quote:

Originally posted by Pola:
It seems that there are people here who assume that since you cheated once you cheated ever since and therefore all your qualifications are not earn. Also, a lot thinks that since you were able to cheat when you were an innocent kid you will be likely turn into a fraudolent man/woman.. . .

Do marks lie?

First, let me emphatically state that I don't think anyone on this forum has even hinted that people who have cheated in their youth continue to cheat throughout their lives. Everyone makes mistakes when they are young (and when they are not so young), so no one has a right to judge anyone.

What I specifically object to is the rationalization that, because cheating is the norm, it is, therefore OK. It's not OK--just as it's not OK in the U.S. to drink before you are 21, to drive when you are intoxicated, to use your cell phone when you are at the wheel, etc.

The excuses all attempt to justify wrong actions: "I'm 20 years old; the law is unfair." "I only had two beers; why can't I drive home?" "I had to call my doctor to cancel an appointment, and didn't have time to stop at the side of the road." And in the case of cheating: "I didn't have time to study." "I wasn't interested in this course anyway" etc. etc.

We all make mistakes, but when we attempt to justify our mistakes, we don't learn from them. That we may have an excuse for doing something, does not make that something ok.

But then you ask a surprising question, Pola, "Do marks lie?" My answer--marks don't lie if the grades are earned; if the marks are obtained by cheating, they do, indeed, lie. But if cheating is rampant, how are we ever to know?

quote:

Originally posted by Emily:
But then you ask a surprising question, Pola, "Do marks lie?" My answer--marks don't lie if the grades are earned.

I made an example, mine, on how the school marks didn't work for my math skills. You could say this was my personal/single esperience, but haven't you ever seen the best of the class becoming a loser in the real life (i.e. job life)? Or does it apply the equation high grades = better worker in the US?

I am not justyfing what I did, I am just explaining the reason I had when I was a teenager and how I barely consider them like serious behaviours now.
In fact, I didn't write "you are justyfiable to cheat if: you don't like the subject, you didn't choose it, everyone else cheat,..."
But I have read posts that makes a cheater looks like a thief, others stating that Dishonesty is dishonesty and that if you cheat once you always cheat and therefore you will be a danger for the society (see bottegal post).

I have also written that I would tell a child that it is not fair, but also not wise to cheat. And someone promptly replied "how can you tell other to don't cheat, cheater?!"
If your parents forbid you something, there is the excitement of breaking the rule. The better way to teach something is to give autonomy to the child, and show him/her the nice and bad side of the "not recommended" action.

I agree, Pola. Grades are simply measurements of a student's mastery of subject material at any given time. Thus, a student who earns an "A" in calculus demonstrates superior understanding of the course material; a student who receives a "D" demonstrates inadequate understanding. Of course, if half the students in the class cheat, then the results of the test demonstrate nothing.

However, grades are not predictors of future performance or success in life. It is said that Albert Einstein failed a math course when he was a young man, but obviously that failure did nothing to diminish his "self esteem" or his determination to do better. I think we can all agree that his performance improved considerably in later years.

Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but I don't believe in giving children too much autonomy when it comes to questions of morality. It's too easy for a child to succumb to the temptation to do the wrong thing. It is the responsibility of the parent to establish moral guidelines, and to clearly state their expectations. "Yes," "no," "right," and "wrong" are words children should learn at a young age.

Perhaps (but only 'perhaps') the secret formula, that you/we would/should either follow or teach, might go something like this....

Like many things in life there are those things that you should do and there are those that you shouldn't.

There are those that are legal and those that are not.

There are those that are really nice and those that are definately NOT.

You will want (or even NEED) to try them all at one time or another in your life. Do so by all means - but understand that the society you live in will often accept that you have tried those 'forbidden fruits' (whatever they may be). But what they often don't or won't accept is if by trying that temptation - you learn nothing - and do it again - and again - and again!

