OaktownBear said:
01Bear said:
TandemBear said:
01Bear said:
OaktownBear said:
01Bear said:
TandemBear said:
If you feel having another person take a college test for your child as crossing an "arbitrarily-drawn line," then I don't know what to say!
Would you want the pilot of your next airplane to have had another person take the certification tests instead? Since requiring the actual person flying the plane to pass certification is based on "arbitrary lines," then this would be just fine according to this approach.
And how would you feel if your child had been denied flight school by that very same person who cheated their way in? Wouldn't that matter to you? Or would you simply take the cheating one step further to ensure that you "out-cheated" the other cheaters?
Similarly, is Lance Armstrong the real victim? He just out-cheated the other professional dopers. He beat them at their own game, right? And this is true, to a very high degree. However, he still crossed a line. Several lines, actually. Lines very clearly stated, and not based on arbitrary or capricious rules.
So what is the line? Where do you draw it?
You're missing the point. I'm not saying that the cheating was good or right. Rather, I'm saying that fundamentally, it was not much different than other uses of resources (by those with access to such) for the benefit of their offspring. If you disagree, great! Please explain how it's not.
I'll start with an analogy to baseball. If you hire a batting coach to teach you, you improve your game. Improving your game makes the game better by having a better player play the game. You can't be blamed for wanting to be better or for using resources at your disposal to make yourself better. Improving your play is within the agreed upon rules of the game. If you pay off the umpire, you break the rules of the game. You are not succeeding through effort, talent and skill. You make the game worse as the game is no longer about skill but about influence. If everyone did that, the game becomes unwatchable. I'd rather see Mike Trout battle it out against a top pitcher matching skill against skill then see Jeff Bezos hit off Bill Gates and the winner going to the one who wanted to pay the umpire more for the privilege of winning. And, in paying off the umpire you have induced a person whose job it is to be fair and impartial and maintain the integrity of the game to break that obligation.
You haven't fully explained if you think both hiring a tutor and bribing a proctor are wrong or both are okay. I'm assuming you see some level of wrongness in both because quite honestly if you don't see bribing a proctor as wrong, I don't know what to say. I will go through this anyway. Bribing the proctor breaks the rules of the game. It induces a person whose duty is to maintain fairness to break that duty. It damages the system by calling all scores into question. If everyone did it, highest test scores would go to the highest bidder and a system designed to test skill would be based on nothing.
I think if we are going to understand each other, you need to explain why you think using a tutor is wrong. I'm saying that at the individual level, a person who is willing to work to improve their skill is a better thing than not being willing to do that. If they use a tutor there is no problem with that. They are playing by the rules and attempting to better themselves. They are in no way damaging the system. They go in and take the test themselves based on the skills they have learned. If they get a high score it is because they performed well. it is no different than trying to be better at any skill or activity and seeking a teacher to help you.
Now I would absolutely contrast an individual's decision to use whatever resources they have to make themselves better at test taking with the social inequality that calls into question the validity of the test in judging academic quality of an applicant. If you said we shouldn't use the test, I might agree with you. If you said schools should factor in the relative access to resources to help take the test that varies across applicants, I'd absolutely agree with you. If you said society should provide access to quality tutors to students who don't have the economic resources to have them, I'd agree with you as well.
That is why my guess is that you are conflating societal inequality with individual morality. But the bottom line is I just don't know because I don't see you explaining anything wrong with an individual using a teacher/tutor to improve their skill. If I could understand what you think is wrong with that, maybe I'd be closer to getting your point.
In the interest of full disclosure, when I was an undergrad, I used to teach SAT prep for one of the major test prep companies. Whether hiring a test prep tutor is moral/ethical depends on the premises underlying the test.
If one of the premises is that the SAT/ACT is supposed to provide a gauge of a student's grasp of basic high school material, then a test prep program that teaches students how to find right answers without always knowing the material tested runs counter to that. Given that the premises of the test is what I just described and the prep courses functioned as I described, it's inescapable that hiring a test prep tutor is designed to game the system (read: cheat) while not providing the students with a better grasp of basic high school material. Given this, the answer would be, yes, hiring a test prep tutor is also wrong/immoral. Whether it's as wrong/immoral as hiring a substitute test-taker is not at issue (in fact, this would go back to the issue of difference in degree of wrongness and not in kind, since both are wrong).
On the other hand, if the premise of the SAT/ACT is to determine how well a student can take a test, hiring a test prep tutor to acclimate better a student to taking the test, then there is nothing wrong/immoral about hiring a test prep tutor.
This is like saying practicing for a math test, learning the equations, functions, proofs, whatever, is "gaming the system" so that you know how to pass the test. Well, yeah, that's the point! And utilizing a teacher to help the student learn the material could also be construed as "gaming the system."
What you're actually saying is that you don't agree with the test-taking process as a viable learning method. If that's the case, then fine. But it doesn't involve morality or ethics at all.
If course material is presented and then at the end of the year tested, then that's the system. If a student can exhibit proficiency, then they pass. If they make no mistakes, then they earn 100%. If you feel it's banal regurgitation, then fine. That may be the case. Are students really learning to learn, or just memorizing material?
Well, that's another discussion.
But if they've learned the required material through the help of a teacher or tutor, it simply cannot be considered "gaming the system" or cheating. That's ludicrous. You have a strange take on cheating and test prep.
But I'll repeat, if flying a plane requires mastering a finite set of skills, then I want my flight students learning that finite set and then proving proficiency with it. And if learning that set of skills results in flying planes with successful results, then it fits the bill. Taking more time to learn it for struggling students isn't cheating; it's making the extra effort needed to master the material. No ethical or moral discussion required.
