There are any number of laws that I don't particularly like or even agree with. But, they are the law, and my full compliance is required. I don't get to pick and choose which laws I'll obey fully and which I will fool around with when I don't think I'll get caught. I have the choice of contacting various public officials and lobbying to have those laws changed which I don't like. But until or unless those laws are changed or eliminated I MUST obey them.
The last few weeks have presented us with two tragedies, tragedies that occurred because two young people went against the law governing their behavior in the situations they found themselves in. In the first case, an 18-year-old girl was texting while driving her car, against the law in NY, and hit and killed someone. In the second case a 13-year-old girl died when she was a passenger in a van being driven by a 16-year-old who was speeding and driving without an adult licensed driver in the car, in violation of his permit and the governing law.
Now granted, young people are not renowned for their maturity and logical thinking in many cases at many times. Both of these accidents might have been about an individual just plain not thinking correctly at one given time, with disastrous results all around. It is possible that these were both just isolated incidents. And it is also possible that these incidents were exemplars of a systemic disregard for the law on a pick and choose basis.
If I had just a nickle for every time I've seen a driver on the road using a hand-held cell phone or texting or operating other devices that occupy that driver's hands and mind, I'd be retired and living the life of Reilly in sunnier climes. Such drivers create an unsafe driving climate for all of us. And the law is clear and well-publicized--the mentioned activities are illegal. Let one of these (frum) drivers have an accident or get caught by the police and a brouhaha erupts that the police are unjustly targeting these people, the law is coming down unnecessarily hard on these people, and, after all, "everyone" does it so why be so harsh in punishing the ones who are caught? There's one answer for that question that says it all: it's the law, full stop. If you break that law, be prepared to suffer the consequences.
Re the 16-year-old driving without an adult licensed driver with him, 16 may be young, but I'd be willing to bet that any 16-year-old with a driving permit is quite aware that he/she is NOT allowed to drive by themselves without adult supervision. It's breaking the law to do so. And I would also imagine that the law was the last thing on this teen's mind when he offered to drive home his friend and his friend's sister. After all, what could possibly happen on a short trip in the neighborhood? Well, that unthinkable happened, and a young girl died. Not only was he driving without supervision, but he was going twice the posted speed limit, also against the law. And then there was the issue of the killed passenger not wearing a seat belt. Not answered but a question that many have is did the driver's parents know that he was getting in the car to drive, and did they allow this?
I am not trying to pour salt in the wounds of the young people and their families involved in these two incidents, and yes, I cry for what the outcome might be for those arrested , but I am also concerned about the implications community wide. There are far too many people who look at the law, any law, as a maybe I will or maybe I won't obey it situation. The news media have been full of coverage about those in Klal who have been caught violating any number of laws governing money/business practices. The recent discussion about alcohol being provided for those who are underage on Simchas Torah and at other times clearly points to violations of the laws governing alcohol use. People jokingly discuss openly how they've managed to get around the law on reporting income or paying taxes. School administrators, legally mandated to report abuse of children in their schools, routinely cover up those abuses.
There seems to be an attitude on the part of some members of Klal that if it is "their" law we can take it as only a suggestion rather than a requirement. That our own halachah also governs many of these actions, which are clearly against halachah, seems to be besides the point for too many people. They "simply" interpret the halachah to match what they want to do. We are forbidden to engage in enterprises that are clearly a sakonah. How are the two incidents described above anything but a sakonah?
I wouldn't have thought it necessary, but it clearly is, that parents and schools and shul rabbis need to stress that the law is the law and we all have to obey it. Parents and adults in the community need to set better examples for our children by themselves obeying the laws of the land, and they need to do a better job of supervising their children and stressing that breaking the law has serious consequences, so we don't break it.
The result of breaking the law can be deadly literally, and we surely do not want to have to mourn any more children whose lives have been tragically lost because of an attitude that obeying the law is optional.
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
When is a Paper not a Paper?
Note: I'd been holding this post to publish later in the summer, closer to when school will begin, but Matt at KanKanChadash http://kankanchadash.blogspot.com/ just put up a posting on cheating and I felt that this posting might be cogent to the discussion of his posting.
