TEACHING

Ref. College where I freelance:

We had a meeting a few weeks ago during which the subject of standards and student attainment came up. The Head of Department spoke about management fears on the lack of numbers of students passing, without of course alluding to the management's shameless, irresponsible recruitment practices. One of the lecturers suggested that perhaps we should allow those students who lacked language skills, that is most, to cut and paste as even if their English was poor they still understood the material.


I wondered: did he obtain his own qualifications in that manner? Was he used to his students producing such efforts? What was his own marking like?

I immediately recalled an Asian lecturer from a previous, defunct college who gave distinction to student's efforts that were clearly copy and paste. One student, a lovely man but with quite a low intelligence, produced for him a wonderfully academic piece of work that he similarly marked. I discovered the piece on the internet. This lecturer no doubt acquired his own qualifications in the same fashion. I took over his students when he left and referred most.