What kids are reading |
This weekly column looks at lists of books kids are reading in various categories. Information on the books below came from Amazon.com’s list of children’s best-sellers; they are listed in order of popularity. |
Books on cheating |
1. Is It Still Cheating If I Don’t Get Caught? by Bruce Weinstein and Harriet Russell (young adult) |
2. Cheating Lessons by Nan Willard Cappo (young adult) |
3. Cheating (God I Need to Talk to You About…) by Dan Carr, Bartholomew Clark, and Bill Clark (baby to preschool) |
5. Cheating to Win (Sweet Valley High) by Francine Pascal (young adult) |
6. The Art Contest: No Cheating Allowed! (Spongebob Squarepants) by Steven Banks and Robert Dress (ages 4 to 8) |
7. Cheating (Introducing Issues With Opposing Viewpoints) by Patty Jo Sawvel (young adult) |
8. Let’s Talk About Cheating (The Let’s Talk Library) by Dolly Brittan (ages 4 to 8) |
9. A Book About Cheating by Joy Berry (ages 9 to 12) |
It was relatively easy to catch cheaters in my high school classes; they weren’t very good at it and copied Wikipedia verbatim, or had the same wrong answer on a quiz as the person next to them. Cheating in college, however, is more complicated. The Nov. 19 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features a first-person account by someone who has “ghostwritten” thousands of student papers in his full-time job for a large essay-writing service. “You’ve never heard of me, but there’s a good chance that you’ve read some of my work. I’m a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students,” the anonymous writer states to the readers of this publication — college teachers.
And that brings up what is most powerful about his account: He writes well. His prose is simple, direct and cogent. He wanted to write novels, but his college didn’t encourage this passion. So he used his composition skills to write other students’ papers, and has continued to do that for a living. This year he will earn $66,000.
I’ve always tried to create assignments that discourage cheating. Relying on students’ integrity is risky. So I ask for students’ first drafts along with their papers, and they meet in peer review groups with an early version. In my writing classes, students are encouraged to recount their own experiences — something many of them enjoy doing. Consequently, there’s less temptation to pay someone else to do the writing. Yet this article tells me, “Somebody in your classroom uses a service you can’t detect, that you can’t defend against, that you may not even know exists.”
The motive behind the ghostwriter’s account is to make college teachers aware of the extent of this cheating. “Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.” He adds that never in six years has his work been exposed. “As far as I know, not one of my customers has ever been caught.”
In a 2007 questionnaire answered by 60,000 college students, 60.8 percent of them admitted to cheating. Although this was not a very scientific survey, many think this percentage is too low. It’s hard for me to gauge the extent of cheating in my own classes. On research papers or assignments students don’t find interesting, some students cheat. On the assignments they like, cheating is extremely rare — almost nonexistent.
So I try to keep student interest high to ward off ghostwriters. Other teachers employ software programs to detect plagiarism, although no software can detect an original paper written through an essay-writing service.
It would be easy to condemn paper mills and writers who earn a living facilitating others’ cheating. We could blame cheating on increased pressure to do well in order to be competitive in the job market. But this anonymous ghostwriter is “planning to retire. I’m tired of helping you make your students look competent.” His absence, however, will not reduce the number of cheaters. In his company alone, there are 49 other writers who are ready to absorb his workload.
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected]