A photo showing students of a renowned Bangkok university wearing
strange headgear complete with side flaps to thwart cheating during a
midterm exam caused quite a stir after it was uploaded to Facebook as a
joke.
Teachers at Kasetsart University in Thailand have recently come under
fire for making their students wear horse blinder-like devices made of
paper to prevent them from cheating on their exams. A photo showing
around 100 students wearing the rudimentary anti-cheating hats was
recently posted on Facebook by the KU student board, where it got so
many negative reactions that it was eventually removed. Unfortunately
for the Thai learning institution the photo had already been picked up
by the media and the negative responses just kept on coming. However, it
appears the students were not pressured into wearing the paper
blinders, in fact they were the one who suggested it. ‘‘It was an
agreement between us. No student was forced to wear a hat. Instead, all
were happy to do so and thought it was fun. They felt more relaxed
during the test,’’ Nattadon Rungruangkitkrai, a lecturer at Kasetsart
University, said during in a press conference.
Rungruangkitkrai’s claims have been confirmed by members of the
student council, who went on to explain that the anti-cheating hats were
deemed necessary because the classroom was too small for the number of
individuals taking the exam, and they were forced to sit very close to
each other. “It is quite normal that people try to cheat in an exam, so
the hat helps avoid distractions while doing the test. I feel very bad,
and angry, that this has been seen as bad by outsiders,” a third year
student at KU told the Bangkok Post.
Nattadon told the press he had intended to teach the students about
ethics, and as part of this lesson he had asked them to think of
creative ways of preventing cheating during the upcoming exams. Out of
all the ideas presented, they settled on blinder hats made from A4
paper. I for one fail to understand see how wearing anti-cheating hats
promotes the idea of ethical conduct, although, to his defense the
students had agree to do it. Still, simply not cheating when given the
opportunity sounds a lot more ethical to me.
According to News.com.au, Thailand’s Civil Aviation Center allegedly
used a similar anti-cheating approach. A photo (also posted on Facebook)
shows students wearing cardboard boxes on their heads.
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