The laziest student in the world.

Today, perhaps, the laziest student in the world, visited my blog. It is not uncommon for people, from University web addresses, or other educational institutions, such as Secondary schools or high schools, to arrive on my blog, with what is clearly an essay question in their search terms. Sometimes, I get dozens of people from the same country, searching with the same essay question, arriving on the same page, of my blog. I can only imagine the consternation of their teacher, when a dozen or more of their students hand in the same copy/pasted essay (mine), as their own!

Plagiarism is very common amongst today’s students. I see other evidence of it too, sometimes. Occasionally, someone searches with an extended quote from one of my essays, and arrives on my blog. I assume this to be a teacher checking whether an essay is plagiarized or not...for how else did they get a hold of an extensive quote from my writing?

Today’s example was a classic. A person searched from Mongolia, in Asia, with the search terms “Mongolian laziness essay”! Just think about the most likely interpretation for what is happening here. This searcher is probably a student, from Mongolian, who had been tasked to write an essay about Mongolian laziness. I assume this to mean that their teacher had identified them as lazy and required them to write an essay on laziness, as it applied to Mongolians, as some kind of punishment. So, it is a stroke of genius order laziness for that student to then search the Internet for an essay on Mongolian laziness, to steal! I mean, how lazy can you get, than getting someone else to write about laziness, when that is your own task?

What is, perhaps, funniest of all, is the page they arrived on. It was an essay on Mongolian laziness. In fact, it was an account of my experience of teaching one of the laziest students I have ever encountered – and the ways he dealt with the tasks I set him. Given these two experiences, I am left to wonder if Mongolia has a problem with laziness, as a cultural issue. If anyone knows more about this, please comment below.

On a more serious note, it is a worry that so many students, these days, are using the Internet to answer their school essays for them. This speaks of a generation too lazy to learn to use their own minds. Any child who grows up doing this, instead of actually writing the set tasks, will never learn to write or express themselves in written form, in any way at all. They will become incapable adults. Not only that, but not having learnt to exercise their minds in disciplined thought – which they will have avoided – they will probably be quite dim, as well. It doesn’t bode well for the future world they shall be tasked with creating – along with the rest of their often ill-equipped generation. It seems likely that people who are now middle aged, will see a real decline in the level of discourse in the world, by the time they reach old age. Quite simply, many people will not be capable of complex discourse in any verbal form, at all. Another thought occurs to me. If the common man, is poor at dealing with words, one might have thought that the few who were truly literate would be prized – but I think it likely that the opposite will be true. When the average man is too verbally dumb to appreciate the output of the verbally bright, the writings of the best writers will be even less appreciated than they are today. It takes an educated and well informed audience, to receive well the thoughts of the best writers. The reader needs to be a sufficiently erudite companion to the writer, for the relationship to work well. Sadly, the younger generation today, in so many parts of the world, are not cultivating high verbal skills. So, they will become people unable to appreciate or enjoy them in those who do so equip themselves. Basically, the future promises to be a philistine one. I wonder whether Mankind will be able to pull itself up from that now seemingly inevitable precipice? The search terms of my innumerable plagiaristic searchers, is not an encouraging sign as to our probable shared future. I suppose this is what the beginning of the ends of Empires and civilizations looks like: a decline in the quality of the people being a first and troubling sign. It won’t be that far in the future, when such people are unable to manage the culture they have inherited. After that, the process of forgetting will begin. Soon, all will be gone.

It all begins with students too lazy to think their own thoughts and write their own essays. The Internet is full of them. In fact, that is what many students think the Internet is for: doing their homework for them. Some advice: if you see signs in your child that they are pilfering off the net, cut them off. Force them to write their work on their own. It will be the best stimulus to their mental growth you could ever invent.

I am left with one final dilemma: do I publish the offending student’s IP address to reveal what he or she has done...or do I not? What do you think?

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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The worst kind of student.

Those who have never taught, have never had the chance to learn many valuable lessons about human nature. Some of those lessons, however, can be rather depressing.

I recall once teaching a group of Chinese students from the PRC. They were not the stereotypical Chinese students. They were neither particularly bright - in fact they were a bit dull - nor were they particularly industrious - in fact they were rather lazy.

Typically, whenever set a task that involved speaking, this group of students (four boys) would sit and do nothing. They never even attempted to do the tasks. However, they did mumble to each other in Chinese, throughout. Whenever they were asked to do written tasks, they made relatively little effort and their output was among the poorest in the class. Now, none of this might have mattered much were it not for what they did outside the class.

Every week, this group of students would complain, in Chinese, to the Chinese management of this school that they "weren't learning anything". It transpires that they had been told, in China, before coming here, that they would learn English in "three months". They seemed also to believe that this learning process would occur magically, without any effort on their part at all.

