When referring to the concept of cheating, there are many definitions that a person may think of. According to Dictionary.com, there are three ways of viewing the term and thus three corresponding definitions. Nevertheless, the unified theme in the idea of cheating is the use of fraud, deception, and dishonesty (Random House Dictionary). Unfortunately, this is a notion that is continually acknowledged as acceptable. One scenario that is commonly concentrated on is the act of cheating in education.
Louise asked:
What I regard as cheating is considered OK by many American university students — one survey revealed that as many as 75% of the interviewed students had purchased essays, term papers or even their masters theses from other writers, usually through online "paper mills", instead of doing their own work. One student responded to the question Why do you cheat? by saying "If you're not cheating, you're not trying." I am bitter and struggling for my grades and wish I could find a way to rationalize cheating, because it seems I am being a sucker by not doing it. Is there a new philosophy that makes cheating laudable because it is so prevalent and because there is no benefit to not doing it except a feeling (useless) of virtue?
(Klempner).
Although the thought of cheating is largely considered an acceptable practice, it is completely unethical in various principles. In this essay, my goal is to convey the principle that cheating is unethical according to virtue, deontological, consequential/utilitarianism ethics and moral relativism. Moreover, I will explain why everyone should agree that cheating is a detrimental action that should not be encouraged.
In order to achieve this lofty goal, my paper has been arranged int...
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...erent basis, each basis depends on rational decision-making skills. Those who do not employ rationality should not be applauded for using underhanded methods for personal success and although a group may unify in irrationality, if you maintain your morality you will always prevail.
Works Cited
Gowans, Chris. "Moral Relativism." 9 December 2008. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 24 February 2011 .
Klempner, Geoffrey. The 10 Big Questions. 1999. 21 February 2011 .
Martin, Clancy, Robert C. Solomon and Wayne Vaught. Ethics across the Professions: A Reader for Professional Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Random House Dictionary. "cheat." 2011. Dictionary.com Unabridged. 21 February 2011 .
When Professor John Doe assigned this reading assignment, I had really no idea what academic book would appeal to me. I definitely wanted to choose a book that would impact me in the long run and that I would benefit from. When I told my brother about the book, he said that he was just finishing a book called “The Cheating Culture, Why More Americans Are Doing More To Get Ahead” by, David Callahan. When he quickly explained what the book was about I knew that was the book I was going to read. I figured that this would be a good choice, because everywhere you look these days you see cheating. This book was published back in 2004 so even though it is a decade old, I do believe that many of the examples in the book are still problems, if not, even worse today than they were a decade ago. Weather it is kids in school, athletes, or the average business man. Everyone is cheating and trying to cut corners to get ahead. Nearly everyone has cheated in their life rather you would want to admit it or not. Reading this book, I was hoping to learn exactly why so many people try to cheat, and what alternatives people could take to prevent from cheating.
“For every clever person who goes to the trouble of creating an incentive scheme, there is an army of people, clever and otherwise, who will inevitably spend even more time trying to beat it. Cheating may or may not be human nature, but it is certainly a prominent feature in just about every human endeavor. Cheating is a primordial economic act: getting more or less” (21). This quote is important because it proves how everyone has cheated once. In many cases it is true, people often cheat on tests or even on their diet. Not everyone can live up to their expectations. Some may justify it, others proudly proclaim it, and others will try denying their cheating vigorously. Most people consider cheating as a bad and unwise action. In this novel, it gave two examples of cheaters, school teachers and sumo wrestlers. It shows how both authors can take two different people and still find something similar with both of them, like cheating.
Thiroux, J. P., & Krasemann, K. W. (2009). Ethics: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
(1) Schafer, Karl. "Assessor Relativism and the Problem of Moral Disagreement." The Southern Journal of Philosophy 50.4 (2012): 602-20. Web.
First of all, cheating is morally incorrect. We learn this in the earliest stages of childhood and throughout our life. It is a general assumption that cheating is wrong. This is because cheaters are frowned upon in society. Does it ever feel right to cheat? Of course it does not; morally, cheating is wrong.
Cheating means acting dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain a benefit, in achieving a task or acing an exam. Many factors can affect why many students choose to cheat. First, the temptation of being able to take just a few lines from the Internet can be convincing. Second, achieving better grades, Students will tend to cheat in various ways to give themselves a boost grade in a class. Third, work load and pressure, Students will turn to cheating to lighten the homework load which often takes many hours to complete. In this ted talk, Dan Ariely mentioned two common reasons for his argument. According to Dan Ariely, people tend to cheat if they justify their reason to do so, or when they are surrounded by people who also cheat. And also to gain benefit in a test students can tend to cheat.
Take out your sticky notes, electronic devices, or the magic markers to write with on the palms of your hands. Look over at your classmate’s paper and copy the “correct” answers for the quiz questions one through ten. Hand in your quiz into your teacher early, and then lay your head on your desk and go to sleep. Does that ring a bell? The topic being focused on is cheating. Not the type of cheating where you break your boyfriend, or girlfriend’s heart. This discussion is based on the cheating a lot of students practice in class, “academic cheating” to be precise. Academic cheating is defined as representing someone else's work as your own. It can take many forms, including sharing another student’s work, purchasing a term paper or test questions in advance, or paying another student to do the work for you.(ETS/AD Council) 70% of public high school students admit to serious test cheating. 60% say they have plagiarized papers. Only 50% of private school students, however, admit to this. (McCabe)
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
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.
Cheating is wrong, under no circumstances even with good intention, would this be acceptable. If we challenge that could cheating only certain circumstances be wrong? Applying principles of prima facie, defined as not being absolute (Rowan). The potential consequences of the teacher losing his job, the student getting expelled, other students relationships being impacted, how each would deal with the moral consequences in the future are all to be considered.
Cheating is defined as to "deceive by trickery" or "to act dishonestly, practicing fraud." (Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 1993). A recent survey has shown an overwhelming majority of students have cheated. They, however, have justified their actions and do not believe that is a “big deal” (Cheating is a Personal Foul, 1999).
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.
"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 in our culture is often looked at with distain and is something that most find unacceptable. However, the question will always remain, is there ever a time when cheating can be justified? To answer this question one must define what cheating really is. Cheating at its root is dishonesty and with moral relativism swiftly becoming the norm in our society, dishonesty has fallen into a rather grey are of life. Something that one would find to be dishonest on all accounts another would find to be acceptable under the right circumstances. For each individual there must be a baseline from which their morals are established and from which they define the difference between right or wrong. One area of life we can look to for clarity is the world of sports. In sports, there are rules which govern a players conduct
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