Why Do People Cheat?
"I’m preparing for the real world. Business is unethical. Cheating is just good training. I’ll be better able to handle what’s put at me when I get out." "‘Oh, it’ll only be this once’ or ‘Everyone else does it, so why shouldn’t I?’" Sly glances at a neighbor’s work, an open book on the lap, or even high-technology methods—the resources of the cheater are many and varied. Whatever the methods, there are many statements like those above to justify cheating. For example, in the United States, surveys show that more than half of all students cheat, or have cheated, during their school years.
Cheating, though, is a problem almost everywhere and everyone at one time or another has cheated. But why is cheating so widespread? Even if it is a way of getting higher grades at school, is it really worth it?
Why do people cheat? To justify the practice, some students claim that school is boring and that they prefer to spend their time on things that really interest them instead of studying. Others say that they are virtually forced to cheat.
However, not everyone feels the need to make excuses, as a poll in the USA shows. Many of the young people questioned admitted that one of the main reasons for cheating was simply laziness. Some of them admitted that they did not cheat when they had studied their lesson. If this is really the case, anyone tempted to cheat should consider the following warning in the book of Proverbs: "The one working with a slack hand will be of little means." (Proverbs 10:4)
"Success is one of the reasons people cheat." (McCabe 285) With these words the NASPA Journal touches on another factor that is often mentioned by students. For example, years ago, good grades were desirable. Today, they are a necessity if students plan to apply to college. Cheating has gained greater acceptance as students try to cope with academic pressures. Students have been affected by these pressures, as is shown by a survey organized among 160,000 young Americans. Sixty percent of them said that they studied in order to pass tests and only 40 percent in order really to learn. Randy Herbertson, president of the student body at Colorado University, thus claims that "cutthroat competition" (Hollinger 297) pushes students into "desperate actions," (Hollinger 297) such as cheating.
Is cheating the best way? Granted, the pressures to m...
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...eater] steal no more, but rather let him do hard work, doing with his hands what is good work." (Ephesians 4:28)
Cheating can set a pattern that can lead to a practice of lying that may involve more serious matters. In the first place, the harmlessness of cheating is notoriously disputable. What the cheater perceives as harmless or even beneficial may not be so in the eyes of the deceived.
Cheating, no matter how innocent it may seem to be, is so destructive to relationships. The credibility of the cheater is shattered, and there may well be a permanent breakdown of trust. Out of fear and human weakness, a person may be tempted to seek refuge by cheating. That is the course of least resistance or mistaken kindness.
The one that works hard at studying gains the satisfaction of truly earning his grades. Even if he does not in later life use every detail that he has learned while in school, he leaves school with knowledge or skills that he can use beneficially for the rest of his life. Moreover, his mind has been broadened, and he has received good training in developing strength of personality. The cheater? He soon discovers that the one he has really cheated is himself.
In this final chapter, Christian Miller speaks about cheating. There is a cheating behavior that many people do for various reasons. This assumes that the cheater might not be the one who is advantaged. Most humans today cheat when the opportunities arise. In studies, it is clear that many students cheat while in college. Of the many students who cheat, only a small fraction of them get caught. In a very large group of people, it was seen that only 3 people stated that they have never cheated while in school. In one case, a student found an exam on the printer and mass distributed it to the class and the class finished the exam quickly and scored higher. This made the teacher skeptical and a retake was made. It is clear that cheating is very prominent on college campuses. In an experiment, participants were told that they could only take 5 minutes on a
With his charismatic nature that allowed him to connect with all the groups of the opposition, Khomeini led the revolution and overthrew the Shah. For the religious and traditional masses of Iranians, he represented authentic Shi’a Iranian culture. For the idealistic students who were the leaders of the revolution, he represented unconventional defiance against the Shah’s regime. Khomeini understood the pain and alienation of all of his followers, who felt separated from their own Islamic culture as a result of the Shah’s westernization, and his charisma allowed him to unify the opposition against the Shah. With mass demonstrations all throughout Iran that immobilized the country, the Shah had no choice but to abdicate his position as monarch
That stomach churning feeling of guilt for many seems to appear as a small price to pay when completing an act of academic dishonesty. Colleen Wenke wrote an essay on cheating eighteen years ago called “Too Much Pressure”. In the past fifty years, the number of students who admit to cheating has increased fifty to seventy percent(Gaffe). Many people wonder what leads the students to make this unjust decision. Today, the reason for a rise in cheaters is because of how easy it has become, leading many students to the false conclusion that they aren’t breaking any rules; It is simply viewed as a shortcut to success in the classroom and beyond.
“The Tiger’s Bride” by Angela Carter takes a very peculiar look into the customs of patriarchal society. At first, it seems like a normal short story with its display of women as objects of men, but as the tale develops, the reader finds themselves in a completely different realm of humanity; one where a woman can define herself without the constraints of social masculinity or femininity. By reversing the traditional binaries of male and female, Carter successfully demonstrates her ability to expose the embodiment of women as objects, and to abolish sexist structures of society.
Khomeini indoctrinated the youth of the nation through the schools. He was against freedom of speech and arrested those who voiced opposition to his regime. Khomeini was very anti-west and wanted to undo some of the westernization policies of the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini instituted many new policies that followed Islamic principles, such as the oppression of women, the banning of Western culture, and implication of shar’ia law. He remained in power until his death in 1989.
