It’s a fair cop. The code courses are also to be ignored. The crap gadgets are worth it.
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I just started reading Cory Doctorow’s short story Vigilant, along the same lines. Doctorow rants about the mindset that treats education as war between teachers and students.
The whole story is here.
“Dee’s school was worried that kids who did their tests remotely would cheat, because at Dee’s school, they conceived of education as an adversarial process: the teachers wanted to cram education into the students’ brains, and the students wanted to avoid being educated. Tests were a way for teachers to know if they could stop cramming, and if the students could, they would 100 percent fake the test results so that the cramming would end.”
One thing no one has mentioned so far is the fact that the student got detention. In what way is additional punishment beyond a failing grade going to help the situation?
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Show us on the doll where Massachusetts hurt you. 
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One thing detention implies to me is “supervised working on homework”, which means they (probably) aren’t cheating on it.
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A failing grade isn’t supposed to be a form of “punishment” at all. It’s an indication that the student hasn’t demonstrated understanding of the subject.
One can argue about whether or not detention should exist, but it serves an entirely seperate function than a letter grade. An “A” student who breaks the rules may receive detention while a failing student who has tried to follow the rules does not receive detention.
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One of my proudest moments in high school was that time that we got ourselves and our goody-two-shoes honor-roll friend into detention during the last week of senior year for that water balloon incident. Good times!
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All right, I didn’t mean to imply that a failing grade is punishment (that’s the opposite of the message in the Cory Doctorow story I quoted). I was talking about detention, which is all too often used as punishment, the pedagogical equivalent of jail.
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It’s really just yet another example of Goodheart’s Law, and probably one of the most prevalent in modern society.
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A quick skim through the student handbook suggests to me that the academic integrity policy on page 24 applies. In part:
Plagiarism consists of the unauthorized use or close imitation of the
language and thoughts of another author, including Artificial Intelligence, and
the representation of such as one’s own work. Plagiarism and cheating in any
form are considered disciplinary matters to be addressed by the school. A
teacher apprehending one or more students cheating on any graded assignment, quiz or test will record a failing grade for that assignment for each student involved.
I don’t know if that’s new for 2024-25 or if it existed in the document when the alleged plagiarism occurred. I also haven’t read through the whole document.
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So how on earth can you assess students?
From what I know of the american school system, it’s really difficult to judge fairly how well students have performed. GPAs can be skewed by the sort of thing that this article discusses, the SAT and ACT exams are voluntary, and only test a very narrow part of the curriculum, extracurriculars are largely a measure of how much time and effort the parents can put into boosting the child’s CV , and personal essays and “institutional fit” have a history of being loaded with bias and discrimination. In that sort of environment, how does any student get a fair demonstration of their abilities that isn’t just testing their background.
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It will be interesting to see how this plays out over the years. I’m old enough to remember the brouhaha over calculators in school. When calculators were first sold to the public there was a lot of pushback over having kids use them in school. For one they were incredibly expensive, close to $100 for one that would add, subtract, multiply and divide, no other functions, which gave wealthier students an advantage. Then there was the concern that students would never learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide. It was quite the controversy back then. Now, calculators are cheap and have been integrated into schools.
Will the same thing happen with AI? Who knows? It is a different kettle of fish, but it is still a technological “improvement” that may well become a part of our daily lives. It will be dealt with, much like calculators were.
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We use lots of metrics to assess students for scholarship eligibility.
GPA is one factor, but so are
- Family hardship
- Background
- Clearly articulated goals
- Demonstrated interest and steps taken toward career goals
- Extracurricular activities
- Awards and recognitions
- Work experience
- Community involvement
- Letters of recommendation
among others.
No system is immune from bias, but we have a lot of procedures in place designed to minimize it as much as possible and we revisit those metrics and procedures regularly.
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I’m referring to the white, upper-middle class corridor from NY to ME; I fully expected these people to be from Connecticut; the mom is a ‘published author’ with a website and everything (including a message page…)
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I’d like to see Cory trying to teach the current generation of average American high-schoolers…
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Sounds as if the handbook was written for lawyers rather than for students.
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Nah… “this generation is a bunch of spoiled brats!” is an old-person complaint going back to antiquity and it’s not any truer now than it was then.
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It seems to me fairly obvious that if you didn’t do the homework, you don’t get any marks for it.
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As a former teacher, I can tell you that non-attorney parents play these high stakes games all the time when their teenagers make wrong decisions.
I know I’ve mentioned it before, but we had a student who took an extra AP class because he wanted to beat out another student for valedictorian. He cheated, got caught, and was similarly punished by getting a zero on a test. The school decided that he couldn’t be the class valedictorian since he likely cheated on all the tests (he had the test bank questions.) His parents hired an attorney and sued (“Nowhere in the student handbook does it say that you can’t be a valedictorian if you cheat”) and we teachers were furious.
It’s mostly all about college, but sometimes their precious teens do utterly stupid things. Another senior thought it would be funny to punch a glass door on his out on the last day of school, and it caused severe damage to his hand. The parents hired an attorney and sued because there wasn’t a sign on the glass door telling students that they could harm themselves if they punch the glass.
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And… they mostly didn’t. Which is a problem as algebra is a generalization of those operations.
(I’ve had to mention “you don’t need a calculator to multiply by zero” too many times in college classes.)
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I can empathize with the kid… He’s probably under a lot of pressure. It seems like he probably has assholes for parents, too. That doesn’t help.
But the generative AI thing is totally besides the point. He cheated. It doesn’t really matter how. AI can be a good tool and if he used it to help create a work of his own, I see no problem.
He didn’t, though. This is basically the same as copying shit word-for-word out of Cliff’s Notes and he got caught.
He made a bad decision and SHOULD get a failing grade because of it. That’s also part of education.
The generative AI angle is just distraction.
If he gets knocked down a peg, boo fucking hoo. I’m sure mommy and daddy will still buy him the fancy car for a graduation gift. But if he has that one tarnish to his record, maybe he’ll learn something. Maybe.
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