Now, everytime this particular group of students complained, I would get hauled up by management for it. The manager would then tell me things which they had said such as: "He never marks our work"...which were wholly untrue. I made a point of correcting everything they ever wrote. The sessions would turn into a "he said, she said" ritual, in which I was accused of things which never happened - yet it was just my word against the word of these very lazy students.

It was dispiriting teaching them. You see, everyday I would have to stand up in front of them and teach them - while watching them play brain dead, knowing, that they were stabbing me in the back, on a weekly basis.

The funny thing is, that in the very same class, there were students who wrote feedback that I was the "best teacher they had had". The difference was, of course, that the ones who liked my teaching made an effort to do the work - and the ones who didn't, blamed the teacher for their lack of progress, rather than taking a good look at their lack of effort.

Experiences like this one, rather put people off teaching. You see, the teacher is attacked for the students' own failings. The students, in this case, were just not willing to make the effort to learn - but blamed their failure to do so, on the teacher. The management of the school, in question, seemed to side with the students because "they pay the bills" and "we can't afford to lose them". Thus, the teacher is in the strange position of being appreciated by some students as the "best teacher" and attacked by other students on a weekly basis, and by the management of the school, as well.

In the end, such experiences lead one to conclude that teaching is not worth the effort of the teacher - so one is lead to look at other avenues.

This kind of situation could be prevented if there were higher standards of recruitment. If a student is not really motivated to study and is just there because their parents want them to be there, perhaps they shouldn't be there at all. Let them stay in China, for they won't do any good coming here to laze around and complain about everything including the food (they love to complain about that, too). My advice to them: stay home and watch TV. Don't waste the time of your teachers, or the money of your parents. It is better than becoming a toxic presence in a classroom.

Of course, they will never read my advice because they can't read well. So, I suppose I shall just have to wish for a world in which such students only exist in nightmares.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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Laziness in today's students.

In my time as a teacher, I often saw the most surprising laziness in students. Today, one memory came to mind.

There was a student in my class, from Mongolia, who liked, at times, to use the catchphrase: "I'm lazy." to explain why he wouldn't do something. I heard it a little too often from him. He was an unusual boy: very charming in his own way, with an engaging demeanour. He had big dreams for himself but utterly lacked the will to work at them. I didn't see him attaining any of those dreams unless he changed his ways.

One day, I wrote an essay title for the students on the board. It wasn't a long task, really: I just wanted them to write something in the class on a topic that I thought would interest them, to give me something to feedback on their grammar.

Now, my Mongolian student was somewhat short-sighted. He squinted up at the board, from his customary seat at the back of the classroom - then raised his hand and gestured me over to him.

As I drew near, he offered me his pen which, reflexively, I took in hand. Then he pointed at the board and spoke: "Write that, here." he said, presumptuously, nodding at his notebook.

I stood there, pen in hand, with astonishment on my face. This young man was too lazy to walk to the front of the classroom to read the board - but wanted me to write the essay title, again, in his own notebook, especially for him.

He didn't get anywhere. "You are lazy...now go to the front of the classroom where you can see it better."

He looked somewhat surprised at this, but rose slowly from his seat and slouched to the front of the class where he wrote down the title. Then he slouched back to the back of the classroom.

Forty-five minutes later, I gauged that all should have finished the task and asked them each, in turn, to stand and read their work out to the class (for these were second language speakers and the challenge of public speech was good for them).

When it came to the Mongolian boy's turn, he just shrugged: "I haven't done it."

I walked over to him and looked down at his notebook. He sure was lazy, as he himself noted. There on the page was the essay title - and nothing else. He hadn't even written one word. I said nothing but turned to the next student. Sometimes, you have to know when it is pointless to pursue a student. This one did as little as possible, all the time - and there was little chance of changing that.

There are other students like that Mongolian boy. I just thought his particular story was interesting in the way he seemed to think he was entitled to special treatment - but did nothing to deserve it. All the students like him share a common mindset: that the world owes them a living and that success is theirs without effort. However, I think that all of them are going to be rather surprised at what reality has in store for them. The world doesn't tend to reward too highly those who make no effort to strive within it.

It would be interesting to see how the Mongolian boy's dreams turn out. However, I doubt that I will ever get to know.

The funny thing about him is that Genghis Khan is his great hero - yet it never seems to occur to him that Genghis Khan's particular success came at great personal effort his whole life long. It didn't just happen.

How many other young people think that success just happens - and that it is theirs for the taking, without ever trying hard to get it?

If you have any revealing tales, please share them in the comments. Thanks.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)

The absurdity of Singaporean taxi drivers.

Singapore is, in some ways, one of the most absurd places on Earth. Taxi drivers provide a case in point. In Singapore, you don't choose where the taxi goes, the driver does.

