German Teenager Gets Job Offer By Trying To Use FOI For His Exam Papers 114
Bruce66423 writes "A German schoolboy has taken exam preparation to ingenious new levels by making a freedom of information request to see the questions in his forthcoming Abitur tests, the equivalent of A-levels in the UK." and SATS in the USA. The media attention from his FoI request has already garnered him an offer of work from another transparency-related organization, the research website Correctiv. “If I have time before university starts I’ll definitely do it,” he said.
Somehow I'm reminded of Kirk (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This may not be true in the Netherlands, but in the U.S., I believe that the issue of where to draw the line is addressed by the government having the ultimate ability to redact any information that it considers to be of sensitive or proprietary nature. Of course, the flip side of this is that in some cases (in the U.S), redaction has included literally all of the information within the documents of the request, save page numbers and other inconsequential information - rendering the point of FOI requests us
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really.
Kirk was in a manufactured no-win situation and the test was therefore faulty: it doesn't matter if you don't know how to lose if you can find a way to still win. Winning is fine.
But this was a paper to test how well he learned his subject. He doesn't want to find out how dumb he is, therefore he cheats. And really that's all this is. It's no more original thinking than working out how to steal the papers or someone else's answers. Someone who finds a different way to steal the papers before issu
Re: (Score:3)
Not really.
Kirk was in a manufactured no-win situation and the test was therefore faulty: it doesn't matter if you don't know how to lose if you can find a way to still win. Winning is fine.
But this was a paper to test how well he learned his subject. He doesn't want to find out how dumb he is, therefore he cheats. And really that's all this is. It's no more original thinking than working out how to steal the papers or someone else's answers. Someone who finds a different way to steal the papers before issuance isn't thinking originally in any worthwhile and meaningful form. Original crimes are not laudable. They're just original.
Well, that's a complete failure to understand the purpose of the Kobayashi Maru scenario.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes. This is an important piece of information, no?
Re: (Score:2)
They explain that. It's not to determine if the cadet (it was given in Starfleet Academy) knows how to handle a no-win scenario, it was to see HOW they handled it. There wasn't a pass/fail (except, I guess, if the cadet curled up under the captain's chair and cried or something), it was a personality assessment.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How is this insightful? Where do you get the idea that he doesn't want to find out "how dumb he is"? He's gone on the record saying "I doubt it will work, and I'm still studying for the exam". More likely he wanted to see what the reaction to the request and the reasoning for declining it.
As for Kirk, I thought the whole idea of the test was to analyse how people cope with a no-win situation - that is not faulty, as they do occur in life.
Re: (Score:2)
I get the idea that he doesn't want to find out how dumb he is by the fact he wanted to cheat.
That he didn't think it would work doesn't mean he wasn't trying to cheat.
FoI requests are legal. Cheating usually means breaking the rules, he's just testing the rules without breaking them.
Re: (Score:2)
Cheat: "To violate rules in order to gain advantage from a situation."
He is specifically trying to find a way around the rules that does not violate the letter of the law. It is ipso facto not cheating.
It's a novel and creative approach, and shows both his personal initiative and ability to think outside the box. I would offer him a post myself.
Re: (Score:2)
And given most FoI requests get redactions, is it really cheating at all?
I mean, he requests his tests. But what he gets back could be the test itself, with the ques
Re: (Score:2)
Or he sucks at taking tests. Most tests lose sight of determining if you've learned the subject matter, those tests are too easy to pass. Instead they focus on trick questions. This is why many test taking strategies exist. For example, a commonly taught technique on a multiple choice exam is to look for two or more similar answer choices to narrow it down... Did you ever stop to t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I havent committed a crime because Walmart isnt out anything with a open box.
Sure, they are. First, those open boxes don't magically become properly sealed closed boxes. That costs Walmart money to do that. Second, there's the guest service issue. Customers aren't going to shop at your non-existent store less often. Instead, they'll take it out on Walmart.
Re: (Score:3)
More likely, he just has a much better sense of humor than you do.
Re: (Score:2)
This kid is a cheater. Plain and simple. Trying to paint him in any sort of positive light is plain sociopathy.
Which rule is he breaking? He's only cheating if he's breaking a rule. Otherwise he's just using the system to his advantage and being a lot more clever than other people his age...
