Question about Pens in school and how they prevent cheating

7 comments

1. When you do written homework or tests here, you have to write in pen.

   You hand it in to the teacher and they mark it.These grades are recorded,it becomes kind of an ‘official document’.

   You have to write in pen to prevent people changing things they wrote when the piece of work is returned to the student with the grade written on it.

   For example,if you do a Maths paper and get (say) 5 (grades are out of 10)…a student could then change their answer (if written in pencil)and tell the teacher that they should have got 6.

   That’s the reasoning behind using pen not pencil.

2. Here (in sweden) I have never met a single teacher that would care if we use pens or pencils. If you are using pencil – wonderful. If you are using pen – fine too, as long as you don’t use red color (as it is a common color that teachers use when they mark your tests or assignments)

   I personally don’t know many people that uses pens, with pencil you can easily erase a mistake – with pen you gotta make a lot of mess.

3. It doesn’t make a difference in Denmark, anymore. You can use what you like – especially since 90% of exams are oral or digital, so it genuinely has no impact. The logic behind it is/was, however, mostly for tests and exams conducted in the old way of pen and paper. The idea is that you’d be able to hide mistakes made with pencil, thus the examiner can’t grade you as accurately as if it was all clearly there (both mistakes and corrections) in black and white. That is also why countries still using pen and paper exams tend to forbid pens that can erase (in my UK uni, they only accepted old-school fountain pens for exams)

4. It’s also a way to prevent cheating if there’s something going on between you and the teacher (for instance in a small town it would be very likely that the teacher is a relative of a friend of yours). In this way not even the teacher can change what’s written. It’s also true the opposite, is to prevent the teacher from changing your answers into something wrong because you have a beef with them

5. When I was in school in Ireland you were allowed use a pen once your handwriting was good enough, it was a sign of being more grown up. We’d be practicing our (cursive) writing and at some point the teacher would give you permission to start using a pen. We were probably in the 7-10 age range, memories are pretty vague from that long ago. Never heard of any other reason other than it is what grown ups use.

6. It’s easier to use a pen because you physically have to press a pencil on the paper, so my hands would get tired. Also sharpening in between takes time, it breaks off,… I don’t really see why you *would* use a pencil. Not even voting requires using a pen here and a pencil is fine.

   Like others pointed out, it’s less likely to be altered afterwards, but I wouldn’t want to take the risk of it being smudged.

7. I would add for me pencils is more for the first draft/reflexion part. You are writing while thinking about the different formule and so and so, and when you are sure of your answer, you write it with the pen.

   I think in school for me there are always be more or less a concensus than any pencil script on the assignement was a draft, and should not be considered.

   Plus, Pencil write worsen with time, and became very light, while you don’t have that problem with pens