All Posts Tagged With: "school"

UPDATED: Saskatoon public schools to eliminate consequences for academic dishonesty

In an educational climate where red pens are chucked for coming off as confrontational and teachers are encouraged to use “brainshowering” over the more violent-sounding “brainstorming,” the Saskatoon Public School Board has gone overboard by eliminating penalties for plagiarism and missed deadlines.

Under a new evaluation method for report cards, Saskatoon public high school students will no longer face penalties for handing assignments in late or trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own. The idea, according to the board, is to shift focus from behaviour to learning. “We’re trying to keep the emphasis on the learning, not on the penalty,” John Dewar, a superintendent with Saskatoon Public Schools told the National Post. And so, students caught plagiarizing may not be penalized with a poor grade, but will instead could be required to redo the assignment.

Related: All your profs are wrong about plagiarism and The great university cheating scandal

Besides the whole—you know—culture of tolerance for fraudulence thing, the program will undoubtedly create unnecessary extra work for teachers. Not only will they have to mark subsequent drafts after detecting plagiarized assignments, but they will likely also face an influx of last-minute submissions if penalties are removed for lateness. After all, why should students aim for the due date if they can hold off handing in their “Principles of Intellectual Property” essay until just before report cards?

A similar, misguided policy was introduced in Ontario in 1999 but has since been reversed under new policy guidelines released this year. Saskatoon, however, is going ahead with its no-reprimand plan. “I don’t give late marks, or deduct marks if students are late,” Katie Kehrig, a Saskatoon teacher who supports the policy told CBC News. “I don’t give bonus marks. I don’t have participation marks. Those are behaviours.”

And so, out the door goes the idea of holistic learning. Kehrig and the Saskatoon school board have essentially deemed behavioural growth, an integral part of a child’s development, simply irrelevant within the classroom context. Students, therefore, are being given the message that they can copy, steal, slack off and lie without any consequences. Granted, a plagiarized assignment may have to be rewritten—but that’s only if the student gets caught.

So, shall we peg our bets on Saskatoon as the next breeding ground for disciplined, honest workers? The city where individuals leave school well-versed in the implications of dishonesty and the discipline to adhere to deadlines?

There’s no tolerance for cheating or plagiarism in the real world, and examples are everywhere. In 1998 a scandal erupted when journalist Stephen Glass was discovered to have fabricated countless investigative features for The New Republic. In 2007, Rapper Timbaland was involved in a plagiarism scandal concerning the motifs and samples of his collaborative track “Do It,” and even Prime Minister Stephen Harper faced a plagiarism accusation in a 2003 speech he delivered about the US-led invasion of Iraq. In those cases, Glass was fired and disgraced (though he later got a law degree and wrote a novel—go figure), Timbaland’s reputation was tarnished because of the plagiarism controversy and the Tory campaigner who wrote Harper’s speech was compelled to resign in 2008. And yet, the only words of caution we’re giving Saskatoon high schoolers is  ‘Whoopsies, try again?’

In any case, the buck will certainly stop for these students at the post-secondary level. While some university students still manage to get away with academic dishonesty, those caught cheating or plagiarizing are always subjected to some form of institutional slaughter. Whether it’s a failing mark, a spot on academic probation, or expulsion in some extreme cases, professors certainly will not shrug it off and ask a fraudster to try again. Many first-year students already struggle with academic integrity issues having never learned how to properly cite borrowed ideas; not exposing them to the consequences of plagiarism early will only exacerbate their difficulties.

The Saskatoon school board needs to realize it is ill-preparing its students for the real world. Cheating and missing deadlines simply won’t be tolerated, nevermind go without reprimand. So while the public school bubble may be romanticizing this latest win for ‘learning,’ its students, in the meantime, will be clipping posts off Wikipedia.

UPDATE: Plagiarism not tolerated in Sask after all

Time for catching up

Sleeping-in during summer vacation isn’t as much of a novelty as it used to be. The thing is, if you plan your class schedule right, you should be able to sleep in during the school year, too.

In university, the best part of summer vacation is being able to procrastinate guilt-free.

Now my friends and I have time for profound conversations. Like the merits of Modern Warfare versus Sniper: Ghost Warrior, which will only cost 40 bucks when it’s released next month. Modern Warfare might have AC-130s and airstrikes, but Ghost Warrior has realistic sniping missions.

