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I don't agree with the use of such invasive software, but there's some context to the discussions that I think is important. > If you want to ensure the integr

I don't agree with the use of such invasive software, but there's some context to the discussions that I think is important. > If you want to ensure the integrity of students’ education, try teaching them about consent and ethical computing. Cheating in schools is _rampant_ (1), and it has little to do with teaching students ethics. It's just something that's going to happen. And kids cheat for all sorts of reasons. Some do it for better grades. Some do it for fun. Some are otherwise great performers, but do it because they're lazy. Many of these students are enabled by their parents/guardians. Hell, some of these kids have their guardians explicitly help them cheat. It's hard enough to control academic dishonesty in-person. But wide spread online learning has made the problem an order of magnitude worse. Teachers that want to address it are left with precious few options. So it's no wonder to me that educators are turning to things like Proctorio, even if I don't agree with that decision. The article's points about privacy and disproportional harm to disadvantaged students is spot on. I just felt that it elided what a huge problem cheating itself is. (1) Source: Several teacher friends.

walterbell 6y ago
To the extent that tests claim to be simulations of real-world performance, is the expectation that students (future employees) will be subject to similar surveillance? If not, how can remote testers learn from performance evaluations for remote workers?
hatenberg 6y ago
How do you even try to tell kids to behave ethically and not cheat when the head of state is a grifter, liar, serial cheater? Kids learn by observing not through indoctrination and the cognitive dissonance between the pledge of allegiance and the real world cant be integrated unless one turns to the gospel of Q
some_furry 6y ago
I appreciate your earnest feedback here. Ultimately, I think you're (and, by extension, your teacher friends) are presupposing the frame. Why do we try to educate students within a framework where cheating has any practical meaning? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-learning-no-grades.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-le... I've written about related topics in longer form: https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-american-education/ https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-am... If teachers are so ready to call students cheating a problem that needs to be solved, why don't we look closely at what students' and parents' incentives are to cheat... and then remove those incentives? After all, isn't the goal of the education system to... educate? Not score them based on their utility to their future corporate masters (which is, in and of itself, classist and often racist)? (To be clear, I'm not blaming you or your teacher friends for the systemic problems of education. I realize that decision was made far above them in the government food chain. Instead, I'm proposing that there's a different problem to solve than students cheating.) Maybe this isn't the right time to suggest fundamental changes (since we're all trying to cope with a pandemic every day and it's hella stressful), but I think we need to really think about how we're trying to educate our youth.
- espadrine 6y ago
  One problem is lack of imagination into alternative systems. An established mechanism is hard to challenge, even when bad. Something to drive the point home: companies could have culturally developed in the same way as schools. Managers and bosses could continuously maintain grades on report performance. And they would forbid developers from looking up information on Stack Overflow because that is cheating. But since some employees do it, they could have added that same spyware to ensure they don’t do it. The reason why this would be culturally wrong, is the same reason that it is currently wrong in schools.

walterbell 6y ago

To the extent that tests claim to be simulations of real-world performance, is the expectation that students (future employees) will be subject to similar surveillance? If not, how can remote testers learn from performance evaluations for remote workers?

hatenberg 6y ago

How do you even try to tell kids to behave ethically and not cheat when the head of state is a grifter, liar, serial cheater? Kids learn by observing not through indoctrination and the cognitive dissonance between the pledge of allegiance and the real world cant be integrated unless one turns to the gospel of Q

some_furry 6y ago

I appreciate your earnest feedback here. Ultimately, I think you're (and, by extension, your teacher friends) are presupposing the frame. Why do we try to educate students within a framework where cheating has any practical meaning? https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-learning-no-grades.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/11/nyregion/mastery-based-le... I've written about related topics in longer form: https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-american-education/ https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-am... If teachers are so ready to call students cheating a problem that needs to be solved, why don't we look closely at what students' and parents' incentives are to cheat... and then remove those incentives? After all, isn't the goal of the education system to... educate? Not score them based on their utility to their future corporate masters (which is, in and of itself, classist and often racist)? (To be clear, I'm not blaming you or your teacher friends for the systemic problems of education. I realize that decision was made far above them in the government food chain. Instead, I'm proposing that there's a different problem to solve than students cheating.) Maybe this isn't the right time to suggest fundamental changes (since we're all trying to cope with a pandemic every day and it's hella stressful), but I think we need to really think about how we're trying to educate our youth.

espadrine 6y ago
One problem is lack of imagination into alternative systems. An established mechanism is hard to challenge, even when bad. Something to drive the point home: companies could have culturally developed in the same way as schools. Managers and bosses could continuously maintain grades on report performance. And they would forbid developers from looking up information on Stack Overflow because that is cheating. But since some employees do it, they could have added that same spyware to ensure they don’t do it. The reason why this would be culturally wrong, is the same reason that it is currently wrong in schools.