So 'spread your wings' - fly free - try the forbidden fruits (haven't we all done something similar at one time or another?) - but accept that others may not like it if you then try to justify the continuance of that particular behaviour. Show that you have learned from your experiences and are now a 'Class A' human being!

quote:

Originally posted by Carole B.:
but accept that others may not like it if you then try to justify the continuance of that particular behaviour.

Perhaps I used the wrong verbs in my posts. Because I remember I wrote "I have cheated" using the past and not "I have been cheating".
And Annika also wrote that she don't cheat at hairdresser school because she likes it and she wanna learn these things for real.

And yes, everyone makes mistake, like these children who are enhanced to cheat by their parents. And I know it is frustrating for children that don't cheat because they can see there is a shorter way, there are cheaters, they get lower grades than the rest of the class,... It is exactly what happens also now in my class. You can continue to not cheat, but you have to rely on your inner moral values and swell the bitter pill and look for public confessions at school because it does not work that way, sadly (the teacher don't wanna problems with the parents, so they close also two eyes if that will do it). To me, not cheating because "mommy told me not to" is not a valid reason: I know what is better for myself and I strongly believe in my thoughts.

I have a proven experience that you might not study for this test, but in the next one there will be also the thing I didn't study before, and the problems will add one to another. Of course, I had to try it on myself to believe it was true.

You will have no inner sense of right or wrong if someone doesn't teach it to you. Your mom may not say, "cheating is wrong" but she will have begun very early to show you what is good and what is not.

We all know that there are kids these days whose parents don't parent. We all can see how they drift and look to each other to find out what is cool, because cool has in their lives replaced good.
It isn't my place to judge anyone and paste a red "A" or "C" on his chest. But if I am hiring someone to work for me, I sure will look for one without the "C." If I am making a friend I want to be close to me, and will confide in, I sure don't want a collection of letters on his chest.

You can do wrong and change. We all do over time. We'd all really like to have the people in our lives who understand good and bad and have, even eventually, chosen good.

I'd rather know someone who admits to having done wrong and felt sorry for it than someone who was never even tempted and doesn't get why society is such a minefield for the rest of us.

I'm almost certain that at NO time in any of my posts on this thread have I addressed my thoughts to an individual. I have not named anyone with the exception of Dierdre who posed the original question.

I have tried very hard NOT to lay the blame - or accuse any one person but have tried to address the question of the act of cheating and people's differing rection to it!

I'm almost afraid to get involved in this one...but you know me I just can't resist sticking my oar in

In response to Deidre's original post, the problem in Italy is the amount and type of work the students are expected to do. They have about 30 hours a week homework and interogation exams every week. All the emphasis is on repeating information verbatim with no merit for independent thought. Come on what do you expect?

In every country you'll always find a handful of students who cheat but here overloading students leads to widespread cheating. The system is the problem.

Anyway I agree with Annika and Pola about the scary judgemental tone from some posters when we're talking about high school exams, you guys need to relax.

I was just asking, since you put so much emphasis on the makrs, what do you get from my experience in math (a complete failure in a lower grade and no problem at all in the highest grade).

My respones to your question about marks was not that they are important in a real sense, but that we are judged by them and therefor they become important. Perhaps your failure in the lower grades was just due to your being bored with something that was too easy for you and so you just didn't pay attention or do the work. Just guessing.

We are starting to have a problem with our 2nd grader who is not wanting to draw and color the pictures her teacher wants that go along with her Italian lessons. I'm guessing that she is starting to see them as just busy work. I suppose the drawings help to fix the lesson in the memory through a visual device. But it's hard for a 7 year old understand this. I'm starting to think a lot of this cheating just comes from students not seeing the importance in life of what they are forced to learn.

quote:

Originally posted by Pola:

I'd like also to add a thing: I had 82/100 (min is 60/100) at my Esame di Maturità although I have never took a sufficent mark in math since the second year (out of five). But on the paper there is written that since I completed Liceo Scientifico I have a strong preparation in math.
Do marks lie?

