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Christine Pelton Summary

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Christine Pelton, a biology instructor in Piper, Kansas, is not a hero in my opinion. As I understand the story, this teacher has a little more than one hundred and forty biology students. It was stated in the article that, “Nearly one fifth of her biology students had plagiarized...” Twenty eight of her students plagiarized on a final exam. This teacher quit after the school board did not allow her to fail these twenty eight students. Is this a wake up call to society about the low tolerance of cheating? Is resigning appropriate for the situation in place? Is cheating acceptable to a certain extent or should there be a zero tolerance? Thinking through this article, I have two major thoughts. First, in the students’ minds, product is more …show more content…

The schooling system is broken when it comes to whether students think learning the content or receiving a grade is more important. I was talking to my father about this article, and he brought up an advanced English class at the college he attended. The students who were eligible to take this class were the most talented and the highest in their class. The professor was presented with a problem. He did not feel settled grading these talented students in his class according to the bell curve college classes commonly use. He did not feel right handing out Cs and Bs to these A students. Instead of grading the students on the curve, the professor gave every kid in the class an A, and turned in their final grades on the first day. He expected all of the students to show interest, give maximal effort, and contribute to the class. He understood that they were all talented enough to receive an A. The professor eliminated any stress a grade would bring to these students, and he allowed them to fully focus on learning. I understand that a teacher cannot do that in a high school biology class, but there are ways to prevent cheating and engage learning. This biology teacher may not feel right in allowing these twenty eight kids to pass, but I believe that she should feel obligated in her heart to stay and prevent this from happening again. School is about learning about oneself and growing as a person; school is not about earning a grade and learning biology. This teacher needs to help kids learn about what is the right thing to do before twenty eight of them

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