I belong to a few online professional forums for college professors. The Internet is a real blessing in this area. It allows for discussion among faculty members who might otherwise never meet. But it is precisely the Internet that has been giving some of us conniption fits lately.
Once upon a time when a student wanted to plagiarize a paper he had to find a student who had written a paper that would fit what he/she was looking for or had to find someone who could write the paper for a price. Finding that student paper was not all that easy. Mostly you were limited to students on your own campus. In a town with more than one college you might be able to locate that paper at one of the other campuses. But it took real effort to find that paper. Yes--unfortunately--cheating is not a new phenomenon. Enter the Internet.
The world is now a student's oyster, so to speak. No longer are students limited to papers they can find on their own campus, and which might result in their being caught easier. Now they can go on a fishing expedition for that paper all over the world, and certainly all over the US. After all, there are really a limited number of topics that can be assigned on any given work. And because topics are finite, somewhere out there a paper exists that will solve a student's problem. The Internet has become a repository for many of those papers that students write. Some are on free paper sites: others can be purchased from the paper mills.
Slowly but surely colleges and universities are fighting back. There is now more than one program available that can do an online search when a student's paper is scanned into a computer. That search highlights any and all material that comes from another source. It shows whether the source has been cited correctly. And it can find papers that are available on the paper mills.
In addition, some colleges and universities are now requiring that all papers written for courses be submitted electronically, copies of which are stored in a special school databank. All submitted papers are automatically scanned to check for plagiarism. Even where this is not the case schoolwide, many individual professors are doing this for the classes they teach.
Some schools/professors have the policy that work written in class counts more than that written outside of class. The rationale is that what a student gives you within the classroom is truly his/hers and what comes from outside may have been doctored by someone else. At a minimum, in class written work gives professors a baseline to compare out of class work to.
Those of us on the forums have shared our methodologies for cutting down cheating. Some of the suggestions have been very helpful, and I've adapted a few to my own classes. But what bothers all of us is that we are being forced to play the policeman to begin with. We've heard all the reasons for cheating, starting with the most popular one--"There is too much homework and too many assignments and it's impossible to pass a course/graduate without borrowing work!" A whole lot of us got our degrees at a time when cheating and plagiarism were harder to accomplish, before computers and the Internet. Yes, it existed even then, but to a far smaller degree. One thing we agree on: there wasn't less work during the time we were in college: there was more. Research required a lot of physical running around and a lot of time spent in the library's stacks. Writing a paper was done on a typewriter, and finding an error on a page required retyping the whole page. Most colleges in the "olden" days required 128 to 132 credits for a BA/BS degree: today that is 120 credits. There were far more required courses in the olden days as well. So what has changed that could cause the type of attitude that not only condones cheating but glorifies it?
From our perspective democratic egalitarianism is a major culprit. American society not only decided that college should be available for everyone, but that everyone should be going on to college. Commerce and industry jumped on this bandwagon by making a college degree the working degree in many fields where it previously was not. Having a college degree is no longer "something special" when virtually anyone can get one from somewhere. You think not? The proof is in the number of diploma mills that proliferate today. Their key selling point is not the education and knowledge that they offer but the quickness in getting the piece of paper that says "I have a degree." They compete with each other in how quickly someone can earn a degree from them, and in how easily that degree can be earned. One such diploma mill proudly advertises that students who register with them will have to do no papers and take no tests and can complete a degree in the comfort of their home in under a year. Say what?!!!
Unfortunately, students who attend a regular college have been bitten by the same bug that infests the diploma mills. They reason that they are paying for college, so it's like any other consumer item: you pay, they give you, no questions (or papers or tests) asked. No one asks you to prove that you deserve that car or dining room set that you purchase, so why should a college do so? The result is cheating on a larger level with no accompanying angst in case someone is caught.
Just a fair word of warning to those who believe that they can cheat their way through college with impunity: instructors are fighting back, and expect some carnage. We believe that the old commercial was right, and we've adapted it to our use. We expect students to say: "I got my college degree the old fashioned way: I earned it." Or maybe our rationale comes from a different commercial. A whole lot of us believe that college should be done the straight way because "We answer to a Higher Authority."
