Do you think the content of this article is true?

[Deja Q]

Poll question: Do you think the content of this article is true?

http://momshomeroom.msn.com/?topic_id=2§ion_name=InfoList§ion_id=17917819&source=hp

Why or why not?

[BlooInBloo]

1. Not all kids are cheaters. But a whooooole lot of them wouldn't think twice about it.

[spoony]

2. It's an interesting take

I rather like the notion that cheating involves some creative powers that can be otherwise channeled if a teacher can engage the students. Usually we just think of cheating as irredeemably lazy, but the author's right in the sense that we have always tried to come up with ways of reducing labour.

[TahitiNut]

3. "Laziness can often breed creativity." I'm a poster boy for that.

When I was in grade school, I just couldn't face the mind-numbing rote memorization of the 12x12 multiplication table. It was, to my mind, an insanely ridiculous exercise in redundant, repetitive effort. "Busy work." It provoked such enormous and deep-seated resistance in me that there was no question I'd NEVER memorize it. So ...

I examined it and found that I could cut the memorization task down to almost nothing. I noticed, first of all, that the answer to 8x12 was the same as the answer to 12x8 ... and, indeed, it made no difference what pair of numbers were multiplied -- the answer was the same no matter which came first. Voila! I cut the task almost in half. Next, I noticed that 8 times anything was the same as double 4 times the same number. The same for 6 times anything being double 3 times anything. In fact, when ANY even number was multiplied by anything, I could merely double the answer for half of that number.

By the time I was done, I'd pared the task down to less than 1/10th the size. Instead of memorizing 144 separate answers for every pair of numbers between 1 and 12, I needed learn less than 12. It was only years later that I learned about prime numbers, the associative law, and the commutative law. After all, I'd DISCOVERED them all by myself. Because I was lazy.

Even today, nearly 60 years later, I cannot 'remember' the answer to 8 x 7 ... and must multiply 7 x 2 x 2 x 2 (getting 14, 28, and 56) to get the answer of 56. I'm STILL lazy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. 5,6,7,8

56=7x8

Now you will remember it :)

[Viking12]

4. True. I have more than 12 years experience teaching in the college classroom.

I've seen it all and have to work very hard to prevent the opportunity for cheaters to cheat. It is a signifcant factor in any curricular development plan.

[Edweird]

5. Cheating is nothing new. The methods have changed, nothing else.

[Buck Laser]

6. I did a lot of those things 55 years ago when I was in high school,

but in the following years, I came to realize how misguided and hypocritical I was, and I changed my ways. I think this is fairly common, simply because people to don't reach ethical maturity at the same rate. Given my personal history, it would be hypocritical in the extreme to have an attack of outrage about this report.

The kids who don't reach some kind of ethical maturity will in all probability become republicans.

[Berry Cool]

7. Wow. I thought the question was, how credible is a commercially sponsored Web site?

I say, watch out. Seems to me like this one is designed to sell a particular brand of cereal.