At the advent of the internet explosion in 1998, paper mills were starting to proliferate along with other methods of cheating in higher education. Administrations were trying to address this issue and update plagiarism and academic integrity policies.
As an undergraduate advisor, I attended a conference on Character in Higher Education. Character education was a relatively new movement, mostly in elementary education.
Many public institutions were represented and there was an interesting panel on Honor Codes. The speakers were from Brigham Young University, Notre Dame, the Air Force Academy, and Florida State University. The Honor Codes of the private institutions are easy to understand, but how do we incorporate this into our public education system?
Many public institutions of higher education added Honor Codes in the next few decades, albeit called something different most of the time, Academic Integrity Policy, etc. And with those codes have come a myriad of problems. As an instructor of English Composition, the challenge has been instructing students on what plagiarism is. As students today have grown up with the internet, this need to instruct students has become even more complex. Couple this with the rise of tuition and price of education, many students feel compelled or justified to get the grades they need at any cost. Institutions of higher education are likewise compelled to improve completion rates and get students graduated.
So, the question is: How do we teach honor or integrity or ethics, subjects that were formerly left to religious institutions, but should be addressed in our secular, public institutions of learning?
K-12 education has had character education which has been a hard sell to school districts that have a hard time funding music, of all things. There's no resources for character and, furthermore, who gets to decide what "character is. But groups like the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning and others have program components such as civics and community, how to be a good citizen, that are showing, through the research data, that incorporating social and emotional learning, rather than taking away time and resources from the important subjects like science and writing, actually improves academic performance in all these areas of study, for all students, from varied backgrounds.
Universities have implemented codes of Academic Honesty or Dishonesty but institutions of higher learning have not been able to stop the flow of more and more sophisticated means of cheating. Even scholars and scientists can fall victim to the pressures of providing results they need in unscrupulous ways.
Kwame Anthony Appiah has addressed this question in his books, notably The Honor Code and The Ethics of Identity and some in his newest book where he continues the discussion of identity. He is taking on the difficulty task of answering the question, Who gets to decide what "character," "integrity," and "honor" mean? It's pretty clear that Dr. Appiah says, "We do," and we should decide what these concepts mean for our society and the future of our civilization. Honor Codes and ethics can be taught and reinforced as a subject of learning, as rhetoric and logic and philosophy have been an integral part of education since its beginning.
As an undergraduate advisor, I attended a conference on Character in Higher Education. Character education was a relatively new movement, mostly in elementary education.
Many public institutions were represented and there was an interesting panel on Honor Codes. The speakers were from Brigham Young University, Notre Dame, the Air Force Academy, and Florida State University. The Honor Codes of the private institutions are easy to understand, but how do we incorporate this into our public education system?
Many public institutions of higher education added Honor Codes in the next few decades, albeit called something different most of the time, Academic Integrity Policy, etc. And with those codes have come a myriad of problems. As an instructor of English Composition, the challenge has been instructing students on what plagiarism is. As students today have grown up with the internet, this need to instruct students has become even more complex. Couple this with the rise of tuition and price of education, many students feel compelled or justified to get the grades they need at any cost. Institutions of higher education are likewise compelled to improve completion rates and get students graduated.
So, the question is: How do we teach honor or integrity or ethics, subjects that were formerly left to religious institutions, but should be addressed in our secular, public institutions of learning?
K-12 education has had character education which has been a hard sell to school districts that have a hard time funding music, of all things. There's no resources for character and, furthermore, who gets to decide what "character is. But groups like the Collaborative for Social and Emotional Learning and others have program components such as civics and community, how to be a good citizen, that are showing, through the research data, that incorporating social and emotional learning, rather than taking away time and resources from the important subjects like science and writing, actually improves academic performance in all these areas of study, for all students, from varied backgrounds.
Universities have implemented codes of Academic Honesty or Dishonesty but institutions of higher learning have not been able to stop the flow of more and more sophisticated means of cheating. Even scholars and scientists can fall victim to the pressures of providing results they need in unscrupulous ways.
Kwame Anthony Appiah has addressed this question in his books, notably The Honor Code and The Ethics of Identity and some in his newest book where he continues the discussion of identity. He is taking on the difficulty task of answering the question, Who gets to decide what "character," "integrity," and "honor" mean? It's pretty clear that Dr. Appiah says, "We do," and we should decide what these concepts mean for our society and the future of our civilization. Honor Codes and ethics can be taught and reinforced as a subject of learning, as rhetoric and logic and philosophy have been an integral part of education since its beginning.
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