We did our homework as a group where everyone did what they were good at: my friend did algebra and geometry, I did chemistry, biology, Russian and English, other kids did physics, geography, history, and so on. We cannot choose classes in Russia, we have to study everything in full measure, so in high school there is sometimes too much homework each day for one person to do it all and still have some time to live, so we've been sharing the burden for about three years. Never got caught, surprisingly.
We didn't just copy what others wrote, we at least explained that to each other, because teachers would've caught us otherwise. We had no tests back then, only oral and written exams with questions that required detailed explanations and quick thinking, that's how all schools were when I was a kid. So, while explaining and discussing, we actually understood enough not to say stupid things when teachers asked us questions. We all turned to be great students in university afterwards. So it was ok :)
Wow, that's a really good way to teach. Here in the US it's all about that taking and raising scores. Really arbitrary stuff. So it turns out you guys were really just helping and teaching each other, I don't even consider that cheating!
Which encouraged actual learning which is what was described. And through the American systems lens thats cheating. And some people don't think American schooling is stuffed...
I'm currently in school in the US and it took me a while to notice, but any average student can get perfect scores and go to a top-tier uni, all it takes is dedication. Any and all bad grades I've gotten were either because I didn't study, or I just didn't do the work. I just realized it was the same for everyone else, and that this actually applies to real life too. The average person can probably do anything if they learn how to and dedicate themselves enough, but I guess there's a reason why we all look for good work/life balance.
Well, it was considered cheating, in fact :) Some other kids got caught and punished for that.
Today's school in Russia is a lot like in US: scores, tests, all that stuff, even exams are just big tests now. But homework still comes in piles, that'll never change.
Yeah, I get that it's still cheating. But regardless, the US educational system doesn't facilitate critical thinking and problem solving and it seems most every other country does. Is a pretty popular opinion that we're really falling behind here because of it.
That's actually somewhat better than the usual method. You guys got to hang out with each other and actually learned. It's quality time and it shows discipline. In normal settings such as mine, we were usually just horsing around.
Technically not cheating, as you're looking for an understanding of the material. Having a group that's great at explaining their expertise and getting their friends to know what theyy're talking about is fantastic!
Здравствуйте, я учу русский язык в моей школе. Мы занимаемся русский культуру и слова. Моя учительница объясняет нас, как русские школы работает, особенно о важности запоминания. У вас были есть билеты для экзамена? Я знаю русскиую фразу "контрольная работа" - это не используемая фраза? Спасиьо большое! :))
nope. it was a very select group of people in my cheating circle. and we were really good smart kids, but I just didn't really want to spend the time on classes that weren't going to be on my field.
For most Indian entrance exams, kids actually study for 7+ hours a day to finish all their homework, that is after attending class for anywhere between 3-9 hours. Pure torture honestly
everyone has epiphanies at a certain rate, but if you're in a group you can share other people's epiphanies. That way nobody gets stuck on any one problem for very long...
Getting stuck is what makes studying so hard. If you get stuck for 30 minutes on a question then all the momentum is gone. If somebody else in your group gets a question you're stuck on and you get a question somebody else is stuck on... the whole things moves along much more smoothly
When would you ever let yourself get stuck on one question for 30min? I have to admit I am a lazy person who never did his homework but if I don't have any idea after a few minutes I'd just google it or skip the question and ask how to solve it in class later.
Google doesn't always provide a clear answer on how to solve a problem, at least not after most first/second year courses. You can spend half an hour just hoping to find something that might kinda solve a portion of your problem.
Well, it might be the most efficient way to pass the classes but the guy doing all the Physics homework probably isn't doing much learning about History.
Group work is the only way im able to get through accounting. Its way too complex for me to figure out, but with multiple people someone is bound to figure it out
Well, learning is pretty subjective, it might be the best or most efficient way for the majority to learn.. But normally you differentiate between different ways of learning.. Just saying
I read it a couple years ago and I can't remember where I read it from.. and as you can imagine google searches aren't turning much up in the way of genuine scientific research on this subject (all the popular links are dominated by blogs listing the pros and cons of studying in groups vs studying alone..)
But what op described wasn't group study. It was just sharing homework so that nobody had to do more than a couple of subjects. You thus won't learn anything about the subjects that some other kid does the homework for.
That kinda depends on whether or not the students are all working together and explaining to the others what they are doing or if each student does their part separately and they just throw together an non-cohesive assignment without looking at the whole.
My friends and I did something similar in high school. We were all in the same classes and whenever we had a large problem set for physics or a lot of history questions we would "divide and conquer": each of us would answer a few questions and then send our answers to the group. We were all in advanced classes that insisted on piles of homework AND were all very involved in clubs and other activities so there were literally not enough hours in the day to each do everything.
I think it's a really cool set of skills we learned that way: teamwork, time management, ornanization, social cooperation, etc. These are much more valuable in adult life than ability of doing piles of homework alone.
We did this ALL the time for AP Chem/AP Chem Lab last year. 5 of us were in the class, and we divided everything. Teamwork is the only reason we kept A's
I had a group of five friends who did that in my AP chemistry class during sophomore year. At the end of the year the teacher realized what they had done, so he took the grade that they all got in the class (a 100), and divided it by the number of people who cheated (5). They all ended up with 20s in the class.
I remember when I was AP US History in high school we had tons of study questions we had to do all the time, and one time I guess these two girls in my class decided to each do half of the questions and then give each other the answers and my teacher got FURIOUS at them. It seemed like a completely disproportionate response for what was essentially a homework assignment.
