Education: Cheater Children

Unless integrity is at discount in Manhattan as compared with the average school community, school children are sly and mousing when taking examinations. That was the inference the National Vocational Guidance Association could but draw from a paper read before it last week at its meeting in Washington, by Dr. Mark A. May, research specialist of Columbia Teachers’ College. He had conducted “a long series of psychiatric tests” upon 245 urchins in a Manhattan public school. When eagle-eyed instructors brooded over the scene to make peeking, cribbing and question-whispering practically impossible, 3% of the children were cunning and daring enough to cheat anyway. When instructors left the room, or dawdled inattentively to give iniquity free rein, the cheaters seized their chance, passed notes, made signs, craned necks, copied from grubby “ponies.” 80% of the group joined in. Dr. May did not blame human nature, but the “immoral” examination system. “To some children,” he said, “the passing of an examination is a matter of life and death. In some children there are emotional characteristics developed which the children would not have but for the examinations.”