Stealing marks - Journal of Chemical Education (ACS Publications)

Stealing marks. J. Chem. Educ. , 1929, 6 (9), p 1516. DOI: 10.1021/ed006p1516. Publication Date: September 1929. Abstract. From High-Sch. Teacher, 5, ...
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mental principles are arrived at, and a considerable volume of chemical facts learned, tied together, and, most important of all, based upon firsthand experiences. But the second semester the procedure is greatly changed, and it becomes the aim of the class to measure up to the standards set for a high-school course. The pupils are given the list of minimum requirements as outlined by the A. C. S. committee, a textbook is recommended (although all students need not use the same one) and the recitation period is largely used for quizzes, drill, and supervised study. Some time is given to devising laboratory experiments and discussing their difficulties, but lahoratory work is now largely individual. Direct instruction is offered only in response to a demand from the class. The work is organized about the general principles based upon laboratory experience and developed in general discussions; such concepts as the kinetic and ionic theories and the electronic constitution of the atom, having heen accepted tentatively as plausible explanations of chemical behavior, are employed as a framework to unify the whole course. Whole-hearted approval and general adoption of the innovations briefly outlmed in these pages is neither to be expected nor desired. The scheme is wholly on sufferance, as all methods should never cease to be, and its defects are to be tolerated only until inspiration or experience suggests their cure.

Stealing Marks. The president of one of the great western state universities, addressing the Inland Empire Education Association, declared accordinp t o the Associated Press reports for April 10th that sixty per cent of our college students are willing to steal their prades. There is further food for thought in the facts reported in the last Kadel$ian Review about honor systems, that a t Yale, Amherst, Western Reserve, Rutgers, Washington and Lee, and other of our larger colleges have abandoned the honor system because the students themselves were dissatisfied with it. "Loyalty t o the group is stronger in most instances than allegiance t o abstract standards of behavior. This is all the more so when we know that students often do not consider cribbing a serious moral lapse, but merely a device for getting ahead of the teacher." If students cheat in college, it is because their prcnous experience has shown that cheating is profitable, i. e., that there is more to be gained by cheating than by not cheating. Human impulses run deeper than man-made codes. Honesty will be the best policy only when we make it so. We cannot afford to send our pupils from high school with the thought-"Is there a speed cop on this r o a d ? " a n d with no thought that it is wrong to drive eighty miles an hour in reasonably heavy traffic-only wrong in case they are so unfortunate as to be caught. This situation seems now t o apply in so far as cribbing is concerned. It is a situation which we must combat in the elementary school, in the high school, and in the college. Foul playing in sports ispenalized quickly, not only by the referee but by the crowdas well. There seems t o be no reason why we cannot.attain the same social attitude toward the student who cheats in his academic work.-High-Sch. Teacher, 5, 192-3 (June, 1929).