The Morality of Academic Dishonesty
Shaun and Jon discuss academic dishonesty and the potential issues with plagiarism enforcement.
This episode may have the listener thinking, "these guys are just contrarians." After all, who in his right mind, would question the value of catching a young person in the act of cheating. Is that not the supreme moment of authority? Well, Jon and Shaun will question that. Specifically, they even call out a much relied upon program used for catching students who plagiarize, but let's be sympathetic here for they are not simple contrarians and in regards to Turnitin.com, they know not what they do.
First, let's just get something out of the way here. Shaun is clearly unwell in this recording, but he powers through. It's painful to hear, but hear him out. If nothing else, such rhetoric is amusing.
What seems to have happened to these idealistic teachers is that they decided to believe in students somewhere along the way. Having spoken with some of their former colleagues, it seems that they were always a bit soft on students. Probably, they should have exited the educational system in those early years. Unfortunately, they persisted and those seeds of softness grew into trees of tolerance, and now these two cannot see the students as doing anything wrong. Shaun is more afflicted by this affliction than Jon, and it took Jon nigh on half the episode to realize how radical of a position Shaun was espousing.
In the midst of the kindness confusion, Jon outright confesses to dishonestly proceeding through his secondary education and challenges erstwhile administrators of Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District to strip him of his high school diploma for a specific incident from junior high. Shaun suggests that he could be stripped of his diploma as well for academic malfeasances in the North East Independent School District of San Antonio, but he does not specify an instance so that may be tricky for NEISD. But Shaun will have his own issues when Turnitin.com comes after him for defamation.
So take it easy on these guys: one is about to be a 40-something stripped of his high school diploma while the other will be contending with the perfectly legitimate and morally upright company, Turnitin.com.
First, let's just get something out of the way here. Shaun is clearly unwell in this recording, but he powers through. It's painful to hear, but hear him out. If nothing else, such rhetoric is amusing.
What seems to have happened to these idealistic teachers is that they decided to believe in students somewhere along the way. Having spoken with some of their former colleagues, it seems that they were always a bit soft on students. Probably, they should have exited the educational system in those early years. Unfortunately, they persisted and those seeds of softness grew into trees of tolerance, and now these two cannot see the students as doing anything wrong. Shaun is more afflicted by this affliction than Jon, and it took Jon nigh on half the episode to realize how radical of a position Shaun was espousing.
In the midst of the kindness confusion, Jon outright confesses to dishonestly proceeding through his secondary education and challenges erstwhile administrators of Grapevine Colleyville Independent School District to strip him of his high school diploma for a specific incident from junior high. Shaun suggests that he could be stripped of his diploma as well for academic malfeasances in the North East Independent School District of San Antonio, but he does not specify an instance so that may be tricky for NEISD. But Shaun will have his own issues when Turnitin.com comes after him for defamation.
So take it easy on these guys: one is about to be a 40-something stripped of his high school diploma while the other will be contending with the perfectly legitimate and morally upright company, Turnitin.com.