{"id":3063,"date":"2011-07-29T00:18:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T05:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3063"},"modified":"2011-07-29T00:18:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T05:18:55","slug":"the-ethics-of-student-howlers-competitions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3063","title":{"rendered":"The ethics of student howlers competitions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Inside Higher Education<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2011\/07\/28\/annual_compilation_of_student_exam_howlers\">just put up a list of the winners of the &quot;exam howlers&quot; competition<\/a>.&nbsp; Some are funny.&nbsp; Some are dumb.&nbsp; Some I don&#039;t get the humor about &#8212; they&#039;re not howlers, but just things that put sad on my face.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been teaching for a while, and I&#039;ve got a pretty good list, myself.&nbsp; Papers referring to Descartes &quot;cognito&quot; argument and complaining that there are no disguises, one paper on Aristotle&#039;s Five Causes which double-dips on efficient causation, and one jaw-dropper of a short essay on why we shouldn&#039;t worry about fallacies, because we&#039;ll never argue perfectly.&nbsp; Also, since I edit a journal, I&#039;ve got my fill of crazy submissions, too.&nbsp; And I mean crazytown.<\/p>\n<p>I got to wondering about these competitions.&nbsp; Are they in the wrong spirit, especially for educators?&nbsp; I mean, I&#039;ve had many a laugh over beers with colleagues about some silly student paper, or a goofy&nbsp; journal article I&#039;m reviewing.&nbsp; I don&#039;t see much wrong with that.&nbsp; But why the public display?&nbsp; A private chuckle over a student&#039;s error is one thing, but isn&#039;t putting that material up for public ridicule another?&nbsp; Doesn&#039;t this break a tacit agreement of confidentiality between teachers and students to do this?&nbsp; For example, I always ask students who wrote exemplary papers for my classes if I could save them and use them as models for further classes.&nbsp; It seems wrong for me to use those papers, even in praise, without their permission.&nbsp; Isn&#039;t it the same with howlers? <br \/>\n\t&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inside Higher Education just put up a list of the winners of the &quot;exam howlers&quot; competition.&nbsp; Some are funny.&nbsp; Some are dumb.&nbsp; Some I don&#039;t get the humor about &#8212; they&#039;re not howlers, but just things that put sad on my face.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been teaching for a while, and I&#039;ve got a pretty good list, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=3063\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The ethics of student howlers competitions<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3063"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3067,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3063\/revisions\/3067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}