Interesting post at The Culture Beat about college student plagiarism and cheating, and whether or not Christian colleges are better equipped to curb it:
...my plagiarizer wasn’t alone, even though Milligan is a Christian college, one of several in this region, one of scores across the country. Shouldn’t a religious environment make a difference?“You’d like to think so,” said Michael Arrington, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Carson-Newman College, a Southern Baptist university in Jefferson City, Tenn. “But Christians are exposed to the same temptations as anyone else. We’re still human. I haven’t seen any studies that show Christian colleges have any lower incidence (of academic dishonesty) than state schools.”
A bit disheartening, but no huge surprise there: Christians sin about as much as anybody else. The article does suggest, however, that some Christian schools can legitimately boast lower cheating rates due to stricter honor codes, smaller and more close-knit school communities, and a focus on redemptive (rather than strictly punitive) handling of cheaters. The last element sounds particularly intriguing.
Any readers have experience with Christian college students caught cheating? Do, and should, Christian schools handle this sort of thing differently than their non-Christian counterparts?
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May 15, 2007 at 16:02
Honestly this is no surprise. Unfortunately Christians don’t seem to perform any different from any other group in society in most social statistics. Personally I think a de-emphasis on ortho-praxy is partially responsible.
Throughout Christianity is seems to me that the attraction of material achievement, “significance”, “excellence” and success have overshadowed honesty, charity, self control, kindness, patience etc. . .
May 16, 2007 at 07:23
Sure they do – I just had a case during finals. But I do think that there is a different attitude in that when caught, they have a greater sense they are wrong, and I do think there is more of a redemptive attitude. But that could be just my personal experience here. Anyway, we certainly could talk more about Christian responses to the pressures our society (and Christian parents paying the big bucks) puts on our students.
May 16, 2007 at 13:23
Huh? Christians sin as much as anyone else does? Romans 6:1: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer…just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Whatever happened to transformation? Anybody Wesleyan out there?
May 16, 2007 at 14:30
Bruce, I didn’t say it was a good thing that Christians sin as much as everybody else. Would that it were otherwise! But for an awful lot of issues—pornography, broken marriages, sex outside marriage, and as in the story above, cheating in school—studies have shown that there’s not much statistical difference between Christians and non-Christians. Good thing we’re saved by grace, ‘cause we’d never make it otherwise with our track record.