It's stupid to cheat

Before beginning this teaching adventure, I was told: 'Hungarian students cheat. It is just the way it is, so expect it and be ready for it. It doesn't mean they are bad kids, they just cheat. ' The Hungarian student (and maybe most Central/Eastern European students) regard his class as just as important, if not more important as the individual student. This sense of community is almost unheard of in today's American schools. You know, the American dream of individuality. Free enterprise. Every man for himself. There is even a real sense of competition for being 'number 1 ' in your class. And though these ideologies are lately coming to the surface since the 'big change' in 1989 (as my students call the departure of Soviet troops and the ensuing fall of the iron curtain) in Hungary..there is still such a sense of community in these classes. So, you could say they stick together. It is just assumed that on homework, and even tests, they HELP each other. I can recall last year during my first test...i had no clue what to do. They didn't even bother whispering the answers to each other... Anyway, yesterday I caught two kids cheating. But really, it was quite clever. If they put half the amount of effort into actually LEARNING the vocab words, rather than coming up with this complex hand-signalling system, well, then, you could say that they wouldn't even need to CHEAT..right? Their only problem was that they were doing it right in front of my desk. DUH. So, I catch them, take their papers and make a big display of crumping up the papers and smashing them into the rubbish bin. But, lo and behold, as I turn around, I catch two MORE students whispering in Hungarian. So, I make them come to the front, and assign the four students 100 word essays: 'Why it is STUPID to Cheat' (the best I could come up with on the fly). So i am past getting mad about cheating. They know it is wrong, but they were pretty stunned by how strict I am with it. I must say, though, I get some kind of weird pleasure out of punishments. WHat is the deal with that?! I think it must be some power trip. I would at this point like to share with you some of their comments on Cheating:

Why it's stupid to cheat
Laszlo (car fanatic and general disturber of the peace) writes:
'Because it's not correct think, because the teacher (here) for your knowledge. And if you don't learn that think, you just cheat it, you will be stupid 4ever. So if you don't learn you will not have good jobs, so you can't earn a lot of money, you can't have a big family, because you don't have enough money, you can't have a big family, because you don't have enough money to eat them. '

Tamasz (very quiet, mischievous, lazy) writes:
'If I'm cheating the teacher said come on. When I take the paper, teacher said you have got a one. If I'm not cheating the test really better than one. When I'm cheating I dishonest for the teacher. I deserve the 1 and I promise, I never do it again. When I'm cheating I know that I dive. The cheating is unintelligible.'

Andras (a real forward thinker) writes:
'you shouldn't cheat because the teacher give back your test and write 1 on the naplo (the teacher book). You use your brain. If you haven't got money, because you don't learn now, you haven't got food, so you are hungry.'

there ya have it.