<p>Nothing would stop them, but schools like these are generally very protective of their matriculation lists. I doubt a counselor would want one less ivy/top school matriculation. That’s probably the reason they were willing to hide the incident in the first place. Though of course it’s too late now, because the father has broadcasted it to the world.</p>
<p>This may be kind of a tangent, but one of the things that bothers me most about this story is the father’s “righteous” indignation over the impact of this on his son’s life–with the implication being that his chances of getting into a top-tier college, and thus achieving immeasurable success, have gone down because of the school’s actions. For some reason it reminds me of the story about the NYC parent suing her kid’s preschool for not adequately preparing her for an Ivy League college.</p>
<p>[Mom</a> Sues Preschool For Hurting Daughter’s Ivy League Chances](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Mom Sues Preschool For Hurting Daughter's Ivy League Chances | HuffPost New York)</p>
<p>I guess I still find it astonishing that “smart” people actually believe their offspring’s only chance of succeeding in life will be determined by what college they go to, and that their kids are entitled to every possible advantage to get them into the schools they deem worthy. Is this really how a significant part of our society thinks? Because in my own life and social circles, no one cares. But I, and the people I respect, DO care about ethics, honesty and personal responsibility.</p>
<p>Most people who send their kids to public schools expect their children to be treated fairly, and I agree with them.</p>
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<p>Anyone who assumes that all adolescents think and act alike needs to eat some humble pie. There are plenty of honorable students one never hears about, precisely because they do not cheat, precisely because the culture of the school and the home life works against rewarding or ignoring cheating, and works to reward honesty. Not all publics, and certainly not all privates, are so fiercely competitive that the “only” way to beat the competition is to be dishonest.</p>
<p>But yeah, thanks for the effort to “inform” us. ;)</p>
<p>[Most</a> high schoolers cheat – but don’t always see it as cheating, study finds](<a href=“http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100511173829.htm]Most”>Most high schoolers cheat -- but don't always see it as cheating, study finds | ScienceDaily)</p>
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<p>Just google for “cheating in high school statistics”. There is ample of evidence and hard number.</p>
<p>[75</a> to 98 Percent of College Students Have Cheated](<a href=“http://education-portal.com/articles/75_to_98_Percent_of_College_Students_Have_Cheated.html]75”>http://education-portal.com/articles/75_to_98_Percent_of_College_Students_Have_Cheated.html)</p>
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<p>^^
And that’s why it’s naive to think your student’s never cheated. Almost every parent agrees that their student has never cheated and will never cheat, yet a vast majority of students cheat at some point. Statistically your child has most likely cheated. And yes, not all students cheat, but my point is just that you need to accept the fact your kid isn’t perfect. Just because up to 98% admit to having cheated once doesn’t mean they didn’t feel guilty about it and does it religiously. But don’t claim you know your kid hasn’t cheated because it does seem naive. And you can’t know (unless you follow them all throughout their life…in which case you have a whole other issue to worry about).</p>
<p>This is really, really sad, because I personally know the father and kid in question (though haven’t spoke in about 2 years), and they are nice people. </p>
<p>I agree with what Fermat25 said. I would go as far as to say 100% of high-achievers in my school “cheat” in the sense that we share homework and copy it. I have seen this a lot, and I go to a high school that, on an average year, sends 3-4 people to Harvard, 4 to Princeton/Yale, 6 to other Ivies, 10 to Stanford (we’re in the Bay), 20 to Berkeley, etc…</p>
<p>Why? It’s because the vast majority of homework is useless busywork. Virtually all projects and presentations are also quite useless. Utterly useless homework includes virtually all “worksheets”, every single mind-numbing “journal entry” I have ever written in my life, and many projects. I challenge you to tell me why it is useful for us to spend two weeks in AP US History making a storybook when the teacher could lecture the same material in one day, or how filling out a worksheet on the life history of William Faulkner helps improve the critical thinking skills that English classes allegedly foment.</p>
<p>The only homework that I have not found to be useless are English essays, problem sets, some projects, and some labs: in other words, any assignment that actually requires critical thinking and problem solving, rather than looking up the answer or regurgitating a textbook. And even then many labs often simply require regurgitation.</p>
<p>Honestly, if you assign a worksheet or a journal entry, and if you are even moderately intelligent, you should know better than to expect that everyone is going to waste their time actually doing the worksheet. You ought to EXPECT that most people are going to copy it.</p>
