Cheating in school = collaborative innovation?
That’s what Stephen Baker asks after a colleague brings up the subject:
A colleague who came into my office (to give me yet another math book) talked about how he used to cheat in high school math. He described networks of collaborators playing a daring game. It sounded much like the current ideals of education: People forming spontaneous teams and turning work into games.
Cheating is all too often used as a blanket term to discredit activity that teachers don’t understand. What some teachers label as cheating is really an attempt by students to make their work more exciting, social, and engaging.
People naturally self-organize in groups, divide work amongst themselves, and collaboratively assemble and refine the results of that work. That is more authentic than being assigned to groups, or working in artificial isolation.
Really, where’s the benefit in giving 30 students the identical assignment and telling them each to complete it individually? They will find ways to make that approach less mundane and unnatural, and the experience they get from working together is much more applicable to the way they’ll work in the real world.
Charles says:
Feb 15th, 2008
No doubt, teachers can work at creating more interesting and more collaborative assignments. And students cheat for a variety of reasons. They may cheat because they don’t have enough time to complete the assignment; they may cheat to obtain a high GPA to get the scholarship, job, and other goals they have; and some may cheat so as to break a taboo. But do you have any evidence that most students cheat because they want to make the assignment less “mundane and unnatural”?
If you want to know why students cheat, you might look at the research of Donald McCabe.
Nick says:
Feb 19th, 2008
Hi, Stewart.
I just had this same thought the other day. In school, you are graded on your presumed individual ability to memorize facts or think critically, when in the real world, you are going to collaborate with peers. Sort of like the “calculators in math class” dilemma. Now more than ever, people are going to need to learn things throughout their lives. The skills we need are not what is not necessarily what schools have taught traditionally. We need the ability to teach others, learn throughout life, and the ability to work in teams.
I’m definitely going to get your book.
~Nick