This is another topic which perplexes me. The high school grading scale is 0-10, with 6 being a pass. From what my daughter is telling me (which could be biased by her own experience), grades above 7 or 8 are given fairly rarely, and lots of kids fail 2 or 3 classes every year, and some percentage repeat every year).

Yet last year, according to newspaper reports, something like 97% of the candidates passed the maturita', a large proportion of those (I don't remember how much) with high grades.

Are the teachers very harsh in grading throughout high school just to keep the kids humble?

quote:

Originally posted by Yael:

the problem in Italy is the amount and type of work the students are expected to do. They have about 30 hours a week homework and interogation exams every week. All the emphasis is on repeating information verbatim with no merit for independent thought. Come on what do you expect?

I expect that my own daughter, whose two parents made it through all sorts of difficult school systems without cheating, should not be penalized for her own refusal to cheat.

There are many things I don't like about the Italian school system, including the academic overloading and the fact that the rote teaching style does not suit a lot of kids (including mine), but no other style seems to be familiar to most of the teachers. I agree that all these things lead many students to rely on cheating as the only way to survive.

So what is this school system teaching people? That you HAVE to cheat to get ahead in life.

Is that really what we want kids to be taking away from 13 years in a national school system? How can that NOT have effects on society at large?

DISCLAIMER: Do I think the US school system is perfect or cheat-free? No. Do I think any school system is? No. Do I think this one, the one that my daughter is in because (for the moment) we don't have any choice, could be better? YES (at least to the extent that any system, anywhere, can always be better). Do I think it's worth trying to raise public consciousness about this and other specific, fixable issues? YES. Do I hate Italy and regret raising my daughter here? NO. Do I want to get her out of a school system thyat is killing her motivation and has rendered her depressed and lacking in self-esteem? YES.

Am I more than a little p'd off right now? YES, oh very YES.

ps Yael, not p'd at you. It's the whole damn system that's getting me down.

Deirdre,
I agree with you, but now, public awareness is not going to help your daughter. You and her father need to take some action to remedy the problem. There must be some solution and I don't think you should wait until she fails. So how can we help you figure out what to do.

What have you tried so far.
What suggestions have been given here so far.
Have you tried any of them.
Can you afford to put her in private school or
move her to another public school (I know you say you don't have a choice). Can you just change her teacher.
Does she maybe need some outside help, tutoring or counseling.


From what I've seen and read here not all the teachers or all the schools tolerate cheating as much as yours seems to.

Let's take a positive approach and see if there is something to save her.

quote:

Originally posted by Deirdre:
Are the teachers very harsh in grading throughout high school just to keep the kids humble?

For my experience, teachers are strict on marks to be feared from student, be known has "hard teachers", very exigent, and to feel important and considered.

I have never seen a 10 in my 5 years of lyceum, the bigger grade I had was a 9.5 in English and one in philosophy. But the highest grade is usual 8.5.

quote:

Let's take a positive approach and see if there is something to save her.

Thanks - positive action is always good, if we can come up with something to do!

What have you tried so far. - Nothing, yet.

What suggestions have been given here so far. - Anonymous letter. Hmm.

Have you tried any of them. - Not yet.

Can you afford to put her in private school or
move her to another public school (I know you say you don't have a choice). Can you just change her teacher.

She is in private school, Catholic. It's generally a good school, better than public in terms of giving extra tutoring. But they've got a new young math teacher who is, to put it politely, inexperienced. (Unfortunately, there is NEVER an option to change teachers in Italian schools, mostly because of the way they're set up - there's only one class of each type, so there's no other teacher to go to.)

Part of the reason the kids are cheating so much is that her tests are far too long for the time available. My husband, who is a professor of mathematics, went over the last test with our daughter and estimated that it would take 90 minutes. Ross mentioned this to the teacher, who scoffed, and also insisted she was wrong about an error that my husband had found in the teacher's results!

