Doing School

In this excerpt, Pope describes an intensely competitive atmosphere in Eve’s classes, and I believe that such competition is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it causes students to push forward and strive to reach as far as they possibly can. On the other hand, it creates a high stress situation, causing tension between friends. Of course how someone reacts to this stress is completely defined by their personality. Some students may completely break down when the competition gets tough, then again, some students just get angry, and wonder why the competition isn’t tougher. Then there are those in the middle, who try not to draw attention to them selves, get average grades, and have a ton of friends, so the stress doesn’t affect them much. The latter is what I saw as most common in my geometry class, there were two and three of the break-down types, and about a quarter of the class was the high achievers. I find that this specific excerpt describes a lot of the advanced classes I was in last year. It’s fascinating,
Pope also discusses the issue of cheating, and the student’s definition of “cheating”. The way these particular students define cheating is interesting… cutting class to study and pre-programming calculators is cheating, but copying homework and asking neighbors for answers isn’t. I think students cheat because they feel that they need good grades more than they feel that they need to actually learn the material. For a lot of students, the material is nothing to them. They just want good grades and no homework. Cheating has some consequences, sure. But I’m not sure how many kids who cheat just blow them off… and I wonder if the consequences aren’t scary enough anymore since many kids don’t seem to care. I personally don’t think cheating is worth it, I’ve always figured that if I’m not good enough I deserve to fail. Which brings me to an interesting side topic… a lot of parents are more lax on their kids because they feel angry at their parents for being strict on them as children, so they’re a lot more lenient when it comes to discipline.
Well, back to our topic… Students who are caught cheating should be given a zero on the assignment, and be made to write an essay on WHY they were cheating… I hope that this method would help get the cheaters thinking about weather cheating was actually necessary.
Cheating itself is an interesting topic. The idea that if one can’t do the work themselves, someone else who at least tried to complete the assignment is therefore “smarter” and that they should copy off of them. No human being is perfect, that’s not possible. But the concept of cheating is based off that idea. I personally think that it’s ridiculous, but I have seem many a friend copy homework, and even more friends ask to copy mine (to which I reply that I don’t have it, that they should do it themselves, or that I didn’t do it). The teachers are always happy to help them understand the concepts (for that matter, so am I. Even if I don’t get it, there are always books we can look it up in) so cheating is so… silly. There are so many ways to get good grades without resorting to using another person’s paper.
Overall, competitive environments affect people in so many different ways, so it’s hard to determine if they will eventually resort to things like cheating or skipping class. But does it really matter? Not everyone cheats.