A New Challenge For Teachers

It's that time of the year once again when teachers and students are headed back to school.  As if teachers don't face enough problems in today's classroom, two growing situations are combining to give many of them another major challenge.  The problem was recently highlighted in an article, "Getting Testy", written by John Keilman of the Chicago Tribune.  The first problem is the growing acceptance of cheating in our society.  The author quotes one 16 year old who said "Teachers always give you the whole moral thing, but kids just want to get good grades."  One professor from Ohio State who has studied student cheating notes that while it is hard to nail down statistics on its prevalence, the best estimate is that up to 85 percent of high school students have cheated at least once."  Now that isn't very hard to believe if you look at how cheating is accepted in today's culture, at all levels. But you may argue that, to a degree, cheating has always been there.  Yes, I'm sure that we have all seen answers being passed on notes, straying eyes on tests, cheat sheets, and copying of assignments.  But that is minor league when compared to today's problem which adds technology to the acceptance of cheating.  With cell phones pictures of tests can be quickly taken and passed to others or even posted online. Smart phones can also be used to search for answers on the internet.  By texting, questions and answers can quickly be shared with other test takers.  Term papers can be copied from internet sites where they are readily available for purchase.   Even difficult math problems can be solved using internet sites.  Cheat sheets can be stored in the memory banks of calculators. Homework answers can be posted on blogs or on Facebook. And who knows what else. What can a teacher do?  If you have 30 or more students in a classroom it's not easy to catch them.  Lessons on ethics and morality have little impact on this generation - and probably not on their parent's generation as well.  A teacher could make multiple versions of tests but that would double or triple the teacher's prep time and even then bright students would find a way to get around it.  One teacher mentioned in the article makes all students hand in their cell phones before a test.  I guess that is one possible solution, but what a chore, and it probably won't be long until some parent sues the teacher and the school over this policy.  And as technology advances, a generation that doesn't value honesty will find more ways to use it to cheat.  So maybe the long term result will be that a high school education doesn't mean that you really learned anything except how to use the technology to your benefit.