He plans to go and talk to her. The trick is to get her to see where she's got a problem without making a lifelong enemy of her.

Does she maybe need some outside help, tutoring or counseling.

She's getting tutoring both in school and out, and help from her father. This has been true since middle school - we have spent a hell of a lot of money in tutoring in many subjects. I have always wondered how families manage who don't have this kind of money and/or someone in the family capable of helping. I can't help with most of what she's doing - she's way beyond my math skills already.


From what I've seen and read here not all the teachers or all the schools tolerate cheating as much as yours seems to.

Ross has been in many schools, and there's a fairly consistent pattern of tolerance and/or obliviousness. If they're not seeing it, they're not looking very hard.

Your husband talking to the teacher is the first good step. Since he is a math teacher himself he should be able to have a heart to heart with her.

Does your daughter's school have room parents, can you talk with them about it. Maybe they don't care?

If those two don't help your husband should go right to the director and get all over him about it. This an issue of morality, but also one in which your husband can speak to the director as one who knows what he is talking about.

My daughter is also in a Catholic school, last year we had a bunch of problems with some kids who I judged as hyper active, vivace, I think the Italians like to call it. Their parents would not take the problem seriously and blamed the class disruptions on the teacher. But the parents of the other kids prevailed and eventully the ones whose parents would not cooperate were asked to leave. The one boy whose mom was very active in trying to solve the problems is still there and doing better.

Point being at least in our school making a fuss does pay off, other parents also got the afternoon, homework supervising teacher changed because she wasn't making the kids do their work. I think that this is one of the benefits of the private school, the Catholic school is not that accepting of parental input but they also depend on the income they get from the fees we pay so they are at least a little more sensitive to our problems than the public school.

Part of the problem in talking about cheating is that Ross doesn't want us to - l'omerta' in action! She tried to handle it herself, and put quite a bit of pressure on one egregious offender to 'fess up, but he didn't, and the rest of her class told her they were sick of her attacking him. None of them even considered reporting him, though he actually TOOK THE TEST HOME and completed it over the weekend, then slipped it onto the teacher's desk Monday morning, and she believed she had accidentally left it there! So she gave him 10 on a test that most of the class failed, and even that didn't set off any alarm bells in her mind.

The kids just don't understand the harm they are doing themselves by allowing their classmates to cheat - and perhaps want to keep their options open so that they themselves can. They all know now just how easy it will be to cheat with this particular teacher!

Who is leading- the child or the parents?

quote:

Originally posted by Bill 2:
Who is leading- the child or the parents?

She is still a child - right? You are the parents and you need to take charge of the situation. You don't have to accuse any particular child of cheating you need to talk as adults with the teacher and if that doesn't work go above him until something is done.

You keep saying/hinting that the teachers and administration don't care if the kids cheat. I'm sure they do care. Deirdre, you are right the kids don't understand the harm they are doing themselves, that's why there are parents. Otherwise we could just turn them loose to raise themselves.

A word of advice on raising teens and preteens, never try to reason with them, they are better at it than you are. Parents must make the rules, decide what's right and wrong and make the kids live by it.

She's 17 - a young woman. And knows her own mind by now.

My husband also doesn't think that accusing other kids of cheating will be helpful, and could backfire if it turns into "he said she said."

He plans to go talk to the math teacher about the tests being impossible to do in the time given (he tried one himself). If the teacher tries to claim that the test must be okay because some kids passed it, we then have the dilemma over how to break it to her that they passed by cheating.

In case anyone wonders how the saga is going:

1. Ross will be going to Woodstock School (the same one I attended, in India) starting in August. Cheating is very far from condoned there.

2. The math teacher realized that, on the last test of the year, 90% of the answers were exactly the same. In other words, only Ross and one other kid did NOT cheat. The whole class will be retaking the test.