Cheating
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 violating laws or rules to gain an advantage at something. People today cheat in many different ways –academically, professionally, and financially ¬¬– and for many different reasons. Americans are no exception. While some types of cheating may be more justifiable than others –stealing food, for example. There is no denying that cheating is common in America today. Americans are not only cheating in many areas but are not feeling guilty about it. Sadly, but true, cheating has become acceptable in American culture.
The Damages of Cheating
There are many meanings of the word cheat the meaning that sticks out the most to me is, to be unfaithful to somebody, to have a sexual relationship with somebody other than a spouse or regular sexual partner says MS Encarta. Relationships end everyday due to cheating and the emotional scares of cheating or being cheated on can stay with a person forever. Not only does cheating effect the person that has been cheated on, but it also affects the cheater, friends, and family members as well.
I personally learned about cheating at a very young age when my parents got divorced. Being only four years old when my parents first split up it was hard for me to understand why my father was not around anymore, but going to see him every other weekend at a new house with a new woman, I quickly learned.
Ethics and the Current Cheating Epidemic
There is an epidemic of cheating in American universities. Students are finding easier and more efficient ways to cheat. Morals and morality are changing. Students, members of the younger generation, and teachers, members of the older generation, differ on what is cheating. Morality even differs amongst students.
With each chapter, the authors sought out a few objectives. In chapter one, the authors explored some tools to determine cheating. Cheating occurs due to the manner of incentives. It is a feature in almost every human activity, as it involves getting more for less. This leads to the idea that some incentives can be so strong that they can have surprising effects. The authors were able to back this idea up very well. With the examples they provided, teachers had an incentive to cheat for their students, since poor test grades could lead to their unemployment. Sumo wrestlers took part in arrangements of match fixing, because ranking and winning records were more important than anything else. Here, the economic incentives outweighed the social and moral incentives. However, Paul Feldman’s experiment with bagels on the honor system was an example of moral incentives outweighing the social and moral incentives. In chapter two, the authors attempted to demonstrate that a group could take advantage of another group through information exploitation, just as long as they had information that the other group didn’t have. This is another demonstration on how incentives, depending on how they are used, can have unexpected effects. The authors were able to validate their points in this chapter well, through the examples of the Ku Klux Klan and real estate agents. Kennedy played a major role in exploiting the Klan through the information he infiltrated from them. Real estate agents are using the information they know to sell their own home at a higher price than their own clients, as there is not much of an incentive to sell a client’s home at a higher price. Chapter three is the author’s attempt to demonstrate the inner workings of drug dealer...
The Product of an Environment
A world that demands perfection is only more likely to create imperfections. In the article “ Who’s Cheating Whom?” written by Alfie Kohn, he deconstructs cheating in school from why students cheat to the underlining cause. He sheds light on the fact that cheating could in fact be mainly caused by the environment our culture has created for students. Cheating is most often seen in situations where students find what they’re learning to be boring or something they have no interest in.
Counselor, Esther Perel, in her article “Why People Cheat,” provides insight on how common affairs are. Perel’s purpose is to disclose that infidelity is as common as it is due to human nature. She adopts a professional tone in order to make the information she is presenting more believable.
Recent surveys conducted on college students indicated that upwards of 76% of undergraduate students admit to having cheated on a quiz, exam, or paper. These shocking statistics, indicative of what some are calling an epidemic, show that cheating is a problem that deserves national attention and authoritative intervention. Students who cheat not only sacrifice their own integrity and conscience, but also obstruct themselves from obtaining an actual education. In order to combat this increasing trend, some schools are contemplating new, harsher punishments for cheating. In Case 15 “To ‘D’ or not to ‘D,’” educators suggested that the transcripts of students caught cheating should be branded with the letter D, indicating to employers and graduate school admissions officers that the student participated in academic dishonesty. Opposing parties argue that sometimes students make mistakes and that the student’s future should not be determined by a one-time offense. Regardless, academic institutions failing to recognize cheating as a serious problem face many potential consequences, such as tarnishing the school’s reputation and attracting students who are more likely to attempt academic dishonesty.
This student is one of the brightest in his class back at home, so it 's school system decided to sponsor them in a study abroad program. Also, this program requires him or her to maintain a certain GPA to continue to study in whatever school they 're placed in. So, they make sure each day they come to class, they 're at the top of their game because they know how crucial it is for them to not screw up. At some point throughout the semester, the student 's grade begins to decline and they start to panic. The thought of cheating begins to creep into their head at night. They know they have to keep their grade up so they won 't be kicked out the program sponsoring them to study here in America. This student is already balancing school and work and is reaching their uttermost limit. So, in mist of everything, the student decides to cheat to get an edge on his studies and ultimately gets caught and send back home. This hypothetical situation is more real than one may think. Students everywhere are pressured by their school system or scholarship program to maintain a certain
Lying, Cheating, Breaking Promises, and Stealing
“A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world” is a quote that Albert Camus once said many years ago, however it’s still quite relevant today. People are starting to lose the sense of ethics and more “wild beast” are being let loose in our society. This society is starting to look darker and darker and it’s hard to believe that it will ever get better, but some people believe that one day it will. There are many reasons that our society seems like it’s failing, but I believe that the four main reasons are lying, cheating, breaking promises, and stealing.
First, lying is an aggressively debated topic, and most people believe that lying can be good or bad depending on the situation.