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Argumentative Essay on Cheating In School I will never forget my first experience with "academic dishonesty. " It was my junior year of school and my chemistry teacher was not too adequate, to say the least. He gave his lectures in inhuman speeds and still expected us to understand every pearl of wisdom that came out of his mouth! God forbid we ever asked him a question to clarify the topic he was lecturing about. "Weren't you paying attention?" was the only answer he would give to every question we would ask. The day of our first exam arrived and nobody in the class was really prepared to take it. How could we be with the way he taught that class?
But one of the students was prepared in another way. He had made up a 'cheat sheet', which contained the answer to every potential question that would be on the exam. Before the teacher entered the classroom, the cheat sheet was passed around the class for all of us to copy. When the teacher finally came in and passed out the exam, we all proceeded to use our cheat she! ets to answer the multiple-choice exam with tremendous ease, including me. I definitely knew cheating was wrong, but the whole time I was doing this, it never occurred to me that I was really cheating.
It only seemed to be the most simple and logical solution to avoid a potential "F" on my spotless record. Even looking back now, I do not regret my choice of action and I am almost certain that most students in a similar predicament would do the same thing. Why would anyone cheat when we all know that it is wrong? What's the problem here?
And what can we do to stop it? In order to fix this problem, we need to answer a few questions first. For one, we need to know who is doing this. Next, we need to know why it is being done. Then, we need to know how they are doing this. Finally, we can come up with some potential solutions to this growing problem in our schools.
Who? To answer our first question of "Who cheats?" we can turn to many studies and reports on this topic. The most obvious answer is students, but that really does not tell us much. In recent reports, cheating spans from elementary school all the way up to graduate and professional school students. And it has also been found that a pattern arises as the students grow older. It begins in grade school with something a simple as glancing at another student's spelling test.
In a study done on high school and college students, "approximately 24 % of the girls and 20 % of the boys admitted that they first began cheating in the first grade (Scan, 1969). Then, it "snowballs into more serious cheating in middle and high school, as enrollments swell and students start moving from class to class, teacher to teacher" (U. S. News). In middle school, it escalates to copying a friend's homework assignment and handing it in as his or her own work. By the time the student is in high school, he o!
r she is now using crib sheets, plagiarizing assignments, and even using the Internet to cheat on homework and exams. In a recent study "Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth" on 8600 high school students, " 71 % of students admitted to cheating at least once in a 12 month period, and 45 % have admitted to cheating 2 or more times in a 12 month period" (Josephson Institute of Ethics, 2000). This process continues until the student is either out of school or is eventually caught. "Today, a range of studies shows [the percentage of college students that cheat is] anywhere from three quarters of students to an astonishing 98 percent (U. S. News). Why are the numbers so high?
Why? That brings us to our next question of why the students are cheating at such alarming rates. There are many answers to this question. "Competition for grades, insufficient study time, large workload, instructor pressure, graduate school or job pressure, parent pressure, and influence of friends were among the reasons students gave for cheating" (Put). Another study shows that other reasons include "ineffective deterrents, condoning teachers, and a lack of academic integrity" (Davis, Grover, Becker, & McGregor, 1992). Cheating is just too easy.
In fact, " 95 % of cheaters said they have never been caught" (U. S. News). How can this be? While most teachers do what they can to deter cheating, I believe some just do not care anymore. What's worse, some teachers are the ones that actually enable the students to cheat!
In April of 1997, a school in Detroit was being investigated for allegedly "improperly aiding" the students on the MEAP exams. These practices included, "reading! correct answers out loud while students were taking the test, breaking seals on the packets of the tests before the test date and giving students the vocabulary words [to study from] (Detroit News, 1997), among other things. The teachers wanted the students to pass so badly that they performed these illegal and immoral actions to ensure success. If the students did well, then the teachers look good. It's that simple.
How? How are the students cheating? In all retrospect, cheating has never been easier. While using crib notes and other traditional cheating techniques are still commonly used today, modern technology has made it even easier for cheaters to cheat and get away with it.
The Internet is the big key in all this, which now allows students to download online term papers and chat rooms where students can share science reports and math solutions. Email is also a factor; enabling students to transmit test questions and answers to each other. Hackers can enter the school's mainframe and change transcript information. Cell phones are used to dial multiple-choice answers to alphanumeric pagers and beepers. "Among Y 2 K cheating wonders are pagers and Palm Pilots with infrared technology that can beam messages (and test answers) across the room" (Bruinius, 1999). What can be done?
So what can we do to curb students from cheating? "Teachers' anti-cheating strategies range from talking with students about their mistakes to giving cheaters zeros to simply structuring assignments so cheating becomes extremely difficult" (Education World, 2000). One of the most widely used deterrents by teachers is simply talking to the students about what is cheating and what is not on the first day of class. Just telling them what is expected of the students and what the punishments are for cheating can make a difference. Also, since most students believe that cheating is okay in certain circumstances, try telling the students that all cheating is wrong and that cheaters are liars. "Students tend to shrug off cheating by saying, 'It's no big deal everyone does it" (Education World). Giving the cheating student a zero for the assignment also helps, but make sure to get the parents involved. Students may not like receiving a zero, but they dislike the idea!
of their parents finding out about their deception even more. Parents would most likely follow up the punishment with a grounding at home. "If a student is caught cheating on a test, throw that test away and have the student retake it at a time when at least one parent can come in and supervise" (Education World). This is a good solution since teaching morals and values should be the parents' responsibility. Teachers must also remember to accuse and punish the student only if the student was actually caught cheating red-handed.
Many students who actually worked hard and were wrongfully accused of cheating wind up very confused and frustrated. "Why work so hard if the teacher is only going to accuse me of cheating?" said a high school student who experienced this type of situation. "It only made me feel like he thought I wasn't smart enough to write that kind of report all by myself. It wasn't fair. " Unfortunately, cheating is still a growing epidemic in our nation's schools. But there are many things that can be done in order to curb and deter the cheaters to cheat. I think the best defense against cheating is making cheating extremely difficult.
In my case in high school chemistry class, my teacher did not pay the slightest attention to what we were doing during the test. I am almost positive that, if he had been more involved with his students and with what they were doing, none of us would have cheated. Needless to say, we all received A's for that exam and he did not seem any the wiser to our immoral action. He only taught us that cheating was not only okay but also easy to get away with. Did I ever cheat again after that? I would be lying if I said no.
Luckily, I have not had a need to cheat since my last year of high school and I hope that I will never feel the need to fall back on such deception. Hopefully, the need or the opportunity ever will arise again.
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