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Administrators at Stuyvesant High School have been using handheld metal detectors on students—not to detect weapons but to disarm cheaters who might use their mobile devices during a test. Teens at the elite public school in lower Manhattan were outraged when the wands were introduced recently during two weeks of AP testing. One student tells the Post, "To wand students is absurd. If they can't tell kids are using a cellphone to cheat, it's their own fault. Next thing, we're going to have to take our shoes off like we're going through the airport." And then they'll be forced to take tests naked like they're cutting coke for some paranoid drug lord! Another student also argues that "wanding is pointless. You can cheat in so many other ways." Principal Stanley Teitel declined to comment, but Dr. Teddi Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity, says the tactic is counterproductive, because it creates "an adversarial relationship where students try to get away with [cheating] and we try to stop them... Anything that can be cheated on easily is usually too simplistic a test."
Metal Detector Wands Used to Thwart Stuyvesant HS Cheaters
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Honor code anyone? At a school as prestigious as Stuyvesant, that shouldn't be too far-fetched.
oh, of course! because students always adhere to the honor code in high pressure situations.
Actually at the higher levels of academia, whether it be HS or college, cheating tends to be more widespread than at the regular levels. The "elite" students have more to lose than the average student, so they are willing to take more risks and cheat more often in order to obtain/maintain their grades.
Having graduated from one of those high schools, i will tell you that if there was a test, there was a way to cheat. Good ol' TI-82 graphing calculators were filled with both text and basic programming to help answer test questions.
Most people i knew in high school cheated.
I was also in one of the top schools. I never cheated. I never needed to. You write that elite students have more to lose by doing badly. They also have more to lose if they're caught cheating.
The idea behind most honor codes isn't that nothing happens when you are caught cheating. In fact, the schools that I know do practice it fuck up the chances of the cheaters ever getting into a good school. Every transcript or recommendation gets sent out with an addendum that basically brands the kid a cheater for life. This way, you get the students who think about cheating reconsidering their actions without penalizing the honest ones.
"If they can't tell kids are using a cellphone to cheat, it's their own fault."??
Nice to know they can rationalize bad behavior as easily as adults...
As a Stuyvesant alum, it seems to me that such a policy is counter-productive. There will always be people who cheat. The goal should be to help kids develop a sense of integrity that will serve them later on in life.
That was often lost in the high-stakes environment that is Stuyvesant. It's one thing to help kids become successful, but you need to help them become decent people too.
Hahaha, nice photo.
I also went to a so-called "elite" high school (not Stuy), and I tell ya boyo, the kids used their superior intellect to devise ingenious methods of cheating. One of my friends wrote answers on a sheet of paper rolled up into a bic pen. Another of my smarter friends would finish his test early, copy down all his answers, and toss them onto another friend's desk as he was handing in his paper.
The be-all, end-all cheating story though was the smart kid who got early accepted into an Ivy (rhymes with Barvard), but got caught taking the SAT's for some other students for money. His acceptance got pulled. It pretty much ruined his life.
I went also went to an "elite" high school in NYC and there was kid who cheated way too much, then got accepted to one of the top colleges in the US. Annoyed me and some friends a lot.
So a close personal friend of mine faked letterhead from that college (this friend had been accepted to and sent the big cheater a letter saying the school was aware of allegations that he'd cheated but could not confirm them, so he was still accepted. But, the letter went on to say, he should be aware that such actions would not be tolerated if he chose to enroll. A few days later he was looking pretty stressed out which might have been from the letter. I think he ended up going to that college anyway.
Ahhh, good times.
Also as a graduate of Stuy this decade... people cheated like crazy there. On the littlest things -- copying social studies homeworks -- to important things like final exams and Regents exams.
Having gotten caught a few times myself (actually, every time I tried, I think), the consequences were generally quite slight, or nil.
Having since graduated from a college with an honor code (strictly adhered to, and self-enforced), it is hard to fathom how petty and pointless the cheating was.
Another 'elite' (non-nyc) HS attendee here ... and while plenty of folks went to ingenious lengths to 'cheat', all teachers knew that a test you could cheat on (using a crib sheet in your graphing calculator, or whatnot) was a very (very) poorly designed test.
I feel like the last time this topic came up, a Stuyvesant student came in here talking about how you had to cheat to succeed these days. Lame.
Well, I went to an elite school in suburban Dayton Ohio and...what was this about?