<p>Wait, Sparknotes is considered cheating?
I don’t use it to replace reading the book, but sometimes I use it to supplement the reading or sometimes our book test is 2 weeks after we read the book.
But I know a ton of kids who just use Sparknotes. But they usually don’t do that great, so whatever. That is kind of why I don’t consider it cheating. But the brightest kids don’t really use Sparknotes…</p>
<p>Cheating pretty rampant at my school, but nothing too high tech. A lot of answer sharing, and most kids know what will be on test if someone had the class before.
Last year, one of my teachers was deaf in one ear. Kids would practically yell answers across the room and he wouldn’t hear a thing. </p>
<p>And my math teacher this year was really oblivious and kids would pass around the smart kids test during the final without him noticing. A lot of talking in that class too.
But it was kind of funny. Kids would yell out things that he could hear, like “Number 2 is 27” and he’d be like “Sshhh!”</p>
<p>And hell, some teachers know cheating is rampant and some have even caught kids doing it. But there is no real punishment. One of the kids that was caught ended up in NHS too. Ironic thing is, the teacher who caught him was on the selection committee. </p>
<p>I could go on and on, lol.</p>
<p>And this is at a Catholic H.S. which the local community has a lot of respect for.</p>
<p>I never found Sparknotes very useful - except for when they had the full text. I read most of the Scarlet Letter and Picture of Dorian Gray on there, as well as a couple others I think.</p>
<p>I just used it to refresh my memory a little bit.</p>
<p>One time my English teacher made us read a book by the Tuesday before spring break, small quiz on Wednesday and she said that we would have the big test the Tuesday after break, 2 weeks after it was supposed to be done. But you had to read the book to do decently on the quiz, so you couldn’t just save it for spring break. </p>
<p>But, yeah, I’d be screwed if I relied on Sparknotes like some kids do.</p>
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<p>Reminds me of a story about one of my kids’ German teacher who had a no talking rule during her tests. The punishment was that she would tear up your test on the spot, you would get an automatic F and you had to call your parents immediately on the class phone on the table in the front of the room so that the teacher could talk to them.</p>
<p>One boy talked during a test. Test torn up, F given and he called his mom on the phone. “Good luck,” he told the teacher with a smirk on his face. “She only speaks Spanish.” </p>
<p>Teacher grabs the phone and starts talking Spanish to the mother. Turns out that the teacher’s parents were both high school Spanish teachers and she was also fluent in Spanish! After a nice talk with the mother, the teacher hands the phone back to the student and says, “She wants to speak to you.”</p>
<p>Of course, the story got retold every year. You could hear a pin drop in her class during tests…</p>
<p>The worst cases of cheating and expulsion I have ever heard of came from Catholic schools. Enrollment doesn’t prove morality.</p>
<p>Son says there are certain kids who cheat more than others. However, his point of view is that it really is only lying to your teachers as to how well you’ve learned the material. Some teachers have you sign an honor code and if you would get caught having cheated, it is grounds for immediate suspension or expulsion. It also goes immediately into your file and will absolutely be reported to colleges when you apply.</p>
<p>Does this mean no answer sharing or mentioning what’s on a test? No. But it does deter some kids hugely. Here’s the thing though… if everyone does poorly on a test, then the teacher knows she probably didn’t teach it well enough. An assessment is often just as much an assessment for the teacher’s ability to teach the material.</p>
<p>Make all kids turn in their cell phones before a test seems a simple enough strategy. Our kids are not supposed to USE their cell phones during the day but that doesn’t mean they dont have them on their person.</p>
<p>Ellemenope- In the e-mail the teacher sent about the cheating at our school, she mentioned that many seemed to have used Internet info, and said that one was supposed to use only the books and their own notes from earlier. However, it seems that she didn’t take action against those who used such info (if she did, I haven’t heard of it, and she didn’t mention it in the e-mail), and I don’t consider it cheating as long as one was coming up with related ideas and not blatantly plagiarizing. I highly doubt that most of the class (even those not splitting up work) were seriously not using Internet info.
Coolege- I’m not sure if SparkNotes is considered cheating, but the article at the beginning of this thread said that it was. I don’t think it’s cheating if one reads the book as well, definitely. Those who just read SparkNotes tend to do okay in upper-level English classes at my school, though, which is probably because quizzes ask either really easy information or really difficult information, both of which can be obtained from SparkNotes as easily as from the book itself. Plus we get assigned difficult books, which helps.</p>
<p>^If kids were instructed to use only books and notes, then internet use was not allowed. Thanks for clarifying.</p>
<p>I don’t think the instruction was given, though, until after the cheating scandal broke. I don’t remember the teacher specifying that Internet use wasn’t allowed, though she might have done so and I hadn’t remembered.</p>