It was assigned to read two chapters from the book Down on the Island by Jim Cooper. In the first one, "Teaching", Cooper expresses his point of view about the syllabus for the English class he was teaching at the Colegio located in Mayagüez. He noticed how much difficult was for the students to learn English because most of them didn't know it very well and therefore they didn't understand the readings they had to do at first. After he visited some public schools, he also noticed some of the teachers were having trouble to speak English. Cooper proposed a syllabus which included strictly language courses to the freshman and short stories and novels to the sophomore students. He would loved to stated that the language program he set up solved the student's language problems, but it didn't at all.
In the second chapter, "Helping", Cooper expresses his point of view about a method implemented by the students from our island. This method consisted of 'helping throughout cheating'. How this can be possible? Puerto Ricans, as Jim Cooper demonstrated, are the most hospitable people in the world and they tend to do whatever they can in order to help others. Many of the students seek for an extra help in their classmates, but this attitude was not only in their everyday work but during the time they were taking exams too. However, students learn how they must behave in the school since they are kids at the primary levels. All I want to say with this statement is that students have been taught since their primary levels to be cooperative with each other.
"When I started asking students why they were looking at another student's paper during an exam, they replied with no embarrassment: because I don't know the answer, and maybe he does. If I asked the other student why he let him look at his paper, I got some such answer as: but I'm just trying to help him. He's my friend."
We all know that this kind of help is actually cheating, but the students didn't realize it. It is also worrying that Cooper stated teachers also promote the cheating attitude. I think we must do everything possible to earn our grade by our own effort; not at the expense of others. Students should help them, but in a good way working on cooperative teaching or learning, but they should not cheat. I'm against it.
I find this topic very controversial, since the definition of cheating changes from person to person. I also think you should earn your grades with your own efforts and that you should ask for help before the exam, not during it. Go by my blog and answer a poll I have on this topic!
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ReplyDeleteThat is very common in Puerto Rico. Help till the point of the act of cheating. I think it is a more cultural element that we have to improve.
ReplyDeleteExactly. We need to improve this cultural element to obtain our good grades by our own and not at the expense of others. Thanks for reading my post.
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