Opinion: From Cheating to Teaching

For the attainment of an elevated instructional position and an increment in salary, it is expected from an educator to possess a specialism in the field of Education by acquiring either a degree of Bachelor of Education (BEd) or a Master of Arts (MA) in Teacher Education.

It has been duly observed that the students of the aforementioned programmes tend to resort to unfair means (cheating) for the purpose of acquiring superlative marks to have the degrees conferred upon them for the onward pursuance of their career in teaching.

This has been negatively contributing towards the already poor human resource in the field of education in Pakistan.

Those who themselves do not possess the moral value of burning the midnight oil so as to achieve the academic excellence shall never proffer an impetus to their learners to study assiduously to get to the top of the food chain.

One must also bear that in mind that this is not restricted to preceptors; a multitude of learners of the other fields of study (majors) have been following suit since they have been lectured under the aegis of such instructors. The chief gravamen of the current era is that of the spread of such practise as wildfire.

There exists the exigency to initiate a few steps so as to nip the trend of cheating in examinations in the bud since it has proved itself to be the besetting sin of the learners at educational institutions.

The usage of unfair means fails learners in fathoming the crux of the syllabi, which is crucial to the augmentation of their erudition. For the purpose of catering to the needs of this issue, a sizeable chunk of the examinations must be made a viva voce (oral) so as to deter tutees from cheating by incorporating the sheets of written notes in the examination halls.

Resultantly, those students who have apprehended the disquisitions of the coursework shall emerge as victors solely upon the basis of their merit and conceptual grasp; this shall also make the marking procedure of examinations transparent.

The other alternative shall be that of the heavy reliance upon the marking of each course in the form of written assignments as opposed to the conduct of the examinations of a hundred marks in examination halls, wherein the students get to have access to the self-given cheating material or that obtained by copying the examination notebooks of other learners; however, this can only be made triumphant, should the educators proceed towards giving dissimilar assignments to each student so as to discourage their resort to cheating.

The aforesaid proposals shall promote a healthy competition and creativity amongst the learners, who have always been considered to be ‘the establishers of the future’.

The usage of technology can work wonders in discouraging the public enemy number one of the educational sector of Pakistan, namely ‘cheating’, and with the recent incorporation of the Optical Mark Reader (OMR) sheets, which are functionally machine readable papers in the objective component of examinations, the possibility of bribing a marker (examiner) has enormously diminished.

Since instruction has been of religious significance in Islam due to it being the vocation of the Prophets, the induction of the preceptors into the service must be made upon the grounds of their academic prowess and moral correctness, and the role model to be kept in mind in the process of doing so must be that of the greatest teacher of the Universe, namely ‘the Seal of the Prophets Muhammad (PBUH)’ since His instruction has always been a source of perpetual success in this world and the afterlife.