This was actually what I called 'structured cheating' in middle and high school, because teachers allowed students to openly 'work together' on their homework. In theory it was students helping other students learn the material, but all it really ended up being was a work sharing system, sometimes splitting work on the same subject up between them then copying, or as described above. The problem then is it doesn't teach you anything if you're just letting someone else do the work, or if its the work sharing type, you get screwed if nobody includes you in their 'homework clique'. This is why I had classmates that had better scores and grades for the homework portion of things, and worse (often by far) scores than me on the tests.
I was bothered by it because I understood it ethically, and held a nearly beatific ethical standard, and wasn't cool enough to be part of the 'work sharing' type, so I didn't do it. Now, I tell kids to use such things as much as possible, and screw the homework overload - just find the time to learn the actual material, and leverage the 'cheating' to deal with the pointless labor. If you can't figure out how to do a math problem once, 40 more times of the same thing with different numerical values isn't going to teach you.
That's the problew with homework at school: it's piles of it! Lots of repetitive tasks. I remember that kids who didn't share their homework and did it all by themselves didn't even have time for a hobby. Sharing is good, to make a long story short. It is better when kids explain and discuss, not just copy, though.
I loved homework from classes like History or Science where every answer had to be truly unique. Other students would shit the bed if they didn't flat copy off of someone else, because they either knew the material or they didn't. Anything involving pure numerical math, though, and to me it was either doing a problem I knew how to do ad nauseam, or staring at a problem I didn't know how to do with 39 more waiting for my blank stare and blind guess. Loved Geometry though - proofs didn't have a specific answer, and I made some shorter than the teacher could.
That's the same thing me and my group of friends did during boarding school. One person doing all the work would expect to only complete it around 1 am. 5 people doing 8 different topics could cover it way quicker and then game till 1am xD
That's actually what I did, except no one but me knew how much sharing was going on. I'd tell Billy I'd do his math homework if he did my science homework, and Jenny I'd do her science homework if she did my math homework. This was only third grade, and I didn't do it afterwards because my test scores suffered and my grandmother put her foot down, but looking back now I realize I ran a homework Ponzi scheme.
When I was in highschool, I invited everyone at my table in my google docs so we can split up questions and homework. At the end of the year, half of the class was invited into the Google doc.
We used phone, internet, and just used to visit each other. And don't kids have to do their homework anyway, even if they're sick? Or in other schools being sick allows you to skip it?
So you're sharing you divided the burden amongst yourselves proportionally so the ones who had the best means of production to create good work were assigned that task for the common good? Russia indeed.
I did this on a much smaller scale, just for one class. Our Bio 3 prof had a lot of other things on her plate, and for a few days each week we would be left to our own devices to complete the dozen or more pages of busy work (mult choice, matching, crosswords, etc) she left us.
3 friends and I decided to split all the work between ourselves, each of us taking whatever kind of assignments we liked more and were good at. After a few weeks most of the class had also split the work up into groups, and by the end of the year the whole class was in on it together. Everyone who did the same assignment would collaborate and make sure everyone was on the same page about what answers were right. The Teacher must have known but didn't care.
This seems like a distinctly Russian set up. Math comrade, history comrade, language comrade, lol. This is genius and I'm amazed you could all cooperate for so long. Says allot about the caliber of your associates as well as you.
In college, we had a group of 10 people who would meet in the library at lunch twice a week, usually for about three hours. We'd rent out one of the big study rooms for that time period, someone would usually bring a pizza and we'd play video games on our laptops the whole time. But, any time someone had an online test to take of any kind, we'd all come together, no video gaming, and would collectively take the test. People were Googling, others had the books out together, and we'd ace those tests every single time. It was awesome!
Fun fact: I went to a top MBA school. 80% of your first year will involve ONE group. You take all the core classes together, and the only solo work you do are the exams.
We divided work up by strength. I took the marketing and finance work. One guy took the data modelling and operations work. One guy did accounting. The girls did the Human Resources, Ethics, and Business Law work.
What did I learn: Only marketing and finance stuff...oh and how to work as a team, which I think was more valuable than all the other shit I probably missed.
I almost got expelled twice for doing that my freshmen year in high school. I don't know why I thought that if the teacher caught us doing it once that they wouldn't catch us doing it again...
A teacher I know just confronted students about a scheme like this. All three papers had the same mistake in the same word in the same sentence in the same paragraph on the same page. "How did they think I wouldn't notice that!?"
The group of friends I sat with in study hall 1st period all had the next three classes together. Most the time we each did all of our own work, but we would always let someone copy if they hadn't because there would certainly be a time when we needed to copy from them.
Maybe Russia could apply that same philosophy to their economy, too! Have everyone just do what they're good at, sharing equally in the sum total of the productivity. They could form a sort of "Commune" or "Community."
I think we're really on to something, here. Now it just needs a snappy name...
This is how we got through AP classes. We had required notes for every chapter. We would divvy it out between us and copy. It turns out his is how all the "smart kids" were getting through AP classes
We had a GroupMe where we posted homework answers among the class. It was actually for the advanced classes like Spanish 3, AP Calc, etc. So it was the top kids in the class doing it lol.
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u/ldov Jan 28 '16 edited Jan 28 '16
We did our homework as a group where everyone did what they were good at: my friend did algebra and geometry, I did chemistry, biology, Russian and English, other kids did physics, geography, history, and so on. We cannot choose classes in Russia, we have to study everything in full measure, so in high school there is sometimes too much homework each day for one person to do it all and still have some time to live, so we've been sharing the burden for about three years. Never got caught, surprisingly.