Confessions of a professional cheat

You can’t get much more cynical than this article by a fellow who churns out term papers for incompetent students. He gives some examples of how awful their writing is, and talks about the formulaic approach he takes to writing everything from term papers to Ph.D. theses…and it’s more than a little depressing.

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America’s moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.

With respect to America’s nurses, fear not. Our lives are in capable hands­–just hands that can’t write a lick. Nursing students account for one of my company’s biggest customer bases. I’ve written case-management plans, reports on nursing ethics, and essays on why nurse practitioners are lighting the way to the future of medicine. I’ve even written pharmaceutical-treatment courses, for patients who I hope were hypothetical.

I, who have no name, no opinions, and no style, have written so many papers at this point, including legal briefs, military-strategy assessments, poems, lab reports, and, yes, even papers on academic integrity, that it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

At least I can say that this doesn’t happen much in my classes — when you’ve got small classes and can follow their progress draft by draft, there is pretty much no way to smuggle in a ringer without getting caught.

Fear and pain, the great educational motivators

I remember my physical education class in high school — the instructor (I will not dignify him with the title “teacher”) was a psychopath, as far as I was concerned. He ran the class like a petty tyrant; members of the football team were treated royally and given exemptions and privileges, while the rest of us were subject to his whims and rather vicious rules. We had jock strap inspections every day, and if we were unequipped, we’d be punished; we had to, for instance, run a certain number of laps around the track, and the students who came in last would be punished. And punishment was always the same: we’d be paddled. Not gently, but great walloping strikes with a perforated chunk of wood shaped like a cricket bat. We would be hit so hard that Old Man Earl would actually frequently break the bat on our butts, so he had a stockpile of them in his office. Once he decided to wack every student in the class for some annoying infraction, and he went through three or four of them, covering the gym floor with splinters and broken chunks of wood.

I’m surprised, looking back, on the horrors the PE teacher could get away with because he was the coach of a winning public school football team; I’m most surprised, though, that we actually let it happen, and it was unthinkable at the time to stand up to the blustering, crew-cutted, 6½ foot tall lunatic and tell him that he was a disgrace and ought to be fired.

But I had it good. I was living in Washington state, not Alabama. I also got out of PE classes as quickly as possible and focused on the science courses, which were far more reasonably run. Trust me, you never, ever want to take an academic course from the local coach of brutal team sports.

Now I’ve read this account of one public school teacher in contemporary Alabama.

Payton attends Plainview Elementary and is in the seventh grade. Recently, Lewis claims her son came home from school with severe bruises and welts on his behind. Melissa Lewis said her son was upset, “Mom look at my butt and see if there is something wrong with it? He dropped his pants and I said wow what happened? He said I got paddled because I did not pass my science test.”

Whoa. What possible pedagogical purpose does physical punishment have in a science course? I suppose I could stand up in front of my class and tell them that if they don’t master simple Mendelian genetics right now, I’ma gonna cut a beeyatch, but I don’t think it would have a positive effect on learning.

Anyway, the teacher has apparently been doing this for years. The response so far? Teachers have been sent a letter “discouraging” the use of corporal punishment in the classroom, but it’s still allowed. Why? Don’t ask me. Maybe it’s because the locals are all ignorant thugs, an idea supported by the online poll on the article.

Should Congress ban the use of corporal punishment in the classroom?

Yes, it has no place in the classroom

24%

No, things are fine the way they are
38%

Leave it up to the schools to decide

15%

More guidelines need to be established

23%

Hmmm. How about if teacher and administrator performance reviews were motivated by the presence of a big grinning maniac of a football coach, equipped with a big stick or switch, and anyone who didn’t come up to snuff would get a vigorous thrashing? Views on the allowability of corporal punishment might change a little faster.

Don’t stop now!

We have a bit more than a week to go on our fund raising drive for DonorsChoose, which puts money directly into the hands of teachers who need it, and the pace of donations is slowing way down. Are you tapped out? Do I need to go all NPR and beg for money in every other post? I’ve been so restrained and only putting out these reminders once a week.

Look! Sandra Porter has joined the Scienceblogs team! Maybe I should be nagging the other bloggers here to get it together and join in.

