1) Here's the Honesty Scenario for our debate on Thursday. Please read it carefully. If you have any clarifying questions, send them to me sooner rather than later. Remember: it's a letter to the community about a problem along with a proposed solution. That proposal will be going to three representative bodies -- one made up of South students, another of elected citizens of Newton, and a third of South faculty -- and asking for their input before implementing it in the fall. (It has the incorrect school year on there.) You can reject the entire idea, you can accept it as is, and you can also accept the concept while proposing a number of solutions.
2) The Honesty Debate group is made up of Jake, Isaac, Ayush, Ruja, and Alexa, but Ruja has had to go out of town suddenly and needs someone from the fourth group -- Robby, Johnny, Avery, Evan, or Caraline -- to switch weeks with her. If you're in that fourth group, please consider it and get in touch with at least one of the people in Thursday's group. Let me know what happens.
3) Your homework for Thursday is to
a) submit the classwork from today as a comment to this post. Whichever words/concepts you needed to define and provide samples for should be submitted here, along with proper attribution from where you found it. Please include the name of each person in your small group, and, if you're examples are to general, create some better ones;
b) tweet an example of an American middle school or American public high school that reflects some relationship with an honor code or honor court. I'll divide you up so that we have a bases covered:
if your last name begins with B, C, D or F: find an example of an American middle school (public, private, or parochial) that has an honor code. This could be a story about the code or the code itself. Tweet a link to that information with #apnshs ;
if your last name begins with E or K: find an example of an American public high school adopting an honor code and/or honor court. This could be a recent story about a change or a story from several years ago about when a school adopted one. The idea is that it has some reasoning why they made the change. Tweet a link to that information with #apnshs ;
if your last name begins with L, N, O, or P: find an example of a recent cheating scandal at an American public high school that sheds some light on the kinds of cheating, how prevalent it was, and what steps the school is taking to deal with the offenders and/or remedy the situation in the future. Tweet a link to that information with #apnshs ;
if your last name begins with R, U, W, Y, or Z, go to the National Association of Youth Courts website. There you will find links to youth courts across the US. Find out some pertinent information about a specific youth court for an American public high school that could be good support for a pro or con position of bringing an honor code and/or court to South. Tweet a link to that information with #apnshs .
4) Here are some other links from this week or that just might be helpful in general:
- more reporting on the recent Harvard cheating scandal
- the full press release for the Josephson Institute study we discussed briefly Wednesday
- "Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal" by Stanley Fish
- South's Orange Lion (cheating and plagiarism standards are on page 11)
- similar policies at North
- "Teaching the Virtues" by Christina Hoff Sommers
I might post more resources later, such as our own recent survey, but you be responsible for that before the debate.