Re: (Score:2)
He should be nominated for a Darwin award for doing something stupid.
Who broke the news? (Score:4, Interesting)
So he made this request, haha, but who informed all the numerous reporters, and to what end?
Re: (Score:2)
You mean some bystander picked it up and made it public? Possible. The story itself doesn't tell.
Anyway, it seems the ministry offers to send it well after the exams, and he would have to pay for printing and shipping.
No Action Needed. (Score:5, Funny)
I would have replied to the request that he would be provided with the information... and stated the date and time of his exam :)
Re: (Score:2)
That's a funny answer, but an illegal one. He took great care to make sure that the deadline set by law for their answer is ahead of the exam date.
Still cheating (Score:3)
That's a funny answer, but an illegal one. He took great care to make sure that the deadline set by law for their answer is ahead of the exam date.
Just because he gets the answers legally doesn't mean he's allowed to use them and not be cheating. Cheating isn't usually illlegal, but it does have academic consequences. Personally I would probably give him a little award of some kind he can stick on his resume (e.g. a commendation for original thinking) but tell him he can't sit for the exam on that date.
Re: (Score:3)
Which AFAIK they also can't do.
He found a valid loophole in the law, the combination of different unrelated government actions. Firstly they created a transparency law (good!) which applies to certain government institutions. Also, they centralized the exams - when I wrote my Abitur many years ago, questions were made locally, by the school you took it, mostly by the teacher who had given the course, so it was based on the material that had actually been taught. There are advantages and disadvantages to tha
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I'm not sure it could be considered cheating if he was legally given the questions by someone with the authority to do so.
Re: (Score:3)
While I do think what he did was cheating and he should haven't been able to pass by virtue of that, this sort of thing does indicate a couple of things, which can be good or bad depending on view:
1. That he's not tied into solving problems the way everyone else is; therefore a creative thinker
2. He's got the guts to do something that a lot of people might consider cheating; he covered his ass by saying "I'm studying anyway"
Too often we complain about the school system being used to create automatons that
Re: (Score:3)
So much for reading the actual article....
He has REQUESTED the exams using a Freedom of Information request. They haven't actually given them to him and are very likely going to find a reason not to.
The article says that he is still studying (revising) for the tests because even he doesn't think that his request will succeed.
Re: (Score:2)
Slight inaccuracies aside in my initial post, I stand by my initial point. Kid got a job offer because he showed creative thinking and some modicum of courage to ask a question most wouldn't have asked.
He may not be talented, but he's enough of a go-getter (or at least can put on a show of being one) and many companies value that, even if it is for a complete bullshit reason. Sometimes the bullshit is what gets feet in the door.
There's an apparently oft-told fable in a company I used to work for in which
Re: (Score:2)
I would bet money she expressed curiosity and interest in his job.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see why he's still doing the automaton thing going to college, though, when he now has a career offer. I dropped out of college because having a career was better, and I had a career; it wasn't worth dropping out of my career for college.
Flawed legislation (Score:2)
Freedom of information is one of those ideas that's such a popular idea no-one will touch the legislation, but the law is typically worded so vaguely that it causes real problems.
Are legislators just lazier than they used to be?
Re: (Score:3)
Freedom of information is one of those ideas that's such a popular idea no-one will touch the legislation, but the law is typically worded so vaguely that it causes real problems.
Are legislators just lazier than they used to be?
They are not lazier. You can find laws from a century ago that are also vague. In fact, making laws vague is and has been common for a very good reason - the drafter knows he can't anticipate all situations, so he deliberately makes the law overly broad and assumes/hopes it is used appropriately and with discretion and thought. The flip side though is when a law is overly broad it opens up the possibilities like this where a person can argue, perhaps correctly, that the letter of the law allows something
Re: If this happened in the US: (Score:1)
Arrested? You mean the police wouldn't just shoot him? Sounds like an achievement to me.
Re: (Score:3)
Had this taken place in the US at a USian university he would have found a reason to arrest him under the USSR^h^hA Patriot Act and/or permanently expelled from uni with no job prospects other than "Do you want fries with that" if he is lucky enough to get one at all. .
Pretty much the type of off-topic post I'd expect from someone that uses the word USian. Why that anyways? Why not USish? USAish? USAn?
