A school in India is forcing students to wear cardboard boxes over their heads while taking exams in order to prevent cheating. Well, that’s certainly a creative way to ensure everyone stays honest, I suppose.
Karnataka: Students were made to wear cardboard boxes during an exam at Bhagat Pre-University College in Haveri, reportedly to stop them from cheating. (16.10.2019) pic.twitter.com/lPR5z0dsUs
— ANI (@ANI) October 18, 2019
- It happened at Bhagat Pre-University College in Haveri. Photos taken in the classroom were posted to Twitter earlier this month by Asian News International. They showed dozens of students sitting at desks with the cardboard boxes over their heads as they looked down at exam papers.
- A college administrator has apologized for the school’s methods. MB Satish told BBC Hindi that the school was trying out the unconventional anti-cheating method on an “experimental basis” because they knew of other schools that had done it. Not only that, but Satish insisted that the students were fine with it and even provided their own boxes!
- He still defended the choice despite it being very ill-conceived. Satish said, “There was no compulsion of any kind. You can see in the photograph that some students were not wearing it. Some who wore it removed it after 15 minutes, some after 20 minutes and we ourselves asked them to remove it after one hour.”
- Local officials called it “inhumane.” SC Peerjade, deputy director of the local pre-University Education Board, told the Times of India, “When I got a message on this, I immediately went to the college and ordered the management to stop the practice. I also issued a notice to the college management and am contemplating disciplinary action against them for implementing this idea.”
- Thankfully, the practice has been discontinued. Frankly, if cheating is that much of a major issue in the school, they probably have far bigger issues than a cardboard box over the head is going to solve. Either way, they need to figure out another way of deterring cheating that doesn’t include something so humiliating and frankly, silly.
