Is rewarding students who turn in wrong doers a good idea?

I know this doesn’t really answer your question but I want to share a relevant experience:

I went to a college where you were not rewarded for turning in cheating students, you were required. It was part of the honour code. Exams were not proctored at my college. If a student was found cheating and you were found to be in the vicinity and someone could merely suggest that you somehow knew/witnessed the cheating (even if you were not cheating yourself), you would be held in violation of the honour code and you’d get a black mark on your record…just like a cheater!

The downside to cheating was that if you reported it, you would have to go in front of some BS Academic Integrity “board” (made up of students AND professors) and you’d have to face the person you accused. Yuck!

It made me livid. I hated it. I would have rather that all of our exams were proctored like how they are at other schools so we could bypass this nonsense. It made me and my classmates paranoid. I learned to put my head down and do. not. look. around. Do not look up. I just aimed to get done ASAP and get the hell out of the building once I was done with my exam.

Did I witness cheating? Yes, by accident. I looked up and I saw it happen a few times.
Only once did I turn someone in because seconds after witnessing someone cheat, I made eye contact with a fellow student, and I knew that I had been “caught” witnessing, so that I would get into trouble if I didn’t report it. So I did but I begged the teacher not to take me to the Board because I didn’t want to be named. I was just reporting the cheater so I wouldn’t risk getting into trouble myself.

It’s a crappy, awful system. It made me paranoid and afraid. It made me distrust my classmates.

I think it’s far better to put up barriers to cheating. Have proctored exams. Make everyone turn off their smartphones and put them on a desk up front. Limit bathroom breaks. Have different versions of the test instead of just one. Make it very difficult to cheat in the first place. Don’t pit students against each other. This was a very uncomfortable part of my college education.

Ironically, the “honour code” was touted like some great policy. “Oh it’s great, it allows us to take exams anywhere in the building we want!” Yeah, whatever. I’d rather be proctored than worried about being turned in for NOT being a whistle blower.

You have to be careful on the reward issue, in reference to deciding what or who is a wrongdoer.

If there are rewards, then the person (doing the reporting) may be incentivized to over-report (i.e. to lie or exaggerate) because of the reward. That skews the whole idea.

I’m also a bit worried about relying on a vigilante teenager’s views on right and wrong being the standard of behavior at school.

I guess that the concept of reporting and reward is nowhere near Due Process. I would be wary of the concept.

(Do we want to raise a generation of tattletales?)

I see a system rife for abuse.

Circumstances vary, but nothing good is going to happen to any kid labeled “snitch” before his peers. The thought of cultivating informants in the classroom is one of those concepts that makes me uncomfortable. I can’t exactly explain why, but I suspect it involves crossing a line in an unspoken code of ethics involving the eternal tug between kids and “management”.

The University I went to had the following Code of Honor stated in this very simple verse:

An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.

This is the explanation for it:

The Aggie Code of Honor is an effort to unify the aims of all Texas A&M men and women toward a high code of ethics and personal dignity. For most, living under this code will be no problem, as it asks nothing of a person that is beyond reason. It only calls for honesty and integrity, characteristics that Aggies have always exemplified.

The Aggie Code of Honor functions as a symbol to all Aggies, promoting understanding and loyalty to truth and confidence in each other.

Unfortunately, what you ended up with many times was a Code that found itself at odds group loyalty. And many times when it came down to it you protected your own members, regardless of what they had done, even if it meant going against the Code. Rick Perry capitalized on this the attain and maintain his entire political career.

In North Korea, citizens are given incentives to “snitch” on others, even their own family members. If an illegal plot or operation is underway and you are found to have known about it but you didn’t tell anyone, you and your whole family are likely to be sent to a death camp.

Extreme example but honestly, sort of sounds like how my college was.

Do you really want to cultivate an academic environment that is filled with distrust and fear? Where students are worried about “saying the wrong thing” and getting turned in by an overzealous student, even if you haven’t necessarily done anything wrong?

This guy comes to mind
shout out to the 90s kids

Edit: Should have said ”...ripe for abuse”. or perhaps ”...rife with abuse”.

It would totally depend on the offence. I was brought up in the old school where one doesn’t normally snitch on another. However I would feel obligated to tell someone if I had information that one of the students were planning to hurt themselves or the school faculty on a large scale.

No, I do not. If a student poses a threat to the safety of the school by, for example, carrying a weapon, then the student should be reported for the benefit of everyone. There is no need for a reward. For lesser offenses, I do not believe in encouraging snitching.

I don’t either. Oppressive governments that have been successful are the ones that encourage snitching – Russia and Big Brother comes to mind. We should be teaching kids to mind their own business unless it is a MAJOR safety issue.

BTW, I am actually okay with turning in cheaters BUT I don’t think it should be required nor should people be rewarded for doing so. It should be kept confidential, between the teacher and the student(s) involved, not an integrity board. A decent teacher, when informed of possible cheating, can handle the situation on his/her own by keeping a better watch, looking at the test answers for signs of cheating, etc.

If I had irrefutable evidence of cheating and it was a very key class and having people cheat puts me at a disadvantage AND I could report the person (or even behaviour, anonymously) privately to the teacher and not to a board, I would!

We should not be rewarded for doing the right thing. The reward is evening the field and not allowing cheaters the advantage over the hard working and diligent students, employees, etc.

I don’t understand why a reward would even cross your mind…? When I had a day care, the kids were forever snitching on each other. I certainly didn’t reward them for it.

The word reward would not occur to me in a situation like this. I am fine with telling the snitch, “thanks for letting me know, I’ll follow up on it.” I guess in a way that is a reward, because the teacher is taking the comment seriously, but I don’t feel a big deal should be made of it. I also don’t think students should be required to turn other students in like the example mentioned above.

After hearing the excessive amount of cheating that is being done these days I think some more snitching might be a good thing. I have mixed feelings about it. Certainly, if the class is graded on a curve it is completely unfair when someone is cheating.

I never snitched the few times I knew someone was cheating. I never saw it in college, just in k-12.

I don’t think it usually should be rewarded, but if the crime was something truly heinous and way over the line, kids should be rewarded for turning those people in.