With labs, essays and exams to worry about, it’s easy to lose touch with the rest of the world. And in the space of two semesters, everything changes. Sometime between last September and my final exams, everybody stopped playing Halo 3. And according to my 14-year-old brother, World of Warcraft is lame-ass.

I have some catching up to do.

-photo courtesy of Mike Willis

Who invited him?

The three most hated words by students everywhere

When I first realized I have less than a month of no homework and sleeping in left, my last three weeks of summer vacation instantly got sucked down that Back-to-School preparation drain.

I started playing a kind of switching game in my head.

Reading a good book. Switch that with a two-inch psychology textbook.

Sleeping in until 11 a.m. Switch that with standing at the city bus stop at 7 a.m.

Doing whatever I want, whenever I want. Switch that with a rigorous study schedule, attainable only through a strict eight coffees a day regimen.

I found it hard to enjoy anything I did because I couldn’t help seeing it through my I-won’t-be-able-to-do-this-once-I’m-back-in-school filter.

But yesterday I suddenly phased back into my summer vacation. And that’s because I really thought about what I was going back to this September.

University.

There are no bully students. There are no bully teachers. You’re in charge of your educational plan. You’re going to a place that’s built for you. University is an exciting place to be.

Maybe going back to school isn’t so bad after all.

Jeff Rybak takes aim at the “extremely negative trend” of unpaid internships

Like just about anyone with a social circle of twenty-something friends, I know a lot of people who are un(der)employed. Most of them have completed post-secondary degrees and diplomas – in some cases more than one. More and more I’m hearing about offers they receive concerning unpaid internships, volunteer opportunities and the like. At times they are forced to even consider these offers. I’d refuse to describe these things as “offers” and “opportunities” if not for the fact that I can “offer” someone the “opportunity” to get punched in the face several times. Grammatically it is correct. But not in any other sense.

Moral outrage aside, there are four distinct reasons why this is an extremely negative trend. Two of them are public policy reasons. The free labour takes the place of paid jobs, and to the extent that these positions lead to real opportunities the fact that they aren’t paid lends gross advantages to the already privileged. Two other reasons are purely personal. Working for free will low-ball the value of your labour, and exactly because these positions aren’t paid the legitimacy of the experience you gain will always be in doubt.

Free Labour

The problem of free labour has been well explored in connection with workfare. I tried to find a relatively non-partisan explanation of the workfare experience in Ontario and this is the best I could come up with. Most organizations are much more scathing on the topic, but comparisons to slavery are probably counter-productive. There’s no need to so rhetorical about it anyway. The problems are right there on the face on things.

Just as in workfare, unpaid positions in the workforce (whether billed as volunteer positions, internships, whatever) do not become full-time jobs. Unpaid interns are replaced with new unpaid interns. In an ideal situation one might hope that the last unpaid intern moves on to a paid position somewhere else (see below) or even in the same organization, but regardless the work stays in that unpaid position. So whatever the value of the experience the work performed in any position such as this is work that has been permanently removed from the paid workforce. Any argument that this work would not exist otherwise is idiotic and self-defeating. If it’s completely made-up work then it can’t have much value as experience. And if it’s meaningful work then someone would be getting paid to do it, if not for the unending stream of people willing to make victims of themselves in the hope of it leading to something better.

I say “willing,” by the way, because I’m back on the topic of volunteer positions and internships. In the case of the workforce it’s anything but voluntary. But my intention isn’t to focus on that topic. I just want to illustrate a basic point of logic. For everyone who does a job for free in the hope of scoring a coveted position in some field of work, there’s actually one less paid job in that field. And everyone loses.

The Already Privileged

Of course some lose more than others. The Globe ran a great article on the issue of prestigious internships getting auctioned for charity – so instead of getting paid you actually pay (potentially big bucks) for the privilege of the experience. And privilege it is. Who can afford such a thing? The already wealthy, of course. And I do hope we can agree there are problems with this. We accept that money can buy elite education, private tutors, that privilege often contributes to networking opportunities, etc. But surely it’s a problem once it becomes even the way to buy your way directly into the workforce. Anywhere else we’d simply call this graft. But the charity angle does complicate things.

