The Effects Of Cheating In Education

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Anybody that has gone through the adventure of high school knows what happens in everyday high school life. Gossip, rumors, relationships, fights, and more often than someone would like to see, cheating. “According to surveys in the U.S News and World Report, 75% of college students admitted to cheating during high school, and of those people, 95% said that they were never caught” (Hau). Undoubtedly, cheating in education has occurred since the modern school system has been in place and almost everyone has cheated at some time. I have to admit I am a part of the 95% of students who have cheated in high school and got away with it. It was only copying someone’s math homework in homeroom before class, but is that really all it is? Is it
If students do not have any other extra goals in addition to a good grade, the student is most likely to cheat ("Students Cheat for Good Grades. Why Not Make the Classroom about Learning and Not Testing?"). When students stop caring about the actual “learning aspect” in education and only focus on getting the highest GPA possible, this is when you get the acts of dishonesty that will lead to the downfall of our society. This all stems from the way the education has been set up, too much emphasis grades. The pressure this system puts on students leads them to cheat. “Pressure by parents and schools to achieve top scores has created stress levels among students—beginning as early as elementary school—that are so high that some educators regard it as a health epidemic” (Palmer). The saying “you are going to drive me to drink” can be applicable to the way the current school system is over-concerned with grades, “you are going to drive me to cheat”. Another factor adding to the pressure on students is how much harder it is becoming to get into the top universities. “At Stanford, admission rates plummeted from 12.1 percent in 2003 to 5.7 in 2013. UC Irvine dropped from to 56.6 in 2002 to 41.1 in fall 2013. And even Cal State Fullerton 's acceptance rate dropped from 65.9 percent in 2002-03 to 48.1 in 2012-13” (Terrell). Not only does this extra added pressure put more strain on students’ health, but it drives them to cheat to get into the top schools. All of these issues stem from the heart of the problem which is described by a group of panelists at Stanford. Panelists linked cheating to the social pressure put on students to prize high grades over education and other values, including creativity and imagination (Palmer). Until students value other more important grades things like creativity and

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