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From the
Upper School Principal
Intellectual honesty: for students, for parents
Walking to school today, my sons and I exhaled
clouds of steam into the cool morning air. I love this time
of year in schools, especially this year. We have begun the
school year extraordinarily well, with outstanding student
leadership and a generally positive energy. We’re through
the hot weather of September and the great effort of beginning,
and we are into the steadier rhythm of the middle of the year.
This is a productive season in all schools, even more so at
Milton.
Classes are going forward at full tilt, and students are wrestling
with big ideas, hard reading assignments, and significant
research and writing challenges. We take academics seriously,
and each year we begin by thinking and talking with them about
academic integrity and the ethical questions surrounding their
intellectual work at the school. Every September, we take
time for assemblies on the topic of academic integrity, with
the goal of restating and clarifying our expectations for
students’ academic work. This year, student leaders role
played several scenarios portraying students making poor choices
about collaboration on homework, in various shades of black,
white and gray. Those role plays were followed by discussion
in advisory groups, from which we gleaned some useful feedback
that I want to share with you.
Students acknowledged that they mostly know what cheating
is and how to avoid it; they tell us that the most common
form of cheating is "wandering eyes" on quizzes
and tests, followed by unfair collaboration or copying uncited
sources on essays. They offered several reasons why it happens
anyway, the most important of which is stress: so much expected,
plus time pressure, leads to cutting corners. (Faculty think
this pressure is at least partly due to poor time management.)
Some acknowledged that new information technologies like the
Internet make cheating just too easy to resist. A few blamed
teachers who don't follow the test and paper schedule, and
the majority felt that even though cheating is wrong, most
won’t stop their classmates because that would be "snitching"
on friends. They feel caught between the School’s standard
of upholding integrity and the social expectation that students
don’t tell on each other.
Students identified what issues are confusing for them, as
well. Their most common confusions deal with the appropriate
level of collaboration, for example among partners in the
writing of science laboratory reports, among the members of
a group working together in class but then writing their own
conclusions based on that group work, and among students who
share notes or engage in discussion outside of class and then
wonder if that discussion should be cited in the essay that
follows. Students also expressed confusion about the use of
secondary sources to aid in foreign language translations,
and about how to distinguish what is common knowledge from
specialized knowledge. Finally, they were confused about proofreading
and the role of friends and parents. The department heads
are engaged in a discussion this fall about these questions
and confusions, and each department is working to clarify
its standards and expectations—an ongoing challenge,
of course.
On this last point, we give guidelines to student tutors who
help other students in the writing center. These guidelines
are pertinent and we provide them here with the thought that
they will be helpful to you, whether you connect with your
child about academic work through email, by phone or at home.
We consider parents our partners in we work together to develop
in our students both academic skills and ethical maturity.
Student tutors know these things: It’s fine for a student
to show her work to someone else before turning it in, but
not fine for her paper to be edited by someone. In other words,
it’s okay to say to your daughter, "This passage
is unclear," but not okay to suggest ways she might clarify
it. It is okay to point out a poorly phrased sentence to your
son, but not okay to correct it. We tell our tutors not to
take pen in hand during a paper conference, and not to dictate
changes or improvements to a paper. Though it's an inefficient
use of time to work this way, we think it's essential not
to leap to giving kids easy answers. The goal is to support
students in their effort to do good work rather than to help
them do it.
Milton Academy is a remarkable learning organization, an intellectual
community of adults and children who are hungry for ideas
and who hold themselves to high standards. We believe in the
fundamental importance of intellectual honesty at Milton,
and we work constantly and vigilantly to teach our intellectual
standards and uphold them. We’re grateful for the support
we get from parents who talk with their children about questions
of academic integrity, and we encourage you to have those
conversations now and often.
I look forward to seeing many of you at the Upper School and
Middle School Parents’ Weekends in the weeks ahead. In
the mean time, we’ll be working hard to keep up with
your children and enjoying those chilly mornings and autumn
foliage.
Best regards,
Hugh Silbaugh
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