I’m italian and i studied in Italy and i never cheated but i always loved the thrill of being able to.
So in several test, written and oral, between 11 yo and 18 yo (Medie e Superiori) i had all was needed to cheat planned but never used it (and my classmates thought i was doubly stupid as i could have been discovered and i didn’t get the “benefits” of cheating).
I think that this practice gave me also some tranquility before/during the test (i know, i should have been sure enough of my knowledge to not worry) and added a funny aura of mischief to boring exam and test…. could this be called cheating or, maybe doping ?
I thought about it like a… martial art, or a sport and i had only one simple rule: you must cheat “from the source”, no hidden reduced copies, not little schemes written on your clothes/hands, i had to be able to read it directly from the school books, or the original notebook if was something the teacher dictated us.
To be sure i wouldn’t really cheat i’ve done this only in subject i was good enough to get passing grades on my own.
An anectode: one time we, me and some classmates who learned to enjoy this “sport”, were being orally tested and all of us were “performing our arts” (… and it was a very big book, bonus points!) and after i fully responded a specific question without looking at the book, the teacher asked for more details… but i was sure there weren’t more details, even my classmates were sure and eyed quite surprised me, the books and the teacher! I must admit it, then i checked the book and there wasn’t anything more to say… you don’t know how it was hard not to take the book and showing it to the teacher :-))
Ciao!
Bad teachers don’t notice the cheating until it gets so bad that they can’t really miss it, like the maths teacher. Good teachers arrange things so that cheating is harder, like giving multiple tests to the class, so that only 4-5 students have the same test, and these are placed far apart. This means working more, something a good teacher is willing to do but not a poor one. or also the handle tests so that major cheating is impossible because identical response are too evident, and minor cheating is irrelevant, or even where students are allowed, for instance, to use textbooks to a degree (a student that didn’t study will not be able to fill up an essay that requires to sum up all uoiu leraned in, say, history in the past year even if he’s using the book, a student that did study will use the book to verify some data, but the individual elaboration will still be more important than the data). Overall, tis’ always the teacehrs that counts the most: a good one vs a bad one. Bad teachers are easily cheated and will not notice, good teachers are not. The problem is that teaching in italy is mostly a second-rate job, done by people who could not find another job.
Until enough adults begin to speak out on the issue of cheating it will never be dealt with properly. Sounds as if parents are afraid that if their children are punished for cheating that this will harm their children.Qt said that he never cheated but loved the trill of being able to do it! He said he had all he needed to cheat but didn’t. I wonder?
You wonder what, John ? If i really cheated ?
Well, i didn’t, i was only able to. Why i didn’t ? Just for the reason you told, good parents (one of which was a teacher herself, one known to “have eyes in the back of her head” as she was well aware of what happened in her classroom) that told me cheating wasn’t good and that were able to make me understand WHY cheating wasn’t good with their words and their example.
I have hosted Italian exchange students. They all cheated on the Italian exams and learned they could not cheat on the American exams. According to their experiences, in Italy their way of looking at education was from the old book with memorization and not applying it to their life today in a new and changing diverse global society…American schools taught them to look at the same problem, but solve it in many different ways! Therefore they learned to think through many problems, get the problems correct and they did not need to cheat.
I don’t see cheating such a bad thing, maybe becouse i’ve always seen it as a “normal” way to pass an exam. Now if i think why i was cheating I’d say is most of all becouse of how u feel when u get away with it, infact every time i was cheating in a different an more obvious way.
ex: during math tests i used to take my notebook from my backpack and rip the page i wrote the notes just pretending i wanted to use it for calculations!
Eventhough now in university i’m not cheating anymore i would do the same if i in the high school contest, i say so becouse in italian high schools most of the time u are forced to study some subject like Latin or Philosophy.
I’m italian and i studied in Italy and i never cheated but i always loved the thrill of being able to.
So in several test, written and oral, between 11 yo and 18 yo (Medie e Superiori) i had all was needed to cheat planned but never used it (and my classmates thought i was doubly stupid as i could have been discovered and i didn’t get the “benefits” of cheating).
I think that this practice gave me also some tranquility before/during the test (i know, i should have been sure enough of my knowledge to not worry) and added a funny aura of mischief to boring exam and test…. could this be called cheating or, maybe doping ?
I thought about it like a… martial art, or a sport and i had only one simple rule: you must cheat “from the source”, no hidden reduced copies, not little schemes written on your clothes/hands, i had to be able to read it directly from the school books, or the original notebook if was something the teacher dictated us.
To be sure i wouldn’t really cheat i’ve done this only in subject i was good enough to get passing grades on my own.
An anectode: one time we, me and some classmates who learned to enjoy this “sport”, were being orally tested and all of us were “performing our arts” (… and it was a very big book, bonus points!) and after i fully responded a specific question without looking at the book, the teacher asked for more details… but i was sure there weren’t more details, even my classmates were sure and eyed quite surprised me, the books and the teacher! I must admit it, then i checked the book and there wasn’t anything more to say… you don’t know how it was hard not to take the book and showing it to the teacher :-))
Ciao!
Bad teachers don’t notice the cheating until it gets so bad that they can’t really miss it, like the maths teacher. Good teachers arrange things so that cheating is harder, like giving multiple tests to the class, so that only 4-5 students have the same test, and these are placed far apart. This means working more, something a good teacher is willing to do but not a poor one. or also the handle tests so that major cheating is impossible because identical response are too evident, and minor cheating is irrelevant, or even where students are allowed, for instance, to use textbooks to a degree (a student that didn’t study will not be able to fill up an essay that requires to sum up all uoiu leraned in, say, history in the past year even if he’s using the book, a student that did study will use the book to verify some data, but the individual elaboration will still be more important than the data). Overall, tis’ always the teacehrs that counts the most: a good one vs a bad one. Bad teachers are easily cheated and will not notice, good teachers are not. The problem is that teaching in italy is mostly a second-rate job, done by people who could not find another job.
Until enough adults begin to speak out on the issue of cheating it will never be dealt with properly. Sounds as if parents are afraid that if their children are punished for cheating that this will harm their children.Qt said that he never cheated but loved the trill of being able to do it! He said he had all he needed to cheat but didn’t. I wonder?
You wonder what, John ? If i really cheated ?
Well, i didn’t, i was only able to. Why i didn’t ? Just for the reason you told, good parents (one of which was a teacher herself, one known to “have eyes in the back of her head” as she was well aware of what happened in her classroom) that told me cheating wasn’t good and that were able to make me understand WHY cheating wasn’t good with their words and their example.
I have hosted Italian exchange students. They all cheated on the Italian exams and learned they could not cheat on the American exams. According to their experiences, in Italy their way of looking at education was from the old book with memorization and not applying it to their life today in a new and changing diverse global society…American schools taught them to look at the same problem, but solve it in many different ways! Therefore they learned to think through many problems, get the problems correct and they did not need to cheat.
I don’t see cheating such a bad thing, maybe becouse i’ve always seen it as a “normal” way to pass an exam. Now if i think why i was cheating I’d say is most of all becouse of how u feel when u get away with it, infact every time i was cheating in a different an more obvious way.
ex: during math tests i used to take my notebook from my backpack and rip the page i wrote the notes just pretending i wanted to use it for calculations!
Eventhough now in university i’m not cheating anymore i would do the same if i in the high school contest, i say so becouse in italian high schools most of the time u are forced to study some subject like Latin or Philosophy.