0910G[North America Flying] Argument242 by 421899282

421899282UID: 2595732

Topic:

The speaker suggests that colleges and universities should adopt honor codes similar to Goveton'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.This conclusion is based on the deceasing number of cases of cheating and that a survey showed the approval of a majority of students.The evidence seems at first glance to be reasonable.However,there does exist some flaws of the argument after a close review.

For one thing,the measure to find out the cases of cheating is doubtful because the accuracy of the statistic is based on the honesty of all the students which can not be one hundred percent assured.The students who will cheat in the exam probably do not care their promise to not to cheat in their academic endeavors and certainly would claim the new system,which can make cheating much more easier,better than the old one.As to the notification of cheating is likely affected by the personal emotions.That is to say,one may not notify his friends when they committed cheat and we can not rule out the possibility that one may frame other students who he do not like for cheating.In this case,both the statistics of the cases of cheating and the survey conducted by the Groveton honor council are not convincing.

For another thing,even if the statistics the speaker provides can ,to some extent, show the change of the number of the persons who cheated,it can not tell whether the new system is more effective than the old one.On the case that we can not get the proportion the students who cheated account in the all the students,because the speaker evidently neglects the sum of students per year.The decrease of the cases of cheating could be caused of the sharp decline of the students enrolled in the university.

Last,supposed the new system turns out to work well,the speaker commits a hasty flaws to assume it will work well in other colleges and universities which possess various backgrounds and situations.The satisfying function of honor code  could owe mostly to the high quality,in the ethic aspect,of the students in Groveton College which obviously can not be guaranteed for every university and college.

All in all,the evidences in the argument are not persuasive because of the influence of personal quality and emotion and the suggestion to apply the honor code to other colleges and universities is against logical deduction.In order to strengthen the argument,the speaker should carry on a survey on the ethical quality of the students in Groveton College or assign some faculty to monitor to get the statistics of cheating as control.At the same time,we are supposed to be informed of the sum of the students of every grade.Besides,before expanding the use of the new system,a thorough investigation into the college or university which it is applied to is indispensable.