How to deal with the crazies

You all know them: those awful loud little men who travel from campus to campus to preach apocalyptic hateful nonsense on the sidewalks, who rant and howl and condemn everyone who passes by as a sinner, damned to hell, and reserving a special hatred for women and gays. One of the virtues of being on a small campus in a remote rural part of my state is that we don’t get many of those jerkwads here, but they infest the main campus and any other college that is more conveniently located.

What do we do about them? Tarring and feathering is illegal, and you can’t just silence them because you don’t like what they say. I think James Dimock at Minnesota State University Mankato takes exactly the right approach.

“The answer to speech you don’t like isn’t to suppress it. The remedy is to speak back,” said James P. Dimock, associate professor of communication studies at Mankato State. “That is what those kids did and why I am proud of them. They could have gone to the university administration and fought to keep this guy off campus — a fight they would probably have lost. But instead they answered speech with speech. I support what they did 100 percent and I think that they should be a model for how people should respond to these preachers everywhere.”

What he did was encourage students to politely protest the noise of a gay-hating preacher going by the name of John the Baptist by taking him up on his invitation to attend his church services. They did. They sat in the front row, quietly, with signs showing gay people who had committed suicide, thanks to homophobic bullying. They didn’t interfere with his preaching at all, but no one could look at him in the pulpit without also seeing the victims of his hatred. It’s perfect. It’s the kind of peaceful protest that makes people think.

Of course preacher John Chisham doesn’t see it that way. He’s angry about it all, and is whining that the university is promoting anti-Christian attitudes (anyone want to bet against the idea that many of the students who were protesting were also Christian?)

But Chisham said that was unfair. “If a professor said ‘Why don’t you come and attend my class?’ I would take that to mean I’m going to go into the class and sit, and listen respectfully, and I would expect the same kind of decorum.” (Both Chisham and those who protested agree that while the students held signs in front of the room, making it impossible for the congregation members to see their pastor without seeing images of gay youth who have killed themselves, the protest was a silent one — and did not stop the prayers or any other part of the service.)

Chisham said he has filed a complaint with the university, asking it to impose sanctions on Dimock, the professor who advised the students and who attended the service with them. But Chisham said he does not believe Dimock is being punished. “I think there should be sanctions,” he said, “unless Mankato State doesn’t mind being associated with someone disrupting a service of worship.”

Oh, the hypocrisy, it burns.

They did not disrupt the service. They silently highlighted his message. They also listened to every word he said, they did not shout him down at all. When creationists come to Morris, I’ll often encourage my students to attend and listen, too, and I’ll tell them to be polite and non-disruptive (although I’ll also assure them that good, calm questions are also a good idea). The creationists don’t particularly like this, because it means some of their audience are there to think and criticize rather than affirm and gullibly swallow whatever they say, but there’s not much they can do to stop us without looking blatantly hypocritical.

There’s also the fact that Preacher John sees no problem in proclaiming his message, but is offended that anyone would quietly reject it. There’s this whole evangelical principle of, well, evangelizing … but any pushback, no matter how mild, is regarded as wicked. We’re not supposed to ask questions in church, but there’s a whole evangelical literature praising the idea of promoting Christianity in the science classroom — see Chick’s “Big Daddy” for the classic example.

Despite Big Daddy’s puffery, one thing I’ve learned is that fundagelical Christians are typically cowards. They fear and hate being criticized. I occasionally get protests at my talks, and my response to the sign-bearing chanters lined up outside the auditorium is always to invite them to come in and feel free to ask questions in the Q&A. They rarely do. I’d actually welcome a mob of creationists who showed up and sat up front and quietly listened, and might even make sure to keep the talk a little more brief than usual, because I’d expect a lively post-talk discussion. It just doesn’t happen, much as I’d like it to, and here’s Preacher John complaining because he’s got an audience with specific issues to debate. If he’s so sure he’s right, he ought to be overjoyed to have an opportunity to publicly rebut specific questions.

Just in case the opportunity comes up, any time I give a public talk, the creationist versions of Professor Dimock are welcome to show up, take a front row seat, and carry signs that object to evilutionism. I shall joyfully address any concerns that you might have at the appropriate part of the hour, and all you have to be prepared for is the laughter of myself and the rest of the audience.

What am I doing today?

Brain melting. Remember that call for applicants for a tenure track job? We’re screening all those applicants now, and meeting tomorrow to consider who to invite to the first round of preliminary phone interviews. If you haven’t got your application in, you’re late! You’re going to hope everyone else sucks badly if you’re still trying to get something filed here.