Actually, no. Test prep tutors/companies do not focus on teaching the material tested on the SAT/ACT as much as they teach how to find the right answers to the questions on the tests. It's a fine distinction, but it's significant.
Teaching the material on the test would be more in line with what you're suggesting: learning the actual material.
Teaching how to find the right answers teaches a different skillset.
For instance, a question asking a student to sefine the term "fanatic" is supposed to determine whether the test-taker knows what the term "fanatic" means in a given context. But if the student doesn't know what it means, but knows how to eliminate the possible wrong answer choices, he can still arrive at the right answer as follows:
Hypothetical question:
Based on line 4 of the passage, a fanatic is:
A) an enthusiastic supporter
B) a field of science
C) an appliance
D) a type of furniture
Given that the answers in C and D are almost interchangeable, the right answer is likely neither C nor D.
If the passage has nothing to do with science, then B would be a non sequitor. This would eliminate it as the right answer.
Test-taking skills, such as the foregoing, are what is taught by test prep schools/tutors. The definition of words is less relevant, (though vocabulary lists are often handed out for memorization, anyway).
And for this reason the SAT and ACT do not have questions like this on the test any more. They don't test vocabulary and definitions. I fully expect this is what was taught by test prep courses when you were doing it. It isn't any more. I will also say this. I didn't have a tutor or a prep class. I learned techniques like that from a test prep book. If you can't scrape together enough money to buy a book for the most important test of your life to date and/or you don't have the willingness to put the effort in to read it, don't call me immoral for putting in the effort. In all honesty, some of what the test is measuring is that willingness.
I think calling an individual immoral for learning what a large majority of people taking the test know when they walk in is pretty judgmental and silly. Again, I agree with you that it is a poor way to test. That is the fault of the test and the colleges that accept the test scores. It is not on the individual to keep themselves ignorant because some people don't have access to the same information. But again, this is not how the test works today.
A little more about myself, here, I came from an immigrant working-to-middle class family. Both parents worked hard to put food on the table, a roof over my head, clothes on my back, and a couple small luxuries (things that were not the bare necessitoes of life). As many of you probably were, I was a bit precocious and even considered gifted in my youth, to the point where I could've skipped a couple grades based on my reading comprehension and grasp of the English language (though my math skills were not as advanced) in elementary school. By the end of junior high, it was recommended that I take college level math classes at Cal State LA as part of a gifted kids program.
I say this not to toot my own horn (because, if anything, I consider myself a failure), but because I wanted to point out something: I didn't have the luxury of having someone chauffer me to a Cal State LA. My parents had to work. I couldn't drive at 14. The buses didn't run from my hometown to CSULA at convenient times. Not to mention the additional cost of taking college courses.
Instead, I wound up taking math classes with everyone else in the honors cohort at my high school. I had fun. I made lifelong friends. I fell in love and had a girlfriend. In short, I became a high school student.
Yet, if my family had the funds to send me to Cal State LA for the joint high school-college program, that's what I would've done. Life is often more about opportunity than ability. Without opportunity, a gift can be squandered.
When it came to SAT test prep, simply put I didn't. I had an extensive vocabulary from being a voracious reader. My math skills were adequate for me to do well on the SAT. On top of which, I never suffered from test anxiety. Of course, it didn't help that test prep courses were not cheap.
Then again, I was a cocky little *******. I had scored well enough on the PSAT to become a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. My pride told me I didn't need to take any prep courses. As it was, I wound up with a combined score of 1400 (710 verbal, 690 math), which was the highest score for everyone in my graduating class at my high school (and no, my school wasn't the most competitive).
Undoubtedly, if I had taken a good test prep course, I could've bumped up my scores a bit. But to what end? I wasn't going to go to a private school, where tuition made the option cost prohibitive. At best, I was bound for a public university education, where 1400 was enough to get me in, especially since I was among the top 5% of my graduating class (in addition to also scoring well on SAT II subject tests), played a varsity sport, held numerous leadership positions in extracurricular clubs, and racked up tons of community service hours (in excess of what was "required").
The only question I had was how I was going to afford even a public university education. Fortunately, I qualified for and received a Pell Grant (and, IIRC, a Cal Grant) in my undergrad years.
Sure, some of you may be wondering why I didn't apply for scholarships. Unfortunately, my guidance counselor was horrible. She was so bad that in my final semester of high school, she actually advised me to drop out, get my GED, and go to the local JC. While I have nothing but respect for the junior college system in California, I'm not so sure that dropping out of high school to pursue my AA would've been a smart move. Needless to say, she offered no guidance whatsoever in how to apply for scholarships. Being a first generation U.S. college student, I had no idea how to apply for scholarships, either.
Long story short, I didn't come from circumstances* where taking a test prep course was an option for me. I'm sure the same holds true for lots of other highly intelligent and qualified students. Insinuating I was foolish for not taking a test prep course just goes to show how different our circumstances were, and frankly, how privileged you were.
I don't begrudge you that privilege, nor the assistance you've provided your own daughter in her pursuit of higher education. I applaud you for doing everything you can for her. Just as I am thankful to my folks for doing everything they could for me. But assuming others have the same luxuries and privileges you do is not necessarily a great idea. Casting aspersions on others for not availing themselves of the opportunities you had is beyond a slap in the face.
*One of my best friends had it worse. His mom was a single parent (his dad died when he was in elementary school), his older brother was autistic (and pur school district actually made him attend a neighboring district's schools), he had a younger sister, and they were also an immigrant family. This friend huatled and busted his butt, got into UCLA and graduated early so he could start working to help take carw of his family.