April 2008
It’s about time
someone made a point that has been lost in all the back-and-forth over Ryerson
University’s “Facebook scandal.” That point is: The Facebook scandal doesn’t
really have anything to do with Facebook.
An
engineering professor at the Toronto school gave his students a specific
instruction that their take-home assignments should be done independently. One
of those students, Chris Avenir, allegedly ignored the instruction, joined an
existing study group devoted to the class, and invited everyone in it to “input
solutions” to the assignments so they could be shared. He got caught, was given
an F in the course, and is currently appealing his expulsion for academic
misconduct. The fact that the study group was a Facebook group has nothing to do
with the nature of the offence or the controversy over Mr. Avenir’s punishment.
Ten
years ago, it’s what journalists would be cluelessly calling an “e-mail
scandal”. Twenty years ago it would have been a generic “computer cheating
scandal.” Forty years ago, maybe it would be described as a “mimeograph
scandal.” (“Dear Sir: cannot something be done about these ignominious,
strange-scented contraptions?”).
There exists a ridiculous tendency for behind-the-curve scribes to seize upon
new media as somehow responsible, in themselves, for humans doing the kind of
things humans have always done. In the Ryerson case, this tendency has descended
to the level of low comedy. Facebook really, truly doesn’t do anything to
facilitate information-sharing that e-mail and older online applications like
Usenet don’t. The only semi-relevant difference is that Facebook is so new that
users make false assumptions about the security of the information they upload
to it.
Predictably, some people are demanding that those false assumptions be honoured
as facts. The Ryerson Students’ Union is, according to the Ryersonian newspaper,
“fighting to make sure students can’t be punished for what they do or say on
Facebook” — even if what they’re doing is cheating on an assignment for a
Ryerson University class. We have a funny feeling the student union will lose
this battle.
The
technological angle is causing everyone to overlook the vastly more meaningful
development symbolized by the affair. Apparently, in the year 2008, professors
find it necessary to specify that homework problems in an engineering class
should be solved by the student, rather than copied from a brighter classmate.
Not only that, but doing so apparently provokes a widespread reaction akin to “Pfft,
whatever.” And not only that, but when someone is caught defying the direct
instruction, and accused of cheating, hundreds of his fellow students will rally
behind him and declare him a victim of gross injustice.
Call us predictable, but we suspect it just might be the case that a feel-good
primary education system that emphasizes collaboration over individual effort,
and self-esteem over knowledge, has left a few Ryerson undergraduates poorly
prepared for life in hard, advanced disciplines such as engineering.
It
is scarcely possible not to think so, given claims like this high-pitched whine
from Chris-DidntCheat.com, a website for Mr. Avenir’s supporters: “Students
don’t have a chance to learn because we are too busy completing assignments!”
According to this world view, there is some way of qualifying for the terrifying
responsibilities of engineering other than sitting down as an individual and
solving difficult quantitative problems assigned by an engineering professor. If
there is one, we would be happy to hear about it. But if it were generally
adopted, we are not sure we would ever again feel safe crossing a bridge,
flushing a toilet, or even booting up our computers to access that mysterious,
soul-corrupting site known as “Facebook.”
Editorial, National Post, March 17, 2008.
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