I abhor cheating of any kind, but there are some things I detest even more than cheating, such as humiliation and abuse:
High school students suspected of cheating on final exams were subjected to a strip-search by their teacher who was looking for a missing cell phone.
An internal investigation is underway at Cap-Jeunesse High School, in Saint-Jerome, Quebec, regarding the May 24 incident which involved 28 students.
According to reports, during a math exam, the teacher asked all the students to hand in their cellphones to avoid cheating.
When it was discovered that one was missing, she allegedly stopped the exam and ordered each girl into another room where they were strip searched, according to reports.
One teenage girl, who did not want to be named, told QMI Agency: ‘They put us in a small room. They said “take off your bra, then raise your arms”. They even tapped us on the back.’
The school board said the principal was not told of the incident.
The parents of the students involved were later contacted and the situation was explained.
Spokeswoman for the school Nadyne Brochu told Sun News that it was a ‘disproportionate action under the circumstances’.
The school board said that ‘the decision seemed best’ to the teacher at that time but later acknowledged she ‘lacked judgement’.
They also acknowledged that the ‘climate was not conducive to a good test’ so they were allowed to retake the test if they wanted.
It is not known if any of the teachers involved will face disciplinary action.
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Tags: Cap-Jeunesse High School, Cap-Jeunesse High School strip search, Cheating, Education, Exams, High school students suspected of cheating, Nadyne Brochu, strip searched students, strip-search by their teacher, strip-search by their teacher cell phone, teacher asked all the students to hand in their cellphones to avoid cheating
Topical Teaching 
May 29, 2013 at 5:33 am |
Wouldn’t it be much simpler, more humane and infinitely more intelligent to remove the conditions under which cheating occurs? That is to say, there are better ways of finding out what students have learned. Of course this requires that teachers are allowed to exercise creativity. I know that at one time Johnson City schools reduced the stress of exams by allowing students to sit them again having the opportunity to revise what they had learned. They knew at the time that education was much more than an exercise in sorting and grading.
Of course cheating is deplorable. However if tests and exams were not such a critical part of the education process students would feel less need to cheat. In another sense cheating is what exams are all about. Students and teachers are both cheated of their capacity for creativity by exams, and by the need to satisfy their necessarily narrow focus. I believe at Johnson City schools students were given a copy of the exam at the beginning of the course so they would know what they would need to learn in advance.
When I taught high school classes I felt exams were a waste of time, effort and energy. I knew which students had passed my courses long before the exams. As a student I remember being really turned on by the economics course. (Really!) After having had a number of my questions dismissed by the teacher as not being related to the examinable syllabus (but being vitally related to the topic under study) I became as bored and disinterested as the other students. (Was that the aim?)
May 29, 2013 at 10:48 pm |
I completely agree with you about the pitfalls of exams. Do you think it comes down to a lazy form of assessment on the part of the teacher?