this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
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I'm going to allege that such "educational" institutions' focus on "cheating" is harmful and dangerous for their students.
I'm a flight instructor. Students would show up to my class actually afraid to be caught writing things down to refer to them later. They were afraid to be caught using checklists. They would overwhelm themselves trying to commit entire technical manuals to memory. That's not how anything actually works. The FAA prints all these references so pilots can read them. We don't take them away from you when you pass your practical.
Checklist usage in the cockpit is a required skill to pass a practical test. The examiner has to see you using a checklist during the test in order to pass you. Writing things down so you can refer to them later, like flight planning and ATC clearances, also a required skill. Schools make people afraid to do these things.
If you've got a kneeboard that has the tower light gun signal chart printed on it, and you lose the radio and need light gun signals, you're not going to have your license taken away from you if you use that quick reference. Too many students bring that pressure into flight training with them. It's a fun bit of deprogramming to do.
I won't disagree that the overall anti-cheating mentality goes too far, but this example was students literally plagiarizing their first project.
That mentality sounds like instructors aren't properly setting expectations for students. If going over checklists is a required skill, students should be informed regularly that they need to be doing XYZ and should be writing that down. When I was still trying for my CS BS, that was something my profs did regularly. We could bring notes to the final, but you were still expected to write your own code (by hand) on the final.
Yeah, that's what I meant by "it's a fun bit of deprogramming to do." Especially younger students are strongly conditioned to think of tests or performances as "closed book" unless specifically informed otherwise and often demonstrate actual fear of being caught using reference materials or god forbid open a reference manual. Breaking them of that habit often takes more than "setting expectations." It can take some effort to get students to realize the game we're playing here isn't "You have to know everything in all the textbooks," it's "You've got to know which book to find which answer in."
Having gone back to college after becoming a flight instructor, I'm strongly under the impression that college just doesn't matter. There is no certification or accountability requirements for professors; no legal requirement for them to study the fundamentals of instruction, hell I'm not convinced anyone actually interviewed some of my professors before hiring them.
I had an English professor tell me she "likes to give students enough rope to hang themselves with." I want you to imagine hearing that out of a flight instructor.
College professors seem to see themselves as gatekeepers rather than guides. Their classes have to be hard so that only the worthy graduate. Flying an airplane is already complex enough, my job as a flight instructor is to make the process of learning that complexity as easy and safe for my students as possible. What even is college if not corrupt?