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Sunday, June 10, 2012

WYGIWYD

My wife was marking the exam papers for Chemistry during the school holidays. She came across one interesting exam script. The student, a below average one, apparently answered the definition of protons in terms of quarks. The student answered, "a proton is composed of two up quarks and one down quark."

Wow!

I am not one who looks down on a student's ability to excel, but this is really amazing. In the syllabus for SPM's Chemistry, there is no mention on quarks whatsoever. Only when you get into university and you do theoretical chemistry, do you come across the idea of quarks, which by the way was a concept proposed in 1964 and was debated at great length before being accepted by the physicists and theoretical chemists much, much later.

My wife related to me that this student was caught cheating with a smart phone in another paper in the examination. I have a feeling that this student also cheated in Chemistry because the sentence used in most of the correct answers given are identical to what is found in Wikipedia.

Yes, we have to give the student the benefit of the doubt. The student may have read about quarks out of interest. However, I suggested to my wife that she should call the student and test the student's understanding to be sure that the student did not cheat. If indeed the student is very interested in Chemistry and used her initiative to read more, then I am sure she will be able to answer whatever question my wife throws at her.

In actuality, the student barely passed. She was not able to answer most of the essay questions. The questions that she was able to answer have too many similarities to articles in Wikipedia.

If it is true that she cheated using her smart phone, I find this very disturbing. What is the point of answering correctly when you cheat? Cheating will not get you anywhere in the long run. You may get good grades but in actuality, you do not deserve the grade. Learning is about obtaining knowledge, not just about getting good grades. If one gets a C with his/her own effort, that is way better than obtaining an A by cheating. There is no barakah in cheating.

The fact that the student answered using terms only known to university students gave her away. Had she known what to answer based on the syllabus taught, it would have been more difficult to spot that she probably cheated. When you use terms like "quarks", the alarm bells will no doubt ring. I am pretty sure that even university students may not be able to define protons in terms of quarks so convincingly. As such, when a Form Four student answered in such a manner, you tend to be suspicious.

The point I want to make in this posting is this: WYGIWYD.

"What You Get Is What You Deserve".

Nothing more, nothing less.

Cheating is a zero-sum game. You may think you gain something today, but at the end of the day, you get nothing.

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