every time it happens, regardless of your position on the topic, just because the technique is so blatant…
You're pearl-clutching about a response to blog post (on some grad student's obscure blog) entitled "Cop Shit" (and a flagged submission, at that).
Incidentally, you're also misrepresenting the "cheap rhetorical trick" in question. I'm just fascinated by the unhinged moralizing though.