0910AW 同主题写作第三期 ARGUMENT242 by Brian“大洋彼岸之风”

brianwangboUID: 2643722

242The following appeared as an editorial in the student newspaper of Groveton College.

"To combat the recently reported dramatic rise in cheating among college and university students, these institutions should adopt honor codes similar to Groveton's, which calls for students to agree not to cheat in their academic endeavors and to notify a faculty member if they suspect that others have cheated. Groveton's honor code replaced an old-fashioned system in which students were closely monitored by teachers and an average of thirty cases of cheating per year were reported. The honor code has proven far more successful: in the first year it was in place, students reported twenty-one cases of cheating; five years later, this figure had dropped to fourteen. Moreover, in a recent survey conducted by the Groveton honor council, a majority of students said that they would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without."

1，cheating真的减少了吗? 会不会有其他情况出现？（有负面情况）在H下，假设学生完全信守自己的承诺是不可靠的。谁也不会自己说自己会作弊。  如果不采纳H作弊的人就会多吗？数据缺乏可靠性
2，调查的可靠性，样本大小，面对的人群等
3，如果真是这样适合在各大学推广吗，各大学的环境不一样

In this report, the author concludes that adopting honor codes (H) similar to G’s will bring a better situation which has fewer cheating cases in colleges. To support his conclusion, he points out that the first year of H taking into practice, twenty-one cases were reported and yet an average of thirty cases were reported when an old-fashioned system was used. And also a survey was showed by him that the students would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without. This argument has many logical mistakes.

To begin with, the number of cheating cases has really been decreasing when H was used? If the students will be forthright under the circumstances is suspicious. No one would announce to cheat himself. Twenty-one cheating cases have been reported after H was used. But what can we see behind this number? Some students may cheat together and say nothing about each other. Also other students may be used to cheating and won’t disclose his classmates or friends. What’s more, disclosing such kind of students may bring a bad situation to the revelators themselves. Maybe that’s one of the reasons that the number of cheating cases is decreasing. What can you imagine after several years? Review homework will be laughed at？So we can see that the author does not give us a convincing proof.

Secondly, a survey saying that the students would be less likely to cheat with an honor code in place than without has been given by the author. But what kind of survey could be? It’s out of my imagination. We don’t know the real number of the students who have participated in. And also grades and gender should be taking into consideration. If the survey comes from girls who study very hard and do the homework everyday, it would be crazy when they choose to cheat. If the survey comes from Grade one, it doesn’t give us credible evidence either.

Thirdly, different colleges have different conditions, If we assume that H is useful, according to dissimilar exams and education background, it would hard for every school to use H system. And we can’t get such information that what would happen if H is not used. The number of cheating cases will still decrease? We don’t know.

In conclusion, more clear evidences should be supplied by the author. For example, the codes really have effects on decreasing the cheating cases. A comprehensive explanation of the survey must be given to make this argument more cogent.