An issue that many American schools are facing today is academic dishonesty. It comes in many forms and can be found across the spectrum from elementary school level children to adults seeking higher degrees from colleges and universities. The importance of this issue is underplayed and often schools take the path of least resistance; many schools ignore the problem or put it off as low priority. This is just fueling the fire. The more cheating is ignored the more students will feel at liberty to take advantage of the system. Students cheat for many reasons, but one of the most common answers is: “everyone else is doing it.” The fact is that students in school know when their peers are cheating, and thus feel disadvantaged. America, land of the free and home of Capitalism where hard work equals success, students are easily put off when their peers that cheat receive higher scores than them. This is enough incentive to cheat.
This plays into another reason students cheat, the increased pressure of grades. According to Cheating Is a Personal Fowl students in the past would cheat just to get by and it was often the kids on the low end of the grade scale that would cheat whereas now, more frequently kids who are college bound or close to the top of their class are found cheating. “80% of the country’s best students cheated to get to the top of their class.” The grades put a lot of pressure on students but another main factor of cheating is it is taking the easy way out.
Students are becoming increasingly lazy and are expecting more and more of their work to be done for them. In many students eyes the work is not practicable and not worth their effort. In the past cheating was not worth the risk and the effort that would go into it. Cheating has become so easy in the past ten years that students are finding it impossible to turn down the opportunities to cheat. The technology age has brought students the internet, cell phones, cell phones with the internet, micro cameras and many other resources that were never available before. Not only this, but because it is not the traditional form of cheating students have an easier time justifying their actions. 35% of teens with cell phones have used them to cheat during a test and 52% said they have used the internet to cheat. High Tech Cheating on the Rise in Schools
Disturbingly, this is not only found in teens and elementary level students. A shocking number of graduate students admitted to cheating at least once in the past year. In one discipline more than others; 56% students seeking business degrees admitted to cheating and 47% of non business degree seeking masters students admitted to cheating. It is scary to think that the future leaders of the country are cheating their ways to the top. It is easy to wonder how their practices in the real world are going to differ. People rely on others to do the right thing every day. The fact that more than half of these leaders are cheating in some form or fashion is very alarming. For example; how can a person have faith in their surgeon if they know that person could have cheated through school? These numbers are clearly problematic but often overlooked. It is a growing issue, which may already be out of control. There needs to be some kind of solution.
Graduate Business Students More Likely to Cheat
Cheating is a problem so widespread that it is in every single academic institution in the country, the reason it is underplayed is because no one has come up with a very good solution. Schools have put Honor Systems in place but often students do not get caught. For plagiarism some schools are using electronic scanning programs but as the numbers reveal these methods are not really effective. I hope that in the near future schools can figure out a way to combat the cheating, or if cheating is what is happening, find a way to account for it and grade accordingly. Maybe the United States should try and follow the example of a country that is more successful in their schooling but whatever the change is it needs to happen soon.
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A violation of trust, such as cheating, makes schooling in the 21st century unreliable since it permits for the advantage and the disadvantage of some. Rachel mentions the phrase path of least resistance, an effective expression for this pervasive issue. Since students are not motivated, not interested, don’t care, and refuse to waste their time studying or working on a class assignment they feel no remorse in taking someone else’s knowledge. They take a risk and a shortcut, but they find satisfaction in the fact that a couple days later there will be no punishment. Our schools let this work.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Rachel ponders about the future work ethics of these cheating students. This is an important concept to uncover, because it not only elevates some inexperienced individuals, but it also leaves the rest under the supervision of these superficially intelligent people. After her insight, Rachel should extend the gravity of cheating and state that it can take other forms such as financial dishonesty or even corruption when these students become adults. Who rightfully deserves an award, an A+, or a passing grade if it’s clearly getting easier to be deceiving? How does this question the validity of society as a whole and the moral and ethical values we pass on to the youngest minds? This is a point that Rachel should’ve taken more into account.
On the other hand, she succeeds at indicating how technology has pushed this contemporary phenomenon even further. She considers how the accessibility of tiny gadgets only furthers academic dishonesty. Instead of cheating in the old traditional forms of looking at a neighbor’s paper or writing down on a small cheat sheet, pupils turn to their palm where a helpful device sits waiting to spit out the knowledge they can’t. Taking this issue even further, Rachel attempts at finding solutions but doesn’t really offer alternatives. Her suggestion about looking at another country with a low cheating rate can be beneficial for the U.S. but I also believe that within our own society there are more answers. The inequality and injustice that can be found anywhere in the world takes life in the social institutions that make up the United States—institutions like our schools where the most vulnerable of our citizenry find it acceptable to get their way through lies. There are numerous reasons why cheating is so prevalent, goes unnoticed, or even when it is acknowledged it’s taken lightly. No wonder it continues.
I can definitely see how cheating would be a major problem in our country. I have seen it throughout my schooling, from elementary school up until now in college. Coming from a high school, which was very harsh on cheating, I never even considered cheating in college because I was used to the presumed repercussions I would face. But cheating is fairly prevalent at our own university, and it’s because there’s such pressure to receive good grades. It’s always disheartening when you do worse than someone on a test and you know that they cheated. If someone can get away with cheating and get good grades, that’s as good as any excuse for cheating.
ReplyDeleteThere is such a pressure over grades in our school system that when you read that 80% of the country’s best students cheated to get to the top, it’s really not all too surprising. But the pressure over grades obviously isn’t the only reason. Like the rest of our nation in many aspects of life, students are lazy and cheating is the easy way out. Like the article says, with all of the technology that’s been made available to us today, cheating has become a fairly simple task. Not only is it easier to cheat, but also cheating doesn’t even seem as if it’s that big of a deal anymore.
Cheating is an immature act that you’d associate with elementary school kids and middle school kids. When a high school student cheats, it’s assumed that they’re a bad kid, or something to that effect. Which is why, like he said, the number of grad students who are recorded as cheaters is pretty disturbing. But once again, the pressure to succeed at the highest level in our country is of paramount importance, so students often have to resort to cheating just to get by. If not to get by, students cheat to meet the expectations of their peers.
I doubt there’s one school that is without cheating, and this needs to change. More schools should crack down and make students face harsher repercussions to reiterate that cheating shouldn’t be an alternative to studying.