Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Cheating

I finally able to see the ending of the HBO movie 'Cheaters'. The story is about the 1995 Illinois Academic Decathlon scandal. Dr. Gerard Plecki taught 7 high school students of Chicago's Steinmetz High School the value of dedication, perseverance, and teamwork -- in addition, he also taught them how to cheat in the academic decathlon. They managed to upset Whitney Young High School in the decathlon finals. Since Whitney Young HS had won the decathlon nine years in a row -- of course they are not happy of the results and called for an investigation.

The ironic part.


The Steinmetz school board managed to prove that cheating happened -- that is after subjecting the high school students to psychological pressure. Each of the students was subjected to a barrage of interviews. One of the students gave in -- after the 'investigator' lied to the student -- saying his other teammates already testified against him.

Dr. Plecki was fired by the Steinmetz High School. The students however were able to graduate and went to decent colleges. At the end of the movie, there was a note saying that the president of Steinmetz school board during that time was found guilty of tax evasion (?).

I'm pretty sure that cheating happens all the time -- not only in academic institutions. You'll be amazed how tolerant people are on cheating.

Sad.

3 comments:

F said...

Sounds like a classic prisoner dilemma problem. All parties have no choice but to confess, yet all othem confessing leads to bad outcomes for them.

K said...

Exactly. :)

btw, how would you handle cheating in your class?

F said...

i would normally opt for public flogging hehehe. But it seems like our head prof has a problem with that. The only thing we can do is make the environment not easy for cheating.

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