<p>Case in point: one of my AP teachers told the class that he never assigns worksheets for homework because he KNOWS we won’t do it. And everyone in the class chuckled because we know it’s true. My AP Bio teacher told us she doesn’t care if we copy homework, just not to do it in front of her.</p>
<p>In my opinion, you would have to be a DUMB (inefficient) student to actually do the worksheets and journals: looking at this rationally, why should you do this useless assignment when you could do something actually productive (like an extracurricular)? It’s a system of efficiency, tradeoffs, and opportunity costs.</p>
<p>The funny thing is that I LOVE to learn, and to critically analyze things, and to learn new concepts. It’s just that worksheets and journal entries rarely help with this (and if so, only marginally).</p>
<p>In fact, in my experience, the top over-achievers, the people who go to Ivy Leagues, are the ones who systematically copy homework. I knew a group of people (one is now at Harvard, another at Stanford) who set up a system of dividing up bio worksheets so that each person did one section and copied the rest. And in my opinion these individuals were incredibly smart and would never cheat on an essay or test. Why waste time on a vocab worksheet when you can do something that actually requires a brain (like AIME math practice problems)?</p>
<p>I think I’ll end my rant on useless homework and the justifiability of the actions in this specific case.</p>
<p>The fact that others may cheat is not the issue in this case. If the posted speed limit is 60 mph and I am driving at 70 mph I am not entitled to file a law suit against the highway patrol just because others have also broken the law and driven at >60 mph.</p>
<p>If you cheat and are caught you take the punishment and move on.</p>
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<p>I sincerely hope you and the “top students” at your school don’t carry such attitudes into college or moreso your entry-level jobs where you WILL be doing many tedious things that seem to be/are busywork…sometimes for 8-12 hours/day. </p>
<p>That is…unless you’re ready for the possible consequence of being fired for “having a poor attitude” and being given a negative reference as some older relatives recounted from dealing with recent college graduates who thought they were “too smart” to do “useless busywork”, giving respectful attention to tedious “useless meetings”, etc.</p>
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<p>Terrific. Yeah, I’m really convinced that it’s 100%. (Not.) ;)</p>
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<p>Then stop pretending that you have the slightest idea which students do and do not.</p>
<p>The attitudes of the both of you reveal a volume about your cynicism and your rationalizations. Again, like Erin’s Dad, I’m proud of who my children and – and most especially, are not.</p>
<p>Some of us parents actually raised our children not to be arrogant, to be honest, to complete even work that they perceived in their undeveloped minds to be “busywork,” and to earn their grades, including the non-cheating less than A’s both earned by honest triumphs and failures. That’s because I made it clear what I would and would not respect and value in them.</p>
<p>What statistics and studies have proved is that *if the stakes are high enough<a href=“and%20depending%20on%20how%20severe%20those%20stakes%20are”>/i</a> just about anyone will cheat. If the equation is changed, entirely different behaviors result.</p>
<p>Try to have a nice day.</p>
<p>Tutu taxi is dead-on - “everybody” speeds, but we know if we get caught we get a ticket. You can debate the “usefulness” of homework all day long, in many cases I agree - but it doesn’t change what happened to this kid one bit. Bottom line is he and his mom signed the honor code and he knowingly violated it, so he suffers the consequence (as did the other kids that got caught).</p>
<p>Terenc, life is all about sometimes doing things you either don’t want to do or feel are not necessary. In some situations, like work and school, you don’t get to decide what is expected of you - others do. You can choose to NOT do things or to cheat, that’s absolutely your choice for sure - just don’t whine, cry or SUE when you get caught and have to face consequences that you and your mom signed!</p>
<p>If you don’t want all the extra work, get out of honors/ib/ap, simple. </p>
<p>I wonder what HYPetc is really like these days - seeing a strong pattern on CC that it’s all just a rich person’s game of working the system to get in. How sad.</p>