Today, as usual, we encountered the common problem of drivers refusing to take us where we wanted to go: they wanted to go somewhere else. Typically, a driver will just shake his head and indicate that he doesn't want to go there. Once, however, a driver actually took us (on New Year's Eve) to near where we wanted to go, but wouldn't stop at our destination - because, to do so, would have made it more difficult for him to get another fare: so he refused to actually stop at our target destination, but insisted on stopping somewhere we didn't want to be. It was ridiculous - but that is Singapore for you, here the customer always comes last.

In Singapore, unlike anywhere else I know of, on Earth, drivers decide whether or not to take a fare to the destination requested. They frequently refuse to go to particular places - despite the fact that Singapore is the most homogeneous place on Earth and there are no "bad" areas: everywhere is essentially identical to everywhere else. Only an arbitrary place name distinguishes locations. So, if you ever visit Singapore and you only have time to see one shopping mall and one "town" believe me you have already seen the whole of Singapore - because it is all the same, everywhere. Singapore is a place without any places.

Think about what it means that Singaporean drivers can refuse to take you where you want to go. A taxi driver is doing a job and providing a service. Imagine they were, instead, office workers. What kind of office worker would be allowed to refuse requests from their boss to work? "No, I don't feel like doing that." "No, I don't want to go to that room." "No, I won't write my report." "No, I won't pick up the phone." "No, I won't relay the message." Yet, taxi drivers, in Singapore, do the equivalent of refusing to do their jobs, every single day of their lives. They pick and choose customers like some mad connoisseur of passengers, deciding which ones and where based on secret measures known only to them.

The powers-that-be in Singapore are multi-millionaires. They are the richest political class in the world. (Singapore is No.1 in the wages of the political class, at least, if not in anything else). So, they don't have to take taxis: they have cars, perhaps even chauffeur driven cars. They don't understand, therefore, the inconvenience to the population of allowing taxi drivers to pick and choose passengers. It should be an offence for a driver to refuse a fare. It should be an offence punishable by revocation of his driving license - and a heavy fine. It should be an offence that is levied without any option for leniency by the judge. If this were so, Singaporeans might actually have a taxi service worth having. As it is, the taxi "service" has an element of dark comedy in it. It is a bit of black joke on the Singaporean public. It is expensive. It is dishonest (they always take a long route if they think you won't notice). It is also unreliable (they tend to refuse passengers when they feel like it). It is not something to be proud of - and it is certainly not "No. 1" in anything except, perhaps, disregard for the passenger and the ideals of customer service.

Many things in Singapore don't work as well as they should - although most things work OK compared to their more undeveloped neighbours (which is always the first cry of Singapore in their own defence). However, Singapore shouldn't be comparing itself to undeveloped neighbours. It should be comparing itself to the best of the developed world. In such a comparison, it rarely comes out as well as it seems to think it does.

There is one good reason why things don't work as well as they should: the ruling class is detached from the concerns of the everyday man in the street because they are too rich to be affected by those concerns - so they just don't see them. At least, that is how I analyze it. When those who rule are wealthy, how can they ever hope to understand the problems of those they rule? In most developed nations, the ruling class is not actually very well off. This is because the salaries of public servants and politicians are usually quite moderate. Hence, in such situations, those in power are in touch with the concerns of all - for they feel the same concerns. In Singapore, however, to rule is also to be rich. It creates a different dynamic - and a different set of priorities from those who rule towards those they rule.

It is sociologically interesting - but it still doesn't help me deal with whimsical taxi drivers. In any other country, any driver will take me anywhere. In Singapore, I have to ask the driver whether he wants to go there. It is hilarious.

It is very unlikely that the powers-that-be will legislate for better behaviour from taxi drivers. A better option for the population of Singapore, therefore would be to behave like taxi drivers for a while: say, the whole month of October. This is simple to do: just refuse to do your job, for no discernible reason whatsoever. Ignore the orders of your bosses and customers alike and opt, instead, to wander around aimlessly in search of something better to do. For that, of course, is precisely what Singaporean taxi drivers do all the time. Were the whole nation of Singapore to adopt the One Month of Arbitrary Wholesale Disregard for The Customer, Boss and Universe Itself, the situation with regards to taxi drivers would become understood by everyone, in power and out.

Of course, no-one is going to do as I have proposed - but it would be funny. It would make clear how absurd the situation with Singaporean taxi drivers is.

A note for overseas readers: car ownership in Singapore is subject to a number of punitive taxes that make it far more expensive than in other nations. As a result many middle class people who would have been car owners in other countries, do not own cars in Singapore. The threshold for income level for car ownership has, therefore, been effectively raised by the legislation. However recent rises in the cost of taxis has persuaded many non car-owners to change their minds: more people now wish to own a car, so as to be in a position to avoid the over-priced taxi "service".

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

We are the founders of Genghis Can, a copywriting, editing and proofreading agency, that handles all kinds of work, including technical and scientific material. If you need such services, or know someone who does, please go to: http://www.genghiscan.com/ Thanks.)