Book Report

    To be an English teacher, you have to believe that knowing how to read is one of the most useful skills a person can have.  By reading you can learn anything, go anywhere, experience what it is like to be another human being, another creature even.

    So God invented book reports.  (In an attempt to buy time to finish reading before he had to hand in a report, Moses dashed those early stone pages to the ground.)

     The idea behind book reports was that each student would get independent practice at reading comprehension without the help of instructor and fellow students.  Each person could choose a subject in which she was interested.

    Something there is that doesn’t love a rule, to paraphrase Mr. Frost.  That seeks, like water descending, the pin hole or rent in the fabric that will allow it to escape the container, to circumvent or nullify a rule.  Or is it to follow a higher rule, like the law of gravity?

      Suffice it to say that always there will be he (or she) who attempts to con the system, in this case, to find his way around reading a book.  They didn’t tell us in education classes that we would spend a lot of time trying to combat cheating.  The English teacher who wants to be able to look at himself in the mirror with some semblance of self-respect will have to deal with cheating on vocabulary tests and book reports.

      I was never very comfortable with the oral report because I always felt for the shy bashful one who hated standing up in front of the class giving a speech.  Then you never knew what sewage would flow from the mouth of certain characters in the room.

    So I depended on the written report.  It killed two birds—giving the student the chance to practice writing in addition to reading comprehension.  They were a pain and took time to grade, especially if I wasn’t familiar with the book being reported on.   I was still shaving using the mirror until colleague Joe relayed a tidbit of information to me.

     Students somehow think teachers are deaf. They self-incriminate at every turn, never in front of the one who will convict, but in front of any-and-everybody else.

     Maxine is charging $10 for a book report, Joe tells me.  What?  Yes, she reads the book (Maxine loved to read), writes the report, sells it to the cheater. 

     She has her rules.  The purchaser has to copy the report in his own hand and destroy the report—no selling it second hand.  Not only does that prevent duplicate reports being handed in by other students (a sure indication someone didn’t read the book).  It keeps the profit in Maxine’s purse.  (As Americans, you have to admire Maxine’s ingenuity and ambition to turn a buck or two with a beloved hobby.)   

     Joe turned to teaching late in life.  He did his student teaching in Nebraska.  His supervising teacher had a shelf full of books for which he had made tests.  The student had three weeks to read the book and then take the test to prove she had read the book.  Joe brought the system with him.  He persuaded me to adopt the system.

     The downside:  making the tests.  It takes a lot of time to make a valid check of comprehension.  The upside:  grading took little time.  Joe used short answer and completion questions.  I opted for multiple choice.

     One day after we had taken a book test, I was straightening chairs after everyone left.  Under a desk I found a slip of paper with numbers 1-30 and a letter beside each number.  A quick check showed that the pattern of numbers and letters matched the answers to the test we had just taken.  The water had found its way through the membrane.  The rule had been subverted.  Some earlier test-taker had copied the answers and had passed them on to another person or persons.

      I could:  make new tests (a lot of work), rearrange he questions, rearrange the correct answers.  I opted for option three.  With computers, it wasn’t too hard to change the answers around so that what was once correct answer “C” was changed to “A”, etc.  Before computers, the test had to be completely retyped.  Before Xerox established itself in the workroom, a new ditto master had to be typed and run through the spirit duplicator.  With computers and saved documents, it wasn’t too hard to change the answer sequence and print new copies.

    Then I had at least two different versions of each test with a different answer key.  I avoided labeling the test because that would make it easy for the cheater to figure out.  Each version had to look like every other version so the cheater would have trouble figuring out which cheat sheet to use.  I had to be able to identify which test key to use to grade each test.

     For many years I numbered each copy of every test so I could be sure nobody swiped one.  I asterisked the last test so I knew how many copies there were.  I made the even numbered tests one version, the odd-numbered another version.  The student put her test number on her answer sheet (if you mark on the test you are in trouble and I will know by the number on your answer sheet who marked on the test) and I would stack all the odd numbered answer sheets in one pile, the even numbered ones in another pile and could grade with the correct answer key.

     Life got a little easier when the library subscribed to a service that provided books AND tests for each title.  I had my own books with tests recommended for students headed for college.  If a student found a book impossible to read, she could, with my permission, substitute another book from the library’s many choices.  I also allowed extra credit for reading books off the library list.  (I had a fair-sized extra credit list with my own tests, too.)

      The library tests were taken and graded on computer.  Each test was ten multiple choice questions.  There were several questions for each book, but only ten were used.  Each time you brought the test up, you got different questions, so that prevented cheating by passing answers to another “reader”. 

      So that stopped cheating?  No.  The librarian had student assistants for every hour of the school day.  Students got an elective credit for working as a library assistant.  One brighter-than-average assistant found a way into the test program.  He brought up people who had read a book.  That person would take the test under someone else’s name.

     To stop that method of cheating, the librarian put the test program under lock and key and administered the test herself.  But we’re not done yet.

     When the student completed the computerized test, the program would grade the test.  The librarian would print out a copy of the test result which showed the student’s name and the title, author, number of points the book was worth (determined by length, reading difficulty, vocabulary, some other factors) and the number of correct answers out of ten.  The student brought me the copy to be filed and received either extra credit or substitute credit for an assigned book.  The computer kept a record of all the tests a student took over his four years in high school.  A student couldn’t get credit for reading a book a book more than once throughout her high school career.

     One bright energetic fellow worked pretty hard to duplicate that print-out with his computer.  He had the facts right, in the right order.  He couldn’t quite manage the company’s “letterhead” which appeared at the top of every test result.  His fraud was soon discovered.  Thereafter, the librarian personally signed each print out.  No library-lady’s signature, no credit.

     Then I retired.  Did the attempt to work the system end when I left?  I doubt it.

     Were my citizens more dishonest than most Americans?  I doubt it.  Something there is that doesn’t love a rule.  It seems human nature to try to get around a rule, to work the system.

     Just ask the IRS.  They could write a book. . . .