University Cheats

One of the rules imposed by the Open University, and most likely by all other universities, is that you don't cheat.  Your submitted work must be your own work, not plagiarised, and definitely not copied from the internet. Some berks on my course, AA100, have been caught selling their essays to the cheat site Essayzone UK.

Essayzone is a website that allows people who are only interested in the result, as opposed to the education, to purchase marked essays so that they can then presumably try to pass off a lesser or greater amount of the essay as their own work.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I was going to cheat and purchase such an essay, I would want that essay to be a top scorer, it would have to be a distinction level piece of work - that's 85% and above here at the OU. Two of the essays for sale are scored 74% for the Michael Faraday essay, and 72% for the Gunn/Flatman poetry essay. So for the purposes of cheating, the study book contains 100% of the information you require for this essay of which the submitter has only managed to glean just less than three-quarters of the meaning.  I just don't get it, if you're going to cheat, then at least cheat well.

This incident does seem to have exposed a difference between some people on the course.  On the one hand, and I place myself firmly in this group, there are those who see the educational and mind broadening aspects of the study as being at least equal in importance to gaining the degree.  In camp two are those who are only focused on the actual attaining of the degree and who tend towards such comments as "Why bother to read more books outside the course work, the course material contains all the stuff you need to pass."

Brick universities are at the moment packed with people in that second camp, teenage kids who wanted to go to university but without any clear idea of what they want to study.  I would say that some of these children have been railroaded by the school system and peer pressure into going to university, it has become the done thing to do, a three year party with a qualification thrown in at the end. Am I being unfair ? Some universities are reporting 1st year drop out rates of up to 20%, 21% of students starting in 2009 will not complete their degree (source - The Times 14 May 2012).

I cannot offer any proof for this, but it seems to me that someone who takes their second or third choice university course just to be able to have the 'university experience' may well be someone who doesn't care enough to put in the effort to make all their work their own.  Drop out rates from the very top universities, where students have to be the very best and presumably get onto their first choice courses, are tiny; Oxford, Cambridge and St. Andrews all have drop out rates of under 1.5%.

Cheating just seems so pointless.  I could have bought an essay here and there, and re-worded it a little to get around the plagiarism checks.  But if I had done so I would not have had the pleasure of researching and understanding the life of  Michael Faraday.  I would not have been able to explore a little known corner of British-African history (little known to me that is) that was the massacre at Benin.  My knowledge of many aspects of Christianity including Luther, the Reformation, the Dissolution, Pugin and church architecture would be much less.

I had twin goals when I began this degree.  I want to have the degree itself, that would be nice, I would like to prove to myself that I can work to the required standard to get a BA(hons). My other goal is more nebulous, I want to be able to answer more questions on University Challenge, I want to be able to listen to the guests on In Our Time and not only understand the flow of the argument but to be able to agree with or argue with the points raised in an informed manner, when an interviewee on The Culture Show starts to waffle about poetics versus hermeneutics I want to understand what they mean.

So I'm not going to cheat and buy an essay because I want to be more broadly educated, and anyway, I have consistently scored higher than the berks who have sold their work, so what can they teach me anyway ?

The Humanities Whistle Stop Tour; Benin to Greece

Along with my fellow students, I am now at the halfway point of the AA100 module, and the whistle stop tour of all points of humanities continues.  In the next few weeks we will be studying...

A Benin bronze plaque

Cultural Encounters : Changing relations between Europe and Africa and the art of Benin

Cultural exemptions and the Musqueam people of Canada

World short stories

The transmission of medical knowledge from Greece to Europe via the Middle East

Seamus Heaney's translation of Sophocles' Antigone : The Burial At Thebes

Everything is going well so far.  Although our tutor had told us it is not compulsory to hand in every essay, I feel I am getting better value from the course and building my skills better by doing all the work possible.  So far with four essays handed in and marked I'm just a fraction off a Distinction grade.

There are two essays from this section of the module, on the art of Benin and cultural encounters, then either cultural exemptions and the Musqueam people or the contribution of the chorus in The Burial At Thebes.  So far when we have had a choice of essays I have tried to go for what seems the harder of the two choices.  My thinking here is that this is only a level one module so it would be good practise the mentally stretch myself whenever possible.

One aspect of student life that makes learning today so easy is the huge wealth of information via the internet, I kid you not, Melvyn Bragg and the In Our Time guests on Radio 4 are helping me enormously.  Having a group of renowned academics discussing the topic you are composing an essay on is a fantastic help.  Other great sources for research are Internet Archive and Project Gutenberg with their vast collections of texts, audio and picture files. The Open University also gives us access to its vast online library system, so big that sometimes it feels like diving into an ocean of information to find a single pearl of knowledge. It is quite possible to get hopelessly lost / bogged down when searching the seemingly endless OU databases for something you hope to be relevant.

The Benin section is fascinating, and I am very much enjoying the way that the chapters are now drawing the various disciplines of humanities together.  In the the two chapters on cultural encounters and Benin we start with straight history, then combine it with the history of art and a hint of religious studies, then mix in a bit of philosophy at the end.

This section of the course feels like real university work, I had little idea what was meant by the phrase 'cultural exemptions' before this and if asked to describe the philosophical mindset behind 'difference-blind liberalism' a blank and uncomprehending look may well have ensued.  It is all good stuff though, I'm still loving the work.  Onwards and upwards as my tutor says.

People Listen To This For Pleasure ?!

My kitchen normally chugs along to the noise of angry sounding young people bellowing over a crescendo of wailing guitars and pounding drum rhythms, yesterday though as I pressed on to the next part of my humanities course, the fat lady sang.

Cover of Giuseppe VerdiTo be more accurate, she wasn't fat at all, I was just repeating an overly used jibe about opera, but like many people, I suspect that quote and a vague image of large men in tight fitting costumes is about my sum knowledge of opera.  Yesterday I was introduced to Verdi, Puccini, Rossini, Donizetti and Luzzaschi, and I must admit, it was not an easy introduction.

I have no problem with listening to songs in another language, alongside the excellent German singing Rammstein I have a fair few bands whose singing language is either not English, or in some of the more extreme metal bands, possibly not human.

There is a quality to this operatic singing though that sends a shiver right through me, and not in a good way. To be even more precise, I can get along with the male singers, but the high pitched warbling effect favoured by the female vocalists is jarring and unpleasent to my ears. 

So far on the course I have gained knowledge of a good many art forms and historical figures about whom I previously knew very little, and the more I learn the more I seem to appreciate them, with the exception of Stalin, who was a git.  I have not come across anything so far though that has been so hateful at first contact and that has left me with the feeling that if I never encounter it again, I will be the happier for it.

Opera is regarded by many as being difficult and elitist, an art form reserved for, and appreciated by a narrow band of the upper classes.  As with many things regarded as being elitist, half the case is that access to opera, as with many things considered somewhat exclusive, is actually quite easy, anyone can download, cheaply or for free, a reasonable selection of music, and if you have the money you can buy a ticket for a gig.  What seems to be harder to come by though is an appreciation for the art form.  I am listening to (I think) Maria Callas warbling her way though a bit of Verdi's La Traviata, and to be perfectly honest, I just wish she'd stop.

Oh well, I will just have to apply our old Scout motto, POR - Press On Regardless.