Word: essays
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...check the operation of a vague generality under fire, take the typical example, "Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme." The question is asked, "Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?" Our hero replies by opening his essay with "David Hume, the great Scottish philospher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If this be the spirit of the age in which he lived then he was representative of it." This generality expert has already taken his position for the essay. Actually he has not the vaguest idea what Hume really said...
...discussion of the various methods whereby the crafty student attempts to show the grader that he knows a lot more than he actually does, the vague generality is the key device. A generality is a vague statement which means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject might very well mean something to a grader. The true master of the generality is the man who can write a 10-page essay which means nothing at all to him, and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads it. The generality writer banks...
Just exactly what our equivocator's answer has to do with the original question is hard to say. The equivocator writes an essay about the point, but never on it. Consequently, the grader often mentally assumes the right answer is known by the eqivocator and marks the essay as an extension of the point rather than a complete irrelevance. The artful equivocation must imply the writer knows the right answer, but it must never get definite enough to eliminate any possibilities...
This longing may be affected by the type of question (it's a lot easier to cheat on a true-false test than an essay exam) and it is certainly affected by frustration level. If you can't for the life of you remember one out of 100 multiple choice questions, it seems pretty darn stupid to risk the other 99 by looking over someone's shoulder. If you have gone through all 100 and haven't gotten one so far, you might feel you have less to lose by trying to pick up a couple answers the slimy...
...crap shoot in which you win (steal the answer) or lose (get caught). It creates a situation in which the cheater is not committing a crime again his next-desk neighbor, but against a group of obnoxious people who bump his chair while he is trying to write his essay. It's not that proctors aren't nice people--and it is good that someone will do the task--but they really shouldn't have any effect on someone's decision to cheat or not. A student should have to feel as if he is committing a shameful wrong--like...