0910AW 同主题写作第三期 ARGUMENT242 by 彩虹沙漠 [复制链接]

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发表于 2009-6-1 12:45:41 |只看该作者 |倒序浏览

本帖最后由彩虹沙漠于 2009-6-2 22:53 编辑

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."

Referring to the decline of the number of cases of cheating in Groveton College (GC), citing the majority consensus to honor codes of the students surveyed in GC, the author puts forward that the honor code is successful enough to be adopted by the other institutions in which there is a rise of cheating. I can't, however, agree with the author's view because of his/her poor and unfounded supports.

Firstly, of little credible is the power and availability of honor code because the author doesn’t render enough information to confirm it. After all, it is not reliable to keep the students away from cheating by depending on the supervision by students themselves. Possibly, because of the affinity between the students, they won't inform teachers of the fact that some student, who is one of their friends, has cheated. In short, the author fails to show enough evidence to confirm the availability of honor code, let alone recommends other institutions to adopt honor code.

Secondly, even if the honor code does seem available, simply according to the fact that the number of the cases of cheating in GC has decreased in the first year and the following five years, I can't consent to the author's point that honor code is successful in GC. Here I get two mistakes. On one hand, the data indicated by the author is the absolute number of the cases of cheating but not the proportion of cases of cheating. In other words, no information has been showed about the base number of the students taking part in exams per year in GC. Accordingly, without the proportion it can't go to the conclusion that the situation of cheating in BC is restrained in a low level. On the other hand, even if the above assumption can be proved, little evidence is submitted to substantiate that this decline of cheating should be attributed to honor code. Obviously, some other reasons, such as the difficulty of the exams debasing, maybe the points.

Thirdly, the survey in GC cited by the author is probably not representative. This kind of survey is very hard to rule out factor that the students studied have a trend favoring honor code. By common sense, the students who are ready to be studied are the ones that approve the honor code or are not the cheaters at all. So the validity of the result of the survey can't be believed unless the author can propose more evidence to corroborate the representative and randomness of this survey.

Finally, granted that the honor code does have its advantages and it is really very successful in GC, the author shows nothing to prove that honor code can also be successful in the other institutions adopted honor code. It's entirely possible that different institutions have different situations, thus, honor code may fail probably in other institutions without the evidence substantiating the similarity between GC and the others. Even if honor code is suitable to the others, the author cannot come to his/her conclusion that the other should adopt honor code to combat the rise in cheating until he/she could rule out all the other feasible better methods. Therefore, the author’s conclusion sounds little trustworthy.

To sum up, this argument cannot be ground and credible before author could provide enough evidence and information about the data of cases of cheating in GC, which can justify that the cheating does decrease and the reason for it is honor code. Moreover, I need more information about investigations of the feasibility of honor code in the other institutions, and the invalidity of the other possible alternatives, to agree the author on the conclusion that other institutions could take advantage of honor code to combat the cheating in colleges and universities.