Cheating. Not in relationships, but in academics. Cheating is a dilemma that has universally troubled students and teachers for as long as education has been a part of society, even at prestigious universities like Harvard and Stanford.
Of the 77 juniors and seniors surveyed at Northwood, 56 percent admitted to having cheated at some point during high school. Furthermore, over 80 percent of them later stated they hadn’t been caught. This low catch rate is one of the primary reasons found that so many students are willing to cheat.
“To me, it’s just like speeding,” social studies teacher David Orphal said. “If there was a 100 percent catch rate, even with a light punishment, nobody would speed. The same applies to cheating.”
Though many of the traditional methods that previous generations used are still practiced today, modern students have come up with increasingly creative methods in order to slip answers into their exams without being caught.
“The craziest method that I’ve seen is taking the wrapper of a coke or a soda bottle, scanning it into the computer and then, in photo editing software, writing the words and the information rather than actually having it as the health information,”senior Ricky Young said. “Where it might say protein intake, you instead put ‘a2+ b2= c2‘ and then print it out on glossy print paper and wrap it back onto the bottle.”
While cheating has always been a concern for administrations everywhere, a new problem that has arisen is how easy it is to access information with the rise of the Internet.
“You have the combined knowledge of the entire human race at your fingertips, and it’s just adding another tab and then looking on that tab instead of actually being on that test,” Young said. “It’s that easy sometimes.”
Many disagree on just how much of an effect the advancement of technology truly has on cheating, especially in regards to the motivations behind the act.
“Technology is changing how kids cheat,” Orphal said. “Kids today are cut and pasting off of Wikipedia instead of copying by hand off the inside of the encyclopedia. But the core value of ‘I’m afraid that I’m going to get it wrong, so I’m going to do [anything] to make sure I get it right’ hasn’t changed.”
Although they’re aware of how dangerous being caught might be, the majority of students are still willing to accept that risk, and around 20 percent of the students surveyed here stated they never felt cheating was unacceptable. One reason brought up was that there was fault with one side of the system.
“If you really need to cheat, then something is going wrong,” an anonymous senior said. “The teacher isn’t doing something right or the student isn’t doing something right. There’s a disconnect between the educator and educated.”
Students often find it difficult to match the expectations put upon them by their parents, their peers and even themselves. Despite fully knowing the consequences, they find them-
selves willing to cheat in order to not fall behind and lose out on college or scholarship opportunities.
“Those students who are highly motivated, maybe very grade aware, maybe feeling parental pressure, they’re not going to fail,” science teacher Victoria Raymond said. “They’re afraid to not make that A, and that will drive those students to do [whatever they need to do] just as strongly as those students trying to keep their head above the water.”
Another point often brought up was the culture today’s generation was born and raised in and the focus that is put on academic achievement rather than actually understanding the material.
“Everywhere across the board, learning is assessed through standard-
ized testing, which leads us, warps us, shapes us, into thinking that… the value of learning can only be assessed or demonstrated as it relates to a numeric outcome, like as it relates to a grade,” science teacher Aaron Freeman said.
Regardless of the new methods that students are devising to replace the old or how much of an effect technology has truly had, there’s something that hasn’t changed over the years: the negative attitude teachers have towards cheating.
“My underlying belief about cheating is that it’s a reflection of your personal integrity,” Freeman said. “If you value authentic learning, then you value your performance, your name, your reputation and your image to others in terms of your academic persona. I feel like those who cheat will eventually get theirs.”
– By Calvin To