These high-profile examples aside, even your garden-variety unpaid internship is out of reach for many people. Folks need to eat and pay the rent and even (God forbid) support children. Only a limited sampling of people can move back home with their parents, or hit them up for living expenses, or fall back on a trust fund. The rest simply can’t afford to live without an income. So let’s believe for a moment that these “opportunities” are opportunities in any sort of true sense. Who’s getting them? Certainly not the most qualified or the most deserving. Just those with money

I’m aware that many people aren’t in a good position to worry about these public policy concerns. When you’ve got problems of your own to worry about it’s easy to say “life isn’t fair” and just do what you need to do. I respect that. So now I’ll get into the reasons why I believe that most of these positions are bad for the individual as well as bad for the community.

Low-balling Your Value

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from business students (and they have an interesting perspective on things) it’s that once you set a value on something you can’t erase that number. The number can go up or it can go down but the value you try to place on that thing will always be judged in relation to the past. I hear that frequently from recent graduates casting around for entry-level positions. They say things like “it’s a good job, with some interesting prospects, but I know if I enter the workforce at $38k/year I’ll be stuck down there for a long time.” And that’s an extremely good point. So what if you enter the workforce at $0/k year?

Actually, I can see the benefit of that in one regard. It’s more like having no income history at all rather than a low one. I’m willing to believe that maybe in the best positions it isn’t a problem that you started out by working for free. But most of these unpaid positions aren’t the fantastic kind that go up on the auction block at charity events. Most of them are the step that comes before the entry-level position and salary. So how exactly do you negotiate your starting salary from any position of strength when the person across the table knows that last time you agreed to work for nothing? Unless you’re one of those independently-wealthy types, who can continue to work for nothing as long as you want until the right offer comes along, there’s got to be a limit. The need to pay the bills will trump any desire to hold out for a good income.

Many people eventually face this soul-crushing choice, and realize that it’s better to volunteer than do nothing at all. I can see the logic to that and I wouldn’t advise against it. But I’d add that it isn’t any way at all to jump to the front of the queue for a real job. You’re far better taking paid work at any level with the intention to move up from there than doing it for free. Either way you’re stuck low-balling your value. But at least in the later instance you can salvage some of your dignity. And more than that, when you apply for better jobs it will be apparent from your CV that the first job you held, no matter the low income, was indeed a real job.

How genetics class scared the cell out of me

Last week my 13-year-old brother David came home from school burnt to a crisp. He’d been outside for hours at track and field, and had forgotten to wear sunscreen. Yeah, that’s right. “Forgotten.”

But if David had been in my genetics course last semester, he wouldn’t have risked the sun exposure of track and field without first slathering some SPF 4,000 sun screen all over his body.

After taking that class, I’m sold on wearing it from now on. Year round.

Ultraviolet rays are a form of radiation. You forget that. And they can cause mutations in your DNA. The vitamin D threshold easily passes into the Mutant Turtle threshold.

Every time DNA is mutated, you risk the chance of it being a section of DNA that codes for something important. Like information that dictates how your cells are put together. Or how some proteins in your body work.

But you’re really in trouble if it mutates p53.

p53 is a protein that acts as a tumor suppressor. Tumor suppressors work to stop cells from growing and dividing uncontrollably, preventing cells from becoming cancerous. And if a cell starts dividing, and won’t stop, p53 will make the cell undergo apoptosis. Programed cell death.

Tumor suppressors are your body’s private cancer-fighting army. And every time you go in the Sun, you’re basically telling them to go AWOL. If p53 isn’t working, a cell might continue dividing. And growing. Straight into a tumor.

For me, my genetics class turned out to be more than just another biology prerequisite for my program. After imagining all the tiny, silent screams from my poor skin cells under attack by those cruel UV rays, I had something I could immediately take away from the course. Something I could use to go all first born know-it-all on my brother with.

I laid it all out to David. I told him that if he doesn’t use sunscreen, 40 years from now he’ll end up with wrinkly, saggy gross skin, mutant DNA, and maybe even cancer.

But David still wasn’t impressed. “If I wear sun screen, it’ll make me look shiny all day.”

Be shiny all day? Even if it means not ending up a flaming red, sore lobster five hours later, unable to sit down because your legs are too crispy to bend?

Oh yeah, I forgot.

It’s grade seven. Protecting your skin is so totally not cool.

-Photo courtesy of kirinqueen