How to Cheat?

On Yahoo! news the other day there was an article about teens who are creating videos. No surprise there, actually, but these were How to Cheat videos kids posted on YouTube. Well, okay, actually there is no surprise there either.

The investigative reporters actually caught up with two of these cherubs and questioned them about their escapade. Not surprisingly, they didn't really express any shame because, you know, everyone does it. (And of course, if everyone does it, it must be moral you idiots so leave us alone. We are not doing anything wrong because of the numbers!) This is the narrative of Pop Culture. They only seemed luke warm to the idea of an apology, to me, and were perhaps incredulous that anyone said anything at all about it.

I have an idea. How about we design "tests" that they can't cheat on in the first place? For example, how about we teach them about themselves? No kidding. Talk to them about what it takes to succeed on anything: courage, trust, persistence, empowering decision-making, empowering beliefs, and teamwork. Then stick them on a rock climbing course or a high ropes course and have them set themselves a goal for how far they choose to climb. Sit back and watch them succeed or fail.

That's not enough though. They need to be taught how to properly debrief their success or failure through reflection, analysis, change-making, and setting new goals.

I understand that this is a difficult, impossible, or by itself an insufficient solution. But creative teachers can find ways to do this in a classroom...

Granted, many kids simply aren't going to try at anything, even if they like it. Some of their jackass friends talk them out of expressing any kind of effort at all. And that's the beef I have with Pop Culture: it's too busy trying to show kids how to be an overnight celebrity sensation if they can just market their stupidity.

I think that if there was a design where cheating was impossible, we would be kissing this pathetic Pop Culture by-product good-bye. Get rid of these terribly written and useless multiple choice tests, where the answers are found in a nice and tidy set of book pages in the bold and italic print, that the kids find too difficult to read anyway.

It is humorous though. The creativity, diligence, and effort they put into cheating, when directed toward studying, would probably cost them half the effort they're putting in in the first place.