Cheating Is Cheating

What is cheating? Cheating is the dishonesty of an individual for their personal advantage. Base on various studies conducted cheating is getting worse among students. Students are cheating to get higher grades so that they look smart. Students are even cheating their way into colleges and universities. This is becoming a major problem and it does not only affect students but school administrators, employers and even generations to come. Don McCabe (2010) conducted a survey among 24,000 high school students at 70 high schools in the United States. 64% Of students admitted to cheating on a test, 58% admitted to plagiarism and 95% participated in some form of cheating. For college students, 70% of students, report to some form of cheating.

Visual, reading and writing, and kinesthetic, etc. are various type of learners in our schools today. But, the educational system only focuses on the reading and writing learners, this is absurd. This is a contribution to the increasing numbers of students cheating. A true education is not only learned from books and taking a test. The modern day educational system is unfair; it also sacrifices the abilities of each student. This is allowing students to think that they are stupid, useless and incompetent. But it is the inflexibility of our teachers, they are not flexible enough to teach other types of learners and therefore only focuses on the reading and writing learners. But, no two brains are the same, each student has different strength, abilities, dreams; yet, everyone is being taught the same. Modern day schooling claim to prepare students for the future, but seems more as competing for an ‘A’, instead of grasping the concept being taught. Therefore, so many students are cheating their way through school and throughout

Some students are bombarded with assignments and tests which are sometimes due in short period of times. I have recently interviewed a friend of mines, second-year medical students at the University of West Indies Mona, who said the workload is heavy but manageable once you organize yourself properly. But of course, this is his opinion, to others, it may not be that easy. We asked him, “Have you ever cheated?” To this day, the answer is yet to come. I decided to interview a family member this time, a Lawyer, who graduated from two prestigious universities, Stanford University and Harvard University. She remembered the workload she faced while studying, the stress it brought. She admitted to cheating on two tests in her university life and regret that she ever did. She further went on and said cheating is a choice, no matter the situation you should work hard and accept the grade you get because that is what you worked for. With the workload being too heavy, some students would only work towards the requirement needed to pass the class other that trying to completely understand the lesson being taught. In addition, students would not work as efficiently as they should, and this will lead to students cheating just to pass the