“Drug use is associated with an outstanding 20-40 percent of criminal activity in the U.S. today” (Keene, 2005, p.3). The use of illicit drugs can almost always be considered when discussing property crime, theft, burglary, murder, rape, aggravated assault, etc. There is a significant relationship between drug abuse, of both legal and illegal substances, and the effects it has on crime. The major correlations between drugs and crime portray primarily in heroin, cocaine, pcp (Phencyclidine), and opiates. However, alcohol even though it is legal, has an impact on crime more than most people realize. Ordinarily much prevention to include the increase in rehabilitation centers, heightened levels of law enforcement, stricter laws, and the legalization of illicit drugs may be tactics to limit drug use and crime.
Situations of cheating have seemed to become more and more commonplace when the student is bored by the subject material, poor teaching and or feels they have no use for the knowledge. Kohn even states in his article, “cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming.” This infers that if a student were attending a school interested in learning about art, the student maybe more inclined to cheat in a business accounting class due to the fact the student would find the subject material irrelevant to them and their future. Students seem to be less inclined to cheat and it “is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor”” (Kohn). To simplify everything mentioned above; students are inclined to cheat in school when they are disinterested in the subject material and or are overwhelmed by in assignment or finally the result in a poor teacher. Everyone who has attended school can relate to this in some way or another, most people do not want to retain knowledge they have no interest in or use for in their
Gender is a concept that has been socially constructed to identify people as male or female, masculine or feminine. The concept is used as to regulate the way people live and is something that influences the representation of female bodies in novels. Gayle Rubin’s article, “The Traffic in Women” uses several theorists, such as Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss and Engels to understand the role of the women and show how they are oppressed and weak in comparison to men. Angela Carter reinforces Rubin’s beliefs by sharing similar ideas of male dominance in her novel, The Bloody Chamber. She demonstrates how gender is a reflection of the body in stories such as, “The Snow Child,” “The Erl-King” and “The Tiger’s
Resulting from the numerous pressures of high school, academic cheating places a large amount of stress on the minds of American teens. To begin with, low self-esteem and a lack of morals prompt a student to cheat to maintain an acceptable grade. When students pick on a less academically inclined student, the unfortunate student will loose confidence in himself and resort to cheating, cheating that will begin a downward spiral of negative effects. Furthermore, if failing grades persist and plague the student, one will cheat to halt the continuation of unacceptable grades. Secondly, loving parental pressure will generate the need to cheat in school. For example, a child, who is a good student, will cheat, to prove to their parents that they are smart, and that they can achieve their goals throughout their schooling. Additionally, parents want their children to follow in their footsteps in the aspect of the education that they received; therefore, more pressure will be enfo...
Everyone has cheated on something at some point in their life, whether it is in a game, on a test, or in a relationship, everyone has done it. Cheating is anything that involves breaking a rule, or getting an unfair advantage. Schools are one of the most popular places people cheat. Many people down play cheating and use excuses like, “He shouldn’t have let me see his paper,” or, “I am just using my resources wisely.” But, what causes people to cheat? Students cheat in school because of laziness, high standards or pressure to do well, and misunderstanding.
Cheating on academic work is a serious issue that most students admit to doing at some point in their academic career. Elite students are surprisingly the culprits of cheating, but hide it well. (Romm, para 5) Cheating is such a large issue that “70% of students from a sample of 1,800 from nine campuses said they had cheated at least once during their college careers.” (Schneider, para 9) Students cheat on academic work because of different, ongoing pressures in their lives. Understanding the student’s motives and pressures are essential to preventing cheating from occurring in the future. Students cheat for different reasons specific to them regarding their priorities, pressures and because of how easy it has become. Even though eliminating cheating will not happen, there are actions that educational professionals can and should take to prevent most of it from happening so often. Therefor cheating problems are minimized and have a positive impact on the student’s education and understanding of concepts.
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
From a young age we are taught the differences between right and wrong, but as we get older the line between moral and immoral is often blurred. Things that were once thought of as unacceptable are now perfectly fine in our minds. Have you ever seen anyone cheat on an assignment or exam? Do you know anyone that’s been expelled from school for cheating? What if it was discovered that a U.S. senator plagiarized his college thesis paper? Imagine if it got out that one of the most respected universities in the U.S. was involved in a huge fraud scandal that involved thousands of students. Academic cheating is a terrible offense because it is unethical, self-degrading, and can be detrimental to the learning environment.
People say cheating has so many forms, but the worst one would be cheating in a relationship. A cheater is someone who cheats on his partner; someone who systematically betrays his partner either on a physical or emotional level. About a week ago I thought cheating was okay,but now I realize the harm it could cause to their significant other. True love doesn’t hurt, true love protects, and cares. Cheating can cause someone to have a mental break down, and leads to a complete loss of respect. When it comes to relationships, remaining faithful is never an option; loyalty is everything.
Temptation is another reason for cheating in exams. The birth of internet brought the ability to quickly and efficiently transmit information on anything from anywhere, right to our fingertips with sites. The sites cater for students by providing pre-written reports and essays that you can purchase or download for free. Mobile phones with internet increases the chance of cheating in exam rooms.