Critical thinking... at a premium

I've heard people rail about students and their lack of critical thinking. I've seen it a bit first hand, but nothing too serious. Here or there a kid, nothing massive. This is still true, but I've had some incidents today. Must share now.

1) A clever freshmen in my class today was finishing a basic sentence structure review worksheet. He's one of the kids in the class who knows his stuff with this, but he wanted to get the work done so he wouldn't have homework and could talk for the remaining few minutes of class. I caught him taking another student's completed worksheet, I assume with the plan of copying. I returned the worksheet to the owner and warned student-in-question that he should not copy. I told him it was okay to ask classmates for help, since that is a verbal communication and does require some thinking, but mindless copying is not a good idea. I came back a few minutes later, and he was copying again... from another student's paper. I returned the paper to the owner, took his, and ripped it up. I felt bad that it was extreme, but I wanted to be really clear about the copying issue. I gave him a new one and reminded him of the due date, just in time for the bell to ring and end class.

Now, I'm not upset as much about the copying issue, although that is an issue. My frustration comes from how idiotic this student is. I mean, okay, fine, you want to copy. Ask some student for his worksheet, pack up both in the binder, and copy next period, when no one will be noticing! I don't want to teach him sentence structure AND copying, but the thought crossed my mind.

2) My students finished reading "The Most Dangerous Game" last week. I'm grading their workbooks for the grading period. One student - quiet, but studious, attentive, high effort, good grade - had some good comments in the margin of the workbooks about the story and I was impressed. The last question in the workbook says something like, "What do you think happened to Rainsford and Zaroff at the end of the story?" Although the story isn't totally hit-you-over-the-head obvious, but Zaroff sets it up by stating that in a head-to-head, one man will feed the dogs and the other will sleep in the bed. The story ends by saying that Rainsford slept in the bed. Therefore, if Rainsford slept in the bed, Zaroff fed the dogs with his body. Right?

Well, this student wrote that he thought the guys became best friends and stayed on the island to hunt together. SIGH! Really? Are you sure, student?