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NO CHEATING, KIDS!!
The power of a single picture

Anti-cheating hats

Professor Nattadon Rungruangkitkrai, a teacher at the Kasetsart University in Thailand, was teaching the subject of ethics to his agriculture class. The subject came up of putting ethics into action with everyday things, and he asked his class to think up a way to keep people from cheating on an upcoming test.

The students made several suggestions, but settled on the idea of "anti-cheating hats" that could be worn to keep people from looking side to side at each other's test answers.

So the students designed an "anti-cheating hat" consisting of a simple headband with a blank sheet of paper stapled or paper-clipped to each side.

Professor Rungruangkitkrai told them that anyone who wanted to wear such a hat during the test could do so, but that it would be voluntary, and there would not be any requirement to wear one, nor any punishment for not wearing one. The entire class thought it would be fun, so made the hats and wore them for the test. According to both the professor and the students, they thought it was a neat and fun thing to do. One of the students said that it even helped her concentrate better and helped her make a better score on the test.

But as the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote in his poem, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough, "The best laid schemes o‘ mice an’ men gang aft agley" (often get destroyed)

A picture of the class taking the test was posted on the student body's Facebook page by the KU student board, with no explanation that it was the students' idea. It got so many negative reactions that it was eventually removed. Unfortunately for the university, the photo had already been picked up by the media and gone viral, totally without an explanation, so negative responses just kept pouring in to the university. Senior academic staff at the university have vigorously denied the accusations that the students were pressured into wearing the hats, but the negative responses and accusations did not stop.

The KU student board removed the photo from it's Facebook page and issued a statement apologising for igniting the controversy. They said, "We must apologise for causing differing opinions. We actually intended to make people look at it in a funny way." They went on to say that the anti-cheating hats actually halped the students because the room was small and many students were taking the exam sitting close to each other. The university then started getting negative letters and email in sympathy for the professor and students, charging the university with over-populating classes and not providing enough room for its students. There was no way for the university to win. Even today, there seems to be no end to the negative barbs from people who have reacted to the picture without learning the facts. Such is often the case with media coverage, no matter what the country. So now, the university has reacted by passing a rule that students are not allowed to wear such hats, even if they want to.

The media, in fact, have dug around and found examples of times when "anti-cheating hats" were actually required in other places. According to News.com.au, Thailand’s Civil Aviation Center allegedly used a similar anti-cheating approach. A photo (also posted on Facebook) shows students wearing cardboard boxes on their heads. Another picture has circulated about a class at a grade school in which every student was required to wear a manila folder over his/her head to keep the level of cheating down. (The pictures of these have not been included in this feedback file in order to limit the polution they might cause). Those two cases were cases where it was mandatory to wear the hate, but such was not the case at Kasetsart University. But once people see the picture, it is very hard to get them to understand that.

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