In College, high school, and middle school cheating has become a common occurrence on assignments of all types and varying difficulty by students in all levels and types of classes. So how exactly do all these students cheat? Even more curious, why do so many of them go on to cheat even though they understand that it is wrong and could have dire consequences if they are caught. What are the consequences of cheating other than those that are disciplinary? The four types of cheaters can be classified as “addicts”, “desperados”, “bandwagoners”, and “subconscious”. The addicts are those students who cheat on every assignment, whether it is homework, tests, quizzes, or papers. They will resort to looking at other students, getting papers from former students, and anything else it takes to pass the assignment and consequently the class. They are driven to do this as they don’t care enough to do the work themselves and spend their time doing what they want to. These students are typically in lower level classes and are dishonest, deceitful, and untrustworthy. Addicts are those that cheat throughout their entire educational career and pass of the work of others as their own regardless of the consequences to others. They do not care that the people they cheat off of can also be held responsible for punishment. Recently at the University of Kent in Canterbury a student was expelled for copying and pasting sentences from internet resources into his papers throughout his three years of attendance there. The student admitted to cheating as he felt that doing so was alright because he wasn’t caught the first time and thought he could get away with it from then on. The desperados are students who are so desperate to get good grades an... ... middle of paper ... ...assmate. The subconscious cheater is also the least harmful form of cheating as it is accidental and not done on purpose to boost grades and won’t create as great an illusion of ones’ intelligence as the other forms. Almost every student has cheated at one point or another for some reason they use to justify it and they could be any one of these forms of cheaters. Although all these types of cheaters will attempt to rationalize their cheating with various excuses and reasons there is no real justification. They all know it is the wrong thing to do, but will cheat anyways as they can get away with it and it will create the illusion of greater intelligence for themselves and that is a problem for the youth of America. It will make students learn to cheat better instead of actually learning the material assigned to them, resulting in a less intelligent generation.
Strom, P., & Strom, R. (2007). Cheating in middle school and high school. Educational …..Forum,71(2), 104-116. doi:10.1080/00131720708984924
If a teacher is unfamiliar with current advancements in the digital world, it is possible that they will miss the most obvious of cheaters. Because the student is never punished or caught, they assume the teacher does not consider it cheating. In some cases, schools are responsible for the rise in cheating because of the way curriculum is presented. In an article written by the Atlantic, a teacher received an anonymous letter from a successful college student stating that he had cheated all throughout high school. He told the author he cheated “because the grade [he]would have otherwise been given was not reflective of [his] true learning” (Lahey). In other words, he felt the teachers were giving him exams that were not accurate representations of the material he had learned. If students are giving themselves excuses for their cheating, that feeling of guilt will subside, and they will not view the action as wrong. Many think they are not at fault if they do not get caught or because they are just trying to keep up with their classmates who are cheating as well. These are the students that contribute to the statistics, the ones who are adding to
So, to help students across the country cheat better, saving themselves both from easy detection and from incurring the wrath of insulted faculty, and leading to a much more harmonious school environment, I offer the following tips, based on recent experience:
Pressures from society to obtain a successful career require achieving an education in most cases. In today's economy having a thriving career could depend on our educational background as part of the ingredient to fuel our lifestyles. Students attending high school or college can relate to the pressures of sustaining adequate grades. Students who are overwhelmed with trying to maintain higher GPA standards push the academic barriers using technology to cheat. Our society is more advanced with technology such as computers, cell phones, text message systems, as well as various other electronic devices that could provide the avenue for a desperate student seeking a way to cheat in order to receive a higher GPA score. According to Ad Council (1999),"Grades, rather than education, have become the major focus of many students" (Ad Council, 1999). For those students in high school maintaining high GPA's could equal college scholarship programs needed to attend college. Students with peer pressures as well as pressures from parents to achieve higher grades could thrust students who are not motivated to study, to resort to cheating as an easy solution to an unethical problem. This research paper will discuss ways in which students are using technology to cheat. Other aspects of this paper will include statistics on academic cheating as well as ways instructors are catching students cheating. The pros and cons after using cheating detection programs as well as statistics that show significant changes after using the detection programs will also be discussed.
Cheaters are becoming more common among young people. Three out of four students surveyed said that they have cheated in high school. This statistic shows that teachers and parents should be concerned about which direction these students are heading. The biggest influence on the act of students cheating is social institutions such as family, school, and mass media. These institutions all play roles on what a student values when it comes to the battle between academic honesty and dishonesty. Social theories such as, the Bystander Effect, the Strain Theory of Deviance, and the Social Norms Theory further our understanding about the reasoning behind cheating.
In conclusion, cheating is a dishonest action, and its effects could tremendously impact other people around. Alerting authority figures about dishonesty actions can help motivate students to learn the subjects thoroughly and build meaningful life experiences. Although we might lose a friendship, but in the long run, friends will be thankful, since who knows if they are in a situation, where they actually need to use their knowledge, in the workforce they are
There is an ever broadening problem spreading throughout colleges all across America: cheating. Is it a serious offence or just a harmless crime? Cheating is on the rise, but schools and colleges are not far behind with ways of dealing with it. Mark Clayton deals with this issue in his essay entitled “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On.”
Cheating is summarized as when one person steals another person's thoughts or ideas. Dante shows perfectly in The Shadow Scholar, how easy it is to cheat. The students are using his brain and ideas, just so they don’t have to put in the
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
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.
Cheating is a big issue that has reached the most competitive campuses around the United States. It is increasing more and more with the new technology that we have in the 21st century because students have easy access to many sources of information. Cheating is something all students have done at some point in their lives, but as they reach a higher academic level, they are faced with more rigorous consequences that can affect their futures in many different ways. Cheating might be seen as an easy way to obtain a good grade, get into a good college, or maintain scholarships or financial aid, but the consequences could affect the life and the future of the student.
...Almost every student nowadays can admit to cheating at some point in their educational career, but motives as to why they cheat vary and can’t be narrowed down to one reason. There are many excuses as to why all levels of students chose to cheat no matter how wrong or unexpected it is. Cheating is a large problem, but members of universities and schools can discourage it and try to prevent it as much as possible. Not only should it be frowned upon, but it also should be a priority to make it next to impossible to do. Advisers can reduce the temptation of cheating by significantly decreasing the amount of true and false and multiple choice questions on exams and quizzes. Also by understanding the students social and parental pressures in a person at that age’s life is important and contributes to decreasing the amount of students cheating in schools and universities.
We might want to first follow that question with another question. What is cheating and why do so many people do it? Most people would agree that cheating is deceitful and one who obtains answers by cheating is not practicing good integrity. We could further add that cheating also prevents the student from having to put in long hours of studying and preparation. Recent technology has made this “time saving method” even more efficient.
Misunderstanding, pressure, and laziness are not good reasons to cheat and the effect of the consequences are not worth it. You can end up with an F, in detention, written up, kicked out of school, and with marks on your permanent record. There is no way to justify cheating, no matter how hard people try to. No matter what happens, students will continue to cheat, it is inevitable.
Cheating among students has been a well-known problem which is difficult to gain knowledge of. There are different ways of cheating in exam; students can copy from each other, write short notes on their hands or other body parts, use of mobile phones, and others methods. Therefore, the intent of this paper is to discuss the causes and effects of exam cheating.