Good blog in the Washington Post this week about why Johnny can't write. In the blog, a college professor tells the story of a student so ignorant that he couldn't even cheat write.
This blog was a follow-up to another blog post about how to make assignments plagarism-proof. That has been something that has bothered me since I was a student. If you care enough about the assignment to cheat, then just do the assignment. If you don't care about the assignment, then don't do it (or don't do a good job on it).
As I explained at our summer conference last week, the only way I know how to make assignments cheat-proof is to ask a lot of open-ended questions. This creates a lot of work on my end after students turn in their assignments, but it is worth it to me if I can get original work from them.
Long-term, I'm not sure what the answer is to stamping out cheating. When I give out worksheets, the default response of my students is to turn to each other and share answers--before I even finish giving the instructions. If we're going to fix this culture, it's going to take more than just a few teachers to do so.
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