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<p>As ludicrous as this sounds, it is completely true. I attended a half-day magnet school, and for the latter half I would have to return to the public school in the area (for 2 classes, athletics, etc.) The faculty was beyond obsessed with their power. If you every did anything wrong, they couldn’t wait to crack down on you as if the school was the wild west. It was absolutely ridiculous. I remember once I used my phone to text my mother about forgetting my running stuff, a secretary saw, and sent me to the principal’s office. Another time, I used some time of my lunch period to go to a bathroom not in the lunch room (because those are filthy) and the principal followed me to the bathroom and waited outside for me to come out so that he could discipline me. A third time, I had a huge test and went into the library during MY OWN LUNCH to study beforehand, and the librarian forced me out because I didn’t have a “teacher’s pass.” I was sitting at an empty table quietly. I had never been in trouble, was at the top of my class academically, and they still treated me as if I had committed murder. No phone use was the policy of course, but the school only cared about the most inane rules in the entire school. People would yell obscenities, express racism, etc. and no one cared at all. But if anyone used a phone, went into the library without a “hall pass,” or didn’t sign one of the bathroom logs (they had to keep a log because of all the vandalism) you were treated as a criminal. The school would always cater to ignorant, rude, and just plain out unintelligent students but enforce pointless rules against good students. (i.e. they cared about you signing the bathroom log but never actually corrected the vandalism.) I know we like to think that public schools provide a fine experience, but trust me, they don’t. 90% of the work is aimless assignments that require absolutely no use of your brain while the social structure is beyond terrible.</p>
<p>Also, to “Erin’s Dad,” sure, you may think your child has never cheated, but be real. Very small things (which are actually educational/intellectually beneficial) are often considered cheating. If she’s ever asked a friend for a homework answer because she couldn’t figure it out, and used that to help her figure it out on her own (a good idea in a real world), she would be considered cheating in many schools. Again, I don’t know enough about this case in the thread, but what is considered “cheating” in schools is in many cases just valuable collaboration among students.</p>
<p>Again, Berghouse is not denying that his son cheated. It looks like he is asking for fair punishment in accordance with school policy and practice, and believes removal from the class is not supported by policy in this case.</p>
<p>Analogizing to TutuTaxi’s example, when enforcing the law, “selective enforcement” or “selective prosecution” (choosing only certain people to proceed against) and violation of due process (not following prescribed procedures) is prohibited.</p>
<p>Several years ago, a researcher (at MIT, I’m pretty sure) was recording the time intervals between students completing problems on their physics problem sets. Shortly after the problem sets were assigned, the time gap was reasonable but as more people completed their problem sets, the time intervals got shorter and shorter until prior to the deadline when responses were being inputted into the system faster than a person could possibly solve them. The point of the research was, I believe, to chart the workload on the students but as the data came in, the research changed to examine this easily-explained dynamic. I’m not suggesting that this kid should apply to MIT. I’m not even sure what I’m suggesting except – perhaps – that people are finding that cheating is going on even when they aren’t looking for it. If somebody has the link to that study, please post it or send me a PM. It was pretty funny to read about it…as nobody sued anyone.</p>
<p>Kids cheat on homework assignments all the time. This one was was stupid enough to get caught. </p>
<p>Everyone is overracting to the situation, parents, administrators, and all.</p>
<p>I found it. And there is a larger point to be made after all: cheating on homework leads to long-term failure. The punishment, it seems, is already built-in to the crime. Maybe the dad’s right and there’s no need to pile on.</p>
<p>One of numerous stories on the MIT cheating study: [Want</a> to sink your grade point average? Try cheating, MIT study finds - thestar.com](<a href=“http://www.thestar.com/living/article/784471--want-to-sink-your-grade-point-average-try-cheating-mit-study-finds]Want”>http://www.thestar.com/living/article/784471--want-to-sink-your-grade-point-average-try-cheating-mit-study-finds)</p>
<p>Terenc says “Why? It’s because the vast majority of homework is useless busywork. Virtually all projects and presentations are also quite useless.”</p>
<p>Terenc, this may be true, but wait until you get out into the real world. If you get any type of job working for someone else, you will find that a lot of your time and energy is spent in “useless” meetings and conversations. Most adults from the age of 25-60 are doing “busywork” just to put food on the table. That’s why it is called “work” and why we look forward to retiring from it.</p>
<p>50ishwoman - Amen! As one 50ish to another, I could not have said it better myself.</p>
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<p>Well 3 other students were caught cheating along w/ Berghouses son and they ALL received the same punishment. None of the other students are protesting the severity of their punishment. It doesnt appear that Berghouses son was selectively singled out nor denied due process.</p>
<p>Wow, I didn’t think you could get kicked out of a class for copying homework lol</p>