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German Teenager Gets Job Offer By Trying To Use FOI For His Exam Papers
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.
Give this kick a commendation for original thinking.
So he made this request, haha, but who informed all the numerous reporters, and to what end?
I would have replied to the request that he would be provided with the information... and stated the date and time of his exam :)
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.
I'm not sure it could be considered cheating if he was legally given the questions by someone with the authority to do so.
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?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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 don't think for themselves; separating yourself from the pack is a good way to get attention. Again, I'm not saying what he did was right, but sometimes bad press is better than no press.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
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.
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.
You mean, stop verbing nouns?
It's not classified. I'm sure they'll comply with his FOI request for exam questions... on exam day.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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 the drafters never intended.
The same thing also happens in criminal laws where laws are made vague so unusual or unforeseeable situations can also be covered, but then you have a cop with an attitude citing or arresting people for things which almost everyone would agree isn't a crime, but which if you look at the law in the right way, is. An example near where I live is a person grew some vegetables in their back yard, and their small plot did so well, they had more than they personally could use. They tried to sell their excess, but the city found out and said that makes them a farm and the permits were thousands of dollars since the laws for the permits only anticipated big farms, not home farming. The city official admitted it was wrong, but said until the council changes the law, that is what she has to follow. The homeowner gave up and began donating the food to a shelter since paying thousands of dollars to sell a few vegetables was ridiculous.
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.
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).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.