Thursday, April 21, 2005
Cheating is endemic in Tanzanian schools, taken for granted. Students who are caught are treated harshly, but it is almost a game.
My mid-term exam was given last week. I was downtown at the time – the teachers of a course are not included among the proctors (invigilators) for their own tests. Things seemed to go normally. Over the weekend I graded the exams. Lo and behold there were two papers, from good students of mine, that had identical first pages. Complete to the same grammatical mistakes and erroneous answers. I subtracted 25 pts from both papers, and wrote on them “Regina – Vedastus: Who copied from whom?”
In the first class after the exam period I handed back the corrected exams and spent the period going over the answers. Immediately after class, Regina came up to me, extremely disturbed and demanding that I give her a zero because the reduced score was not what she earned so she should have a zero. She is a dedicated, good student – no way did I want to do that to her. Vedastus came up. Neither would admit to cheating: they said they had studied together from the same book, not from my notes. By now the whole class is gathered around and commenting – this was no way a private student-teacher conference. Regina is outraged and almost crying. Vedastus is playing it cool, letting Regina take the lead. Neither would admit to cheating. I told them that I wanted them to show me this book they studied and got the answers from, and would talk also to the invigilator before taking final action.
The Invigilator turned out to be a friend of mine, Banteze. He said that the test was given in three classrooms, and none of the other two scheduled invigilators showed up so he was handling all three classrooms. Consequently it is clear that there were long periods when no teacher was in the room while students were taking the test. So the whole situation was a fiasco. Really, I can be pretty sure that some other students copied answers on the exam, but nobody else was so blatant as to copy a whole page word for word.
My next step was to lay the papers and the story on the desk of the school Academic Master. He laughed, and said that yes, cheating is a major problem. On the other hand, Regina is the daughter of one of the other teachers. So he suggested that I not reduce their scores. Rather, he would call them in, read them the riot act in four-part harmony, tell them that this would be entered into their school record, and never to cheat like this again or there would be the most serious consequences. I don’t know that this resolution is “fair,” but it is probably the best outcome, all things considered.
Whew!
My mid-term exam was given last week. I was downtown at the time – the teachers of a course are not included among the proctors (invigilators) for their own tests. Things seemed to go normally. Over the weekend I graded the exams. Lo and behold there were two papers, from good students of mine, that had identical first pages. Complete to the same grammatical mistakes and erroneous answers. I subtracted 25 pts from both papers, and wrote on them “Regina – Vedastus: Who copied from whom?”
In the first class after the exam period I handed back the corrected exams and spent the period going over the answers. Immediately after class, Regina came up to me, extremely disturbed and demanding that I give her a zero because the reduced score was not what she earned so she should have a zero. She is a dedicated, good student – no way did I want to do that to her. Vedastus came up. Neither would admit to cheating: they said they had studied together from the same book, not from my notes. By now the whole class is gathered around and commenting – this was no way a private student-teacher conference. Regina is outraged and almost crying. Vedastus is playing it cool, letting Regina take the lead. Neither would admit to cheating. I told them that I wanted them to show me this book they studied and got the answers from, and would talk also to the invigilator before taking final action.
The Invigilator turned out to be a friend of mine, Banteze. He said that the test was given in three classrooms, and none of the other two scheduled invigilators showed up so he was handling all three classrooms. Consequently it is clear that there were long periods when no teacher was in the room while students were taking the test. So the whole situation was a fiasco. Really, I can be pretty sure that some other students copied answers on the exam, but nobody else was so blatant as to copy a whole page word for word.
My next step was to lay the papers and the story on the desk of the school Academic Master. He laughed, and said that yes, cheating is a major problem. On the other hand, Regina is the daughter of one of the other teachers. So he suggested that I not reduce their scores. Rather, he would call them in, read them the riot act in four-part harmony, tell them that this would be entered into their school record, and never to cheat like this again or there would be the most serious consequences. I don’t know that this resolution is “fair,” but it is probably the best outcome, all things considered.
Whew!