Well, I guess when you try to copy and use a made up word enough to get people to think it's a real word, you can use whatever you want to.
Re: (Score:1)
Pretty much the type of off-topic post I'd expect from someone that uses the word USian. Why that anyways? Why not USish? USAish? USAn? Well, I guess when you try to copy and use a made up word enough to get people to think it's a real word, you can use whatever you want to.
(Apparently I made a similar comment [slashdot.org] years ago. Interesting.)
Per a former Spanish teacher of mine, if you take the word for "citizen of the United States" and translate it to English as a literal word, you get United Statesian. I agree that it's not valid English and sounds dumb, but after hearing it all those times, it sounds almost right to me.
Hope theirs is better than the A+ (Score:2)
Because the A+ certification here in the USA is an utter joke.
Are they going to (Score:2)
Is it REALLY cheating? Test to teach. (Score:2)
When I wrote exams for my students I always gave them an outline. The outline was based on the syllabus. My goal was to get them to study the core material which they would need to advance their knowledge. The test was as much a tool to spur learning as it was to evaluate learning. Though I always warned them that there would be one 'zinger' in the lot to help me sort the A's from the B's.
I also had instructors who published prior years exams so you could prep for the current exam. They would often promise
Re: (Score:2)
In my favorite case we got a study guide with several sample essay questions on it and then the difference between the study guide and the final was that the header had been changed from "study guide" to "final exam". I had guessed this and even suggested it to several others in the class. I even went so far as to write essays for each question. Everyone else thought I was nuts but, unfortunately for them, the "curve" was to set the highest score to 100 with no care for the number of As, Bs, Cs, ... too bad
Re: (Score:1)
When it cam
FOI abuses (Score:2)
FOI abuses happen all the time. I get them. There are ways to sometime turn them down depending on the situation. However usually you still have to go through all the motions, do a ton of work, and waste a lot of time. From my experience, if this kid were really smart he would have not only did an FOI for the questions, but for the ANSWERS as well...
Even if the answers do not exist as records, in many cases they would be obligated to actually come up with them. I do analysis all the time for questions posed
Third Party Test Administration (Score:1)
Doesn't this just open up a market for using a contractor to administrate these exams? The questions and answers would become trade secret rather than public record.
details (Score:5, Informative)
TFA (and many articles on the subject - disclaimer: I live in Germany and read local news sources, too) forgets to mention something important which is very likely the reason that he gets job offers:
He didn't just send a "here's my cute idea" letter. He actually studied the law in question, his letter is said to be full of legalese mentioning all the important paragraphs. The letter is so that the agency responsible for handling them is now looking if they can find an actual, valid reason to refuse his request, because they couldn't on purely formal reasons (which they usually use when refusing a request they don't like).
Re: (Score:3)
No they can't, the law also states a deadline by which they have to answer and he made sure the deadline is ahead of the exam.
Transparency-related organizations (Score:1)
"offer of work from another transparency-related organization" it illustrates just so well how the 'transparency related organizations' work and what are their true objectives.
Do they care that guy tried to use flaw in law to get unfair advantage -NO
Do they care if guy knows something and in fact could be an imbecile - NO
Do they care if all this case is silly hype - NO
I guess all these 'transparency-related organizations' ever want is attention, noise, proving somebody (but the best - be it government or c
One more reason why admission tests == bad idea (Score:1)
Mandatory testing specifically for university placement is the bigger problem. It forces people to take paths that are unsuitable for them, just because "the test said so". For that, I applaud the person filing the FoI and hope that none of the snark, redaction, or delays gets in the way.
The Abitur is simply a part of a flawed system where a few mandatory test scores divine out the rest of your life. On the other hand, the US system doesn't have these flaws - it allows more people to receive higher level
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
EXTRA! News Titles Ambiguous Cowards Note
AC also objects to contracted subhead text, study finds.
Re: (Score:3)
Strangely enough the Graun has more opening commenting than the Telegraph - I read both so I get to hear both sides of the news. If you avoid any of the Guardian US "journalists" then it's not quite so bad.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been watching the mainstream papers, the tabloids barely cover the election, I've been surprised by the level of support for Miliband from papers that were Tory backers at the last election. It's honestly left me wondering if they no longer see the Tories as good for the economy (economists mostly say they are not good).
