When I was still a senior at my high school, most of my classmates did whatever it takes to achieve academic awards since it's the last year before college. With that, I truthfully admitted that i had to resort to cheating in some quizzes that I wasn't able to prepare for due to certain circumstances that were not academically related. Regardless, I still did the usual drills of being a good student; i never cheated in a Mathematics exam hence I was proud of my exemption back then. I never asked help when a project needs to be attended to ASAP, to the point that in one computer project my classmate hardly did anything, thereby resorting to me being a one-man army. What made the experience worse was that we got the same grade in computer o_0. More or less, I had my fair share of stressful nights and bickerings among some of my classmates for the sake of reaching top honors.
But the main point of this blog is something I want to share to my soon to be students. I had a batchmate who was notoriously known to visit our class e before their quiz time (I will not tell here what subject it was but I am very certain my classmates then would recall this conceited batchmate). For two to three gradings worth, he was persistent in asking my classmate (who belong to the top 5 of the batch) questions related to the quiz since our class takes the quiz first followed by the notorious student's section (i'll call him NS from this point on). This was a very bothering behavior, to the point that I asked why don't you stop giving him the answers to the test. I cannot remember my friend's response but regardless, the persistent leakage continued.
Come graduation, quite a number of my batchmates got top honors and that was a great sight to behold. However, when NS went up the stage to receive his silver medal, silence occupied the gym. Apparently, it wasn't only our section that were knowledgeable of his acts of dishonesty. Surely he got a silver medal, but he did not earn the respect of the batch. I, for one, do not respect him and if ever I do see him again in one way or another, I will greet him with proper diligence for the sake of cordiality but deep inside, I know that I cannot trust this cheater.
Students would find it tempting to cheat to achieve top honors and this is because a lot of students are afraid to make mistakes. Opinion-wise, however, It's better to do one's very best and get average grades than to be dishonest towards being a top student. Why? It's simply because of respect. What's the point of getting high grades if there's an attitude problem? There are children like these and I do hope to help these kids realize that. This will be my responsibility at least for the next 10 months.
My job, my duty. Give it your all or don't give anything at all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Your story portrays a dismayingly common problem, but there is another problem which is not given enough justice. If it is true that your batch became silent come recognition day, then why was there no action (or lack thereof) regarding the leakage of answers?
ReplyDeleteThe problem I see here isn't NS asking for answers, but the other students actually giving them. It's true that most students nowadays are afraid of making mistakes, but even more of them, and to a greater degree, don't have the backbone to fight for what they believe is right. They are too scared of what other people might say, or what difficulties they may encounter, that they turn a blind eye to whatever wrongs are being done.
Either that, or they have no idea how to differentiate what is right from what is wrong. (Disturbingly enough, I think this is the case.) In which case, we have our work cut out for us. It's gonna be a long schoolyear. hehe
True. There are essentially two problems here: students who rely too much on their peers and students who are reluctant to keep answers to themselves. It's really a matter of what's right and wrong but of course, values are very difficult to instill in the first place.
ReplyDelete