All it means to me right now though is more squinty staring at lots and lots of essays and CVs and recommendations. I may be entering a data coma soon.

Boys will be…revolting misogynists

This is a very poor quality recording of a group of fraternity pledges marching about the Yale campus chanting. You should be able to make out what they’re chanting, though: “No means yes, yes means anal.”

These privileged man-children made it a point to march past various sororities letting the women know exactly what to expect from the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity; the president of the frat has since apologized, calling it a “lapse in judgment”.

I don’t think so. I think it goes deeper than that: this was a lifelong failure, the result of a poor upbringing that generates bully-boys who think that terrorizing women with threats of rape is hilarious, and further, a culture that looks on these beasts and forgives them, urging them to go on and bring their misogynistic attitudes to their future careers as captains of industry and masters of politics.

This is not a free speech issue. Of course DKE is free to advertise the fact that they are a slimy nest of anti-woman vermin; one could even argue that they’re doing everyone a favor by making it clear that their frat is the one for low-life scum. But when the Yale University administration sits quietly, waiting for the furor to die down, and when they foster such unconscionable behavior by their students, we’re also free to suggest that maybe Yale isn’t a fit place for our sons and daughters, and maybe that Yale degree should carry a certain amount of social stigma.

As if it weren’t already bearing a mark of shame for being George W. Bush’s alma mater…

Don’t forget DonorsChoose

We’re still trying to raise money for science education — donate if you can. We’ve teamed up with Uncertain Principles and The Thoughtful Animal to raise cash for teachers, and together we’ve almost brought in $10,000 so far. My personal goal was $20,000, though, so we need more.

I’m hoping some billionaire will tire of throwing his money away on ID conferences and will instead invest where it can make a difference. But even a dollar or two helps.

It’s easy to forget about DonorsChoose

Especially if you’ve got adblock in place, because the big banner on the left asking you to donate will disappear…but yes, we are still trying to raise money for science education, and if you’ve got a few dollars to spare, go to my challenge page and pick a project you like and help them out. One of the nice things about the way DonorsChoose is that you actually put your money in the hands of teachers who are doing work that you like.

Now I know, we’re all evil atheists here, and we’d never do something just because it was good and nice. If cutthroat competition is a better motivator to your mind, we’re also having a little contest with some of the other science blog networks, and we have a leaderboard for the science bloggers. Scienceblogs is ahead right now, but those nefarious rascals at Discover and Scientopia are breathing down our necks. Help us simultaneously crush the others and help school teachers!

The students have been slacking!

But then, so have we all. I hit my developmental biology students with the first evil exam of the term last week (I give them a couple of broad questions where we don’t have all the answers, and send them off to write a longish essay on their own time. It’s definitely the kind of test where regurgitation doesn’t work at all). Then also the last few days have been our Fall Break, a short interval with no classes which were added to allow the faculty a chance to catch up on their work and sleep, but which I squandered by gallivanting off to London where I got almost no sleep.

But they’ve got some stuff online.

I’ll crack the whip in class some more today and tell them to provide more blog fodder. If I don’t fall asleep mid-session, that is.

I hate to see the competition getting promoted this way

I teach at a small public liberal arts college in Minnesota. We’ve got a lot of similar liberal arts institutions around the state, including Gustavus Adolphus, a private college with a Lutheran affiliation. We’re secular (we don’t sponsor church services) and public (much lower tuition, also much smaller endowment), which we consider our advantages, but the Illinois Family Institute is trying to undermine that. They are outraged at the licentiousness at Gustavus.

The climate at Gustavus was predominantly secular in the classroom, in dorm life, and on sports teams with only the empty trappings of Christian tradition hanging on in the form of daily chapel services led by a chaplain who affirmed sexual deviance and other such “spiritual” activities.

The IFI, by the way, is one of those fanatical conservative organizations that has a primary mission of opposing gay rights and promoting general prudery everywhere. What triggered the killjoys this time is the appearance of a video showing parts of Gustavus’s freshman orientation, which includes a frank and amusing discussion of student sexual behavior.

(Youtube comments on that video are predictably inane, too)

Dang. That was awesome. IFI may be pissed off, but I predict an uptick in enrollment applications at Gustavus next year.