Job Discussion Forums

[bulgogiboy]

[johnslat]

Dear blu141,

"Helping one's friend through cheating is not a religious obligation in any books! What a silly thing to state."

Good - you've already got your rebuttal prepared for when your students tell you that.

"Islam can be described as a spiritual, social, and educational project at the grandest of scales. The project is spiritual because the Qur`an describes the mission of the Prophet Muhammad as calling humanity to the one true transcendent God, purifying them and leading them from darkness to light (33:46, 57:9, 62:2). It is social because along with a relationship with the one true transcendent God, the social obligation to help one another is the corner stone of Islam (2:177, 2:261-274, 98:5)."


http://www.islamicperspectives.com/SocialProjectsAndMuslims.htm

How long have you been teaching in the Kingdom, by the way?

Regards,
John

[blu141]

[johnslat]

Dear blu141,

"I think you may have difficulty in understanding that it is morally agreeable that helping one another in goodness is encouraged whilst helping one another in sinful matters i.e. cheating, is MORALLY and islamically WRONG.


I think you may have difficulty in reading comprehension.

"Cheating is haram, but helping one's friends is a religious obligation.
Students are, therefore, put upon the horns of a moral/ethical dilemma.
Three guesses as to which horn many of them choose.

At first, I used to try to explain why cheating (i.e. "helping one's friend") isn't really helping him at all, how it's, in fact, hurting him. But alas, logic had little, if any, impact.

After that, I just gave zeroes to cheaters and cheatees, which had a far greater impact than logic. "

You haven't answered my question yet, either.

Regards,
John

[desert_traveller]

...

[rainbowprof]

[Bill Frawley]

Xxxxxxxxxx

[desert_traveller]

...

[rainbowprof]

You know, it's not unusual that the student has a lot to learn in the given subject area- in this case ESL. Surely there's something they can learn from you. Too many people are shocked that their students don't know English. Surprise- you need to help them.

[johnslat]

Dear desert_traveller,

"disagree - education at all saudi institutions is a joke"

Wow - how many years have you been there, anyway? I mean, to have experience of EVERY Saudi institution - amazing!!!!!

Regards,
John

[bulgogiboy]

[HystericalHoosier]

While I have found the comments interesting. I was more curious if anyone knew of any other university in the magic kingdom that was dumb enough to put the policy in writing. Have any of you that teach at other universities actually been instructed not to stop the test until after the third time, or is it just that everyone knows the score and ignore cheating.

[cmp45]

Usually common sense should pervail, but in KSA most of the time the rules are vague and tend not to be as strict. However, if they are seen trying to cheat by talking or discreetly trying to show their paper to another student... I would warn them, or better just move the students away from each other. If they have some sort of cheat notes...then I would take their paper away on the spot and kick the student out of the exam room with no second chance, but then one has to deal with filling out the offical university forms regarding the student cheating and all the BS that goes with it.
Unless you have physical evidence to prove the student was cheating, it can be a difficult situation to prove after the fact.

[sa2k]

I worked for King Saud once upon time and cheating was a big issue back than also. But i noticed that some students didnt cheat because they deemed it as being incorrect and not in accordance with Islam. However many students are not really Islamic even though its an Islamic country. So I think ppl need to relax abit just becuase it is known as somewhat of an 'Islamic society' doesnt mean the people living in it share the same ideas. Secondaly, I blame the way they force students to learn English and pay them because most of them dont want to learn English some of them actully want to learn other languages and they really show a real intrest in other languages such as french and spanish etc. So most of them just want to pass and forget about English as soon as they leave the PYP.

[rainbowprof]

oops