Teen Student Jumps to Her Death After Caught Cheating on Test

[OkieGranny]

http://nypost.com/2014/07/21/teacher-not-responsible-for-cheating-students-suicide-investigators/

Investigators have determined that a high school teacher who caught a student cheating on an exam doesn’t bear any responsibility for her subsequent suicide...

Several students in the room that day said the teacher never raised her voice at Omotayo and described her warnings about cheating as directed to the class in general.

Investigators found that Omotayo had written a note on her test to Malikova that said “What am I doing, Why am I doing it? This is not me. I’m losing my hard earned credibility for some meaningless quiz. I am better than this. This is beyond stupid.” On the back of the test, she wrote “I just want to go away forever on the bottom of the river.”

 

[Nova]

The teacher was probably a bit miffed about the phone,perhaps she had told them not to use them.Grabbing the phone from a student is not severe,she did not lay a hand on her.It was not the reaction of the teacher that caused the suicide,it was that she was caught disobeying rules and would be in trouble with school and parents.Even if the teacher did not react the student most likely still would have jumped.More going on with this child,very sad.

I agree, but as a former teacher who had a minor cheating event, I can't begin to describe the feelings of betrayal. I had spent years learning to organize the material so that it was accessible to all who did their homework. I kept my office hours open many hours past what was required and gave my home phone number and email address to all students. They were welcome to (and many did) contact me at 4 a.m. before a morning exam. I also made up every paper and exam from scratch so students would not be tempted to "borrow" the tests from upperclassmen; this too took a lot of extra time.

So when a few students chose to cheat rather than do a required assignment, it was like a slap in the face, like they were spitting on all the extra hours I put in to help students of all levels do well.

I'm not surprised the teacher here grabbed the phone and yelled that the apology was not sincere. (I'm sure the student was merely sorry she got caught.)

 

[Nova]

I don't care if she killed Jesus herself. Her past doesn't matter. It just proves something was going on in that family that no one knew. We don't know her. We don't know her whole story. This "she was troubled anyway" bull$hit is really starting to piss me off.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

"She was troubled anyway" is a very Western point of view. Western cultures are guilt-based and offer methods of atoning for sins. Some other cultures are "shame based" and the shame attaches to the entire family with little opportunity for removal. (One horrific "solution" is the "honor killings" so famous in the Near East.)

See The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, an influential 1946 study of Japan by American anthropologist Ruth Benedict, for an excellent discussion of the difference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chrysanthemum_and_the_Sword


I don't know the suicidal student or her family well enough to say the suicide was a "shame-based" reaction in Benedict's terms, but there are cultural mindsets in the world that don't fit into our psychoanalytic paradigms.

 

[Nova]

I remember even before cell phones, cheating was quite common when I went to high school.

Plagiarism is even worse and was quite common in college. I remember people who did that got kicked out for that. Big no-no. :nono:

IMO, when we treat education as a job hunt rather than a process of personal growth and development, why not cheat? Anything to get ahead in the rat race, right? The old "when you cheat, you're only cheating yourself" speech rings hollow.

 

[Blondie in Spokane]

Mother of Bronx teen who killed herself after getting caught cheating on test sues city for $10 million

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/mother-teen-killed-sues-10-million-article-1.2008409

 

[Blondie in Spokane]

Mother is awarded $750,000 settlement after her daughter, 17, killed herself in New York after being accused of cheating on a high school German exam

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lement-teen-killed-herself.html#ixzz4xse55PMK

 

[Hatfield]

My daughter is really intelligent. I mean, smart as a whip -- but she hates school and is not achieving well at all. Though I also had a high IQ/extremely spotty grades in my own schooling, it's hard not to feel ashamed for the fact my child is not academically inclined -at all- and likely will not go to college, she'll be lucky to finish high school.

In my youth, that wasn't a problem. Girls did apprenticeships, worked in local industry, went on to own businesses, or they just became full-time mums and that was *nothing* to be ashamed about!!! My family were the issue there - high expectations, so I did college, though I did nothing much *with* it.

Now, it's all about career paths chosen by age 14 (for goodness' sake), college education and being 'competitive', making your parents proud of your grades. So much pressure!!! And pressure on parents, too, to make sure their child is up there with the A-students.

I keep telling my girl, she's smart and all her limbs work, which is more than some folks with good jobs have, so I do not fear for her future. I have faith she'll make a good path for herself in the world, and to hell with people who tell her she's doomed for not wanting to go to college. I must add, I tell her these things, because I believe them, but also because she gets a very hard time from other people about having no plans for college and that makes her feel bad about herself.

Poor girl. I agree, not the teacher's fault, I'd be disappointed in a teacher who did not reprimand my child or her classmates for cheating.

I commend you for your approach.

Everyone is different and the world takes all kinds of people in all kinds of jobs to make the world go around. Happiness is a very important part of life and we also need to be happy in what we end up doing with our lives.

Some just tread through life a slightly different way but it is not to be condemned so long as it makes them content and they can be successful at whatever they choose to do.

I had a friend growing up that despised school and yet was a genius. He was so far ahead of others his age that school was just way too boring and he was not challenged by it at all. I think his parents didnt realize they could have moved him up to higher grades and so he just quit going by 9th grade.

He ended up being a video game developer and became one of his companies top developers making more money than most of his work peers.

Schooling is great for most folks but not everyone and I saw that first hand growing up.

The other thing I want to mention is I think its very sad when its expected of a child to come home with straight As and here is why. There is always that one or two teachers that is so bizarre in the way they teach that no matter how much you study you just did not understand what they were going to throw at you on the test.

You see this more often at the college level with sometimes strange professors. I had this one professor where I went to class every day and thought I was absorbing everything they were "teaching". I studied that course just like all my others where I highlighted what I thought were the main points and focused on memorizing them. The first test I got an A and thought I was on track. I did the same approach for the next test and got a D. I was shocked. When I brought the test home and looked at what I was getting wrong I saw where the teacher was literally asking questions about nundane stuff inbetween my highlighted areas. It was unbelievable. Its like the teacher purposely asked questions about off topic stuff.

I dropped the course and got another teacher the next semester for same subject and did ok. Kids will run into teachers like this along their schooling journey so I think an occasional B or C or even a D should never have the student made to be felt terrible by the parents. There could be valid reasons it happens. They could have gotten the teacher from HE-double-hockey-sticks like I did.