argument242 @@A DREAM @@小组第二次作业by wobaobao519

wobaobao519UID: 2605404

The 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."

时间：1小时21分钟   字数：538
The writer asserted that the college and university should adopt honor codes first based on the assumption that other college and university should also benefit from it if the Groveton's had had, second, the writer used the statistic to show the decreasing cheat number in Groven's as the uneffect provement which without ruling out other possibilities, and what is more, the writer used the result of a survey that most student would not like to cheat in the exam if they assigned to honor codes to strengthen his points.


First of all, the writer's assumption based on the illution that if Groven's could benefit from the honor code, then all the other universities would gained from it. The writer neglect that different
colleges have different situation, due to college has different level of the morality or the students are totally different from college to college, regional to regional. Let us imagine if the students in the Groven are more self-discipline and more purity and highly morality due to its excellent education, then the action of the honor code would turn out to have more constraint on the students there and then have better result in that college which means this action would not be as effictive as to all colleges.

Secondly, without ruling out other possibilities the writer simply concluded that because of honor codes that the number of cheating decreased. There would be cascades of possibilities. Consider, if it not because honor codes but other measures that may be effective. Consider, in those five years, that students became more adult than before, recognizing it is morality wrong to cheat in the exam. Or because that the Groven's had offer several courses which aim to uplift your morality level. And being after those class the students realized the former mistakes. Also, there would be another case, that the less number of cheating reports would be indicated that the number who been caught were fewer and fewer, maybe because students have better the cheating tools, or the teachers become less strictly monitored.


Last but not least, according to the survey, which we do not know the exact information about how the survey are conducted or the way question is positioned. As we know that if the question is not well illustrate and better positions, etc, all these things would also affect the result of the survey. Take everyday life as example, if we are asked would you like to drop the rubbish in the streets, what is your responsive to the question. According to the human nature, It is very likely that he would answer that he would not, but in the real life, when he has choice to choose, he would most likely choose to drop the rubbish as soon as possible without remembering anything about once they were reported to answer that kind of questions.


From we have discussed above, We safely draw our conclusion that even though as first glance it seems reliable, but after several scrutiny, we may found many irrational mistakes, and what is more, to better discussed, the writer should also provide more information about the concrete casual relationship between decreasing number and honor codes, and the exact method how the survey conducted.


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