I belong to a few online professional forums for college professors. The Internet is a real blessing in this area. It allows for discussion among faculty members who might otherwise never meet. But it is precisely the Internet that has been giving some of us conniption fits lately.
Once upon a time when a student wanted to plagiarize a paper he had to find a student who had written a paper that would fit what he/she was looking for or had to find someone who could write the paper for a price. Finding that student paper was not all that easy. Mostly you were limited to students on your own campus. In a town with more than one college you might be able to locate that paper at one of the other campuses. But it took real effort to find that paper. Yes--unfortunately--cheating is not a new phenomenon. Enter the Internet.
The world is now a student's oyster, so to speak. No longer are students limited to papers they can find on their own campus, and which might result in their being caught easier. Now they can go on a fishing expedition for that paper all over the world, and certainly all over the US. After all, there are really a limited number of topics that can be assigned on any given work. And because topics are finite, somewhere out there a paper exists that will solve a student's problem. The Internet has become a repository for many of those papers that students write. Some are on free paper sites: others can be purchased from the paper mills.
Slowly but surely colleges and universities are fighting back. There is now more than one program available that can do an online search when a student's paper is scanned into a computer. That search highlights any and all material that comes from another source. It shows whether the source has been cited correctly. And it can find papers that are available on the paper mills.
In addition, some colleges and universities are now requiring that all papers written for courses be submitted electronically, copies of which are stored in a special school databank. All submitted papers are automatically scanned to check for plagiarism. Even where this is not the case schoolwide, many individual professors are doing this for the classes they teach.
Some schools/professors have the policy that work written in class counts more than that written outside of class. The rationale is that what a student gives you within the classroom is truly his/hers and what comes from outside may have been doctored by someone else. At a minimum, in class written work gives professors a baseline to compare out of class work to.
Those of us on the forums have shared our methodologies for cutting down cheating. Some of the suggestions have been very helpful, and I've adapted a few to my own classes. But what bothers all of us is that we are being forced to play the policeman to begin with. We've heard all the reasons for cheating, starting with the most popular one--"There is too much homework and too many assignments and it's impossible to pass a course/graduate without borrowing work!" A whole lot of us got our degrees at a time when cheating and plagiarism were harder to accomplish, before computers and the Internet. Yes, it existed even then, but to a far smaller degree. One thing we agree on: there wasn't less work during the time we were in college: there was more. Research required a lot of physical running around and a lot of time spent in the library's stacks. Writing a paper was done on a typewriter, and finding an error on a page required retyping the whole page. Most colleges in the "olden" days required 128 to 132 credits for a BA/BS degree: today that is 120 credits. There were far more required courses in the olden days as well. So what has changed that could cause the type of attitude that not only condones cheating but glorifies it?
From our perspective democratic egalitarianism is a major culprit. American society not only decided that college should be available for everyone, but that everyone should be going on to college. Commerce and industry jumped on this bandwagon by making a college degree the working degree in many fields where it previously was not. Having a college degree is no longer "something special" when virtually anyone can get one from somewhere. You think not? The proof is in the number of diploma mills that proliferate today. Their key selling point is not the education and knowledge that they offer but the quickness in getting the piece of paper that says "I have a degree." They compete with each other in how quickly someone can earn a degree from them, and in how easily that degree can be earned. One such diploma mill proudly advertises that students who register with them will have to do no papers and take no tests and can complete a degree in the comfort of their home in under a year. Say what?!!!
Unfortunately, students who attend a regular college have been bitten by the same bug that infests the diploma mills. They reason that they are paying for college, so it's like any other consumer item: you pay, they give you, no questions (or papers or tests) asked. No one asks you to prove that you deserve that car or dining room set that you purchase, so why should a college do so? The result is cheating on a larger level with no accompanying angst in case someone is caught.
Just a fair word of warning to those who believe that they can cheat their way through college with impunity: instructors are fighting back, and expect some carnage. We believe that the old commercial was right, and we've adapted it to our use. We expect students to say: "I got my college degree the old fashioned way: I earned it." Or maybe our rationale comes from a different commercial. A whole lot of us believe that college should be done the straight way because "We answer to a Higher Authority."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)