The unfaithful deontology of teachers

First posted: 26 october 2009

While I was speaking to a friend has risen one old school problem that, thanks to new technologies, now has more intensified: students prefer to copy during class test (assignments) rather than to learn the lesson.

This girl told me that her youngest sister is starting to believe that his mom is bad because she doesn’t help her with the solutions of the tests posted through cellular phone like the mother, teacher herself, of one of her mates does.

I remember when I was young I was astonished because of my friends’ tricks, while completing tests, and when I told my parents this they replied to be smart and tricky and to learn from my mates how to use these tricks. This view point in our parents persists during the years and it’s increasing with the a sense of protection for their children, so they tend to improvises excuses like: “Well, doing this, my son can get good marks with the minimum stress” or “Poor baby, he has got so many things to do: swimming, volleyball, football, that he hasn’t got time to study, we have to help him in some way”, and so on.

Cellular phones (being forbidden during lessons) removed by teachers in classroom are a distant vision considering the fact that each student has got a minimum of four mobiles to be sure that he can use them with full access and with a good network system.

I remember that during my final test (this examination is called “Maturità” here in Italy, due to the fact that a student is supposed to be mature enough to face this exam in the best way), we couldn’t use mobiles and the traditional word of mouth (a sort of suggestions spread from students to students, in a chain) because teachers arranged our positions in a rational way, some boys thought out to put some little notes with maths’ solutions in the bathroom, hung behind the toilet: some problems started to appear when a young professor, smarter than them, made suspicious by the strange coming and going of the male students from the toilets (a sort of walkaround in crossroads), found the “hidden” place. The president of teachers’ commision warned us that he was going to nullify the tests in case that misbehaviour and malicious acts kept happening, he expressed a good telling-off blaming that unacceptable conduct but then all blew up in smoke bubbles.

Then, later on after getting the final high school degree, we choose the proper college (university) to attend at, and we are sure that teachers are more serious and firmer than the previous ones we had during high school. We think that a strict discipline should be kept and taught in order to defend the right moral conduct of students and preserve the right attitude and behaviour during tests, examinations, etc.

Then, suddenly, we get more and more aware that strict discipline and firm moral conduct are chimeras, mere illusions; in fact, during tests, and even oral examinations, many students manage to find a way to be tricky, to complete their works just by using unacceptable hints, tips, suggestions they are not allowed to follow. For example, during an italian literature and language university test (a written one) a mate of mine put some notes in her dictionary, and each of those notes contained some tips and helps about the test itself. She rewrote and copied entire parts of her class books just to be able to copy them without studying and putting efforts to get ready and well skilled for the exam.

So, we’re wondering if teachers pretend they cannot solve that issue, just because they prefer to keep their privileges, defending their positions and roles, as if correcting the mistakes, blaming the unacceptable conduct, punishing the misbehaviour and malicious acts could ruin their working position or spoil their roles. We can think that they fulfill their profession (that is teaching) in the best way they can: maybe they are just lazy, or they are just childish or indifferent when they pretend not to see and notice students that perform illegal or forbidden acts. But then, i think that each job has got its own professional deontology so teaching moral principles, correcting bad actions, requiring fair play and frank and clean acts is part of a teacher role and profession.

I’ve got some doubts about the principles of some teachers at times.

At this point I wonder if graduated persons, work and apply what they learned, thanks to copying (and, therefore, they don’t know), are really competents and well prepared for the exercise of their duties and, most important, I wonder why we still believe that italian school is one of the best in the world (this is what italian people say, but, if they can, they also send their sons to attend at a foreign university abroad) founding that we are the first who destroys the bases from the foundations.

How much time could it take to discover the usual “naughty boy” (that is proud of breaking the rules and obtaining good marks by “scamming”) in the classroom? Should we suppose that, being “naughty scammers” too many, thus we’d better close our eyes and pretend not to notice them?