Tories are the millionaires party, if you're not rich then you'd have to be a bit thick to vote for them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Who the fuck writes "but keeps revising in likelihood request is denied". That isn't even English.
I hate to burst your bubble, but that is English, and British English at that. Revise is being used in the sense of to study:
reread work done previously to improve one's knowledge of a subject, typically to prepare for an examination.
"students frantically revising for exams"
Perhaps your knowledge of English, is shall we say .. in need of revision?
Re: (Score:2)
Who the fuck writes "but keeps revising in likelihood request is denied". That isn't even English.
I hate to burst your bubble, but that is English, and British English at that. Revise is being used in the sense of to study:
reread work done previously to improve one's knowledge of a subject, typically to prepare for an examination.
"students frantically revising for exams"
Perhaps your knowledge of English, is shall we say .. in need of revision?
It's interesting that the majority of examples of the word "revise" in the Oxford dictionary is to change things. The only exception is when referring to studying for exams, etc. "Revising" is definitely a word that is not used this way in the US or in Canada, where I grew up.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's interesting that the majority of examples of the word "revise" in the Oxford dictionary is to change things. The only exception is when referring to studying for exams, etc. "Revising" is definitely a word that is not used this way in the US or in Canada, where I grew up.
To me, this usage of revise (to study) is perfectly cromulent. The only problem I have with it is when I use it in this manner around Americans, who basically say "WTF? What are you going to change?"
Re: (Score:2)
Not quite as embarrassing as asking someone in the streets of SF where you can buy a pack of cigarettes (but with the English slang term). It made people pull very very weird face.
Re:Guardian scum (Score:5, Informative)
I see the word: Revise.
I think: To look again. To revisit.
Just because you don't use it in that sense, doesn't mean others can't.
What bothers me about American English speakers is not that they've never heard these words - that's fair enough - but that they can't infer their meaning from the context and from the potential meaning of the words.
Pavement. Yeah, it's an odd word. But it's obviously something that's paved. Paving. Words that you have in your "dialect" too. The inference, however, never seems to be made.
And yet, when Americans/Canadians use words oddly, we're required to understand what they mean.
You don't need to be spot-on, but sometimes just a brief stint in etymology or even thinking of similar-sounding word-roots would help immensely in your understanding of "our" language.
Re: (Score:2)
And, on another note, stop using everything as a verb.
(You will "ace" the test, etc.)
Re: (Score:3)
You mean, stop verbing nouns?
Re: (Score:1)
Give it up Britain, you lost. Get over it. American English is the future, British is the language of top hats and handlebar mustaches. Don't worry, we'll keep you around for historical reenactments.
Re: (Score:2)
And there you go, proving his point...
Re: (Score:2)
When and why did certain dialects of English lose the distinction between "few" and "a few"?
Re: (Score:2)
I think it is clearer to say 'in the likelihood that the request is denied'.
But those 3 extra words take up space on the newspaper page that could have been used for something else (advertising?). Yeah I know I read this off a web-page, but the editors of said page would have been educated old skool and are happy to cut out superfluous words.
As written it sounds like an Indian-English-ism
I only get that effect when I shake my head from side to side as I read the sentence.
Re: (Score:2)
I was more struck by the lack of an articles or possessives. It does sound more stunted than
"...but keeps revising in the likelihood that the request is denied" or somesuch.
Re: (Score:2)
Otherwise known as "The Grauniad", because of the endless typos. Who the fuck writes "but keeps revising in likelihood request is denied". That isn't even English. That's the mentality of the Left wing assholes who produce The Guardian, arrogant, nation-wrecking tossers, who are terrified of open debate. I wonder why.
You certainly read an awful lot into a typo. Reading slashdot must cause you to have regular mental breakdowns.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Classified! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not classified. I'm sure they'll comply with his FOI request for exam questions... on exam day.
Probably not. (Score:2)
If their FOI requests are like ours, probably not. There are strict rules one has to follow including time frames. Provided he did the request enough in advance, failure to produce the results within a very specific allotted amount of time could have big repercussions.
Re: (Score:2)
All they need is to declare it a secret.
Re: (Score:2)
You simply make it stop being a secret just before the exam starts.