Surveys show that cheating in school ”” plagiarism, forbidden collaboration on assignments, copying homework and cheating on exams ”” has soared since researchers first measured the phenomenon on a broad scale at 99 colleges in the mid-1960s.
The percentage of students who copied from another student during tests grew from 26 percent in 1963 to 52 percent in 1993, and the use of crib notes during exams went from 6 percent to 27 percent, according to a study conducted by Dr. Donald McCabe of Rutgers. By the mid-1990s, only a small minority said they had never cheated, meaning that cheating had become part of the acceptable status quo.
Dr. McCabe’s later national survey of 25,000 high school students from 2001 to 2008 yielded equally depressing results: more than 90 percent said they had cheated in one way or another.
Cheating is caused by competitive parenting.
Its so easy to cheat now. To name but one example, kids use the cameras in there phones to take pictures of the exam or a specific exam question and them send it to friends to either get the answer or give them a heads up in they have the class at a later period.
#1 – Cheating is not caused by competitive parenting. It is caused by poor parenting and a society that believes in “success at all costs.” We glorify those who win and only marginally penalize those who get caught cheating.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
#3 We are trying to say the same thing.
The education establishment has become the gatekeeper for entry into the middle and upper classes. From the perspective of these young adults, the stakes are too high [i]not[/i] to cheat.
When morality, a clear understanding that there is a difference between right and wrong is no longer held by teachers and administrators, there is no reason to expect students not to cheat.
The public schools have been taken over by illegals from Mexico…and when you are here illegally to start with, cheating doesn’t seem such a big deal
I don’t want to get over my depth in popular culture, but . . .
What about the effect of the Nickelodeon mindset pitting Us Kool Kinds against Those Tiresome Adults and their stupid rules?
Not only are students given great benifits from high marks and not penalized much for getting caught cheating, there is a mentality that says cheating isn’t that bad. A few years ago, there was a case that parents brought against a teacher for failing their kids who plagerized. This is in spite of the fact that the teacher’s policies clearly stated that any student caught plagerizing would recieve a failing grade for the class. While many parents would not act as if their child had done nothing wrong, we live in a society where everyone is sue happy and the fear of getting sued for disciplining is greatly increased every time a parent reacts like this. The problem comes from all of society, not just from parents.
[blockquote]Nickelodeon mindset pitting Us Kool Kinds against Those Tiresome Adults and their stupid rules?[/blockquote]
I think this particular mindset–cool kids against tiresome adults and stupid rules–predates not only Nickelodeon, but television.
“The education establishment has become the gatekeeper for entry into the middle and upper classes”
Of course, certain kinds of cheating in adult life (e.g., on your income taxes) can lead to a different kind of “gatekeeper.”
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If school authorities cracked down on cheating, they could greatly reduce it: by giving any student caught cheating on an exam an automatic F on the exam; by letting students know that repeated cheating will show up in a notation on their transcripts; and by more tightly controlling the use of mobile phones.
#7: My mother was a public school teacher and noted that, in all her years in teaching, that those who crossed the border (river, and daily at that) to come to school had a much higher attendance rate and greater attention span than those who were in the country legally. I think you’re way off.
“I think this particular mindset–cool kids against tiresome adults and stupid rules–predates not only Nickelodeon, but television”
—Tegularius [#10]
It predates Nickelodeon. But Nickelodeon deserves recognition for affirming it so explicitly and repeatedly.
Youth culture, including teenage rebellion as a social norm, is largely an artifact of the 20th century.
To add to the comments of many above – education has become not so much the process of learning, but the process of achieving a number. The wonder of learning for learning’s sake is quickly curbed by a system that emphasizes quantifiable results above all else, thereby requiring teachers to teach to the test. If the score is all we care about, we will produce a system that cares only about numbers. The result is that all members of that system adopt a risk-reward mindset. If you feel you are going to fail the test, the lower risk pathway may be to cheat.
It’s also possible that part of the issue is that it may have become more acceptable (to students, at any rate) to admit that they have cheated. One wonders what the actual detection rate of cheating is and how it has changed over the years.
I think there are many factors that contribute to this cultural phenomenon. with the lack of ethics in this area being the first issue that comes to my mind. For most people from the, for lack of a better descriptor, Generation Y crowd, the ethics of internet piracy does not register.
Internet piracy comes in many forms, from the illegal downloading of MP3s and movies to “copy and paste” text content that students are all too quick to put into their own papers.
The ethical problem is in the terms. Most kids don’t see taking something from online as “stealing” per se. “It’s not like we are walking out of Walmart with a stereo,” they say, “and besides, everybody does it.”
I work with college kids, and they more likely tend to view anything from the internet as community property like the unlabeled ice cream carton in the dorm freezer. Its not physically tangible so its not physically stealing, so they think in their mind. No money changes hands; there is no actual physical loss so there its not “actually stealing.” Nobody is getting hurt, they say. It’s looked on more like a “borrowing” or “sharing” not stealing.
And if everyone does it, its not really cheating. Its like if everyone in a neighborhood was building something in their own garages, and needs tools. If Mr. X down the street leaves his toolshed open, even though its technically trespassing and stealing, if everybody goes in and “borrows” this or that, then it is not really viewed as individual stealing even if they know Mr. X does not like it. The community is at fault, because everybody does it, and individuals should not be held individually liable if the whole community is at fault.
I find this a very interesting trend because for the most part, the Generation Y crowd is completely sold out to rampant individualism in every way except for when it comes to a community problem and then no one wants to take individual responsiblity.
I think that literature bears some of the responsibility for this. For instance two of the things that really bothered me about the Harry Potter series were Harry’s predisposition to lie -on many, many occasions throughout the series- and the cheating that went on when Hermione saved Harry and Ron’s bacon time and again by writing or helping to write their homework and essays. sends a very bad message and it’s not limited to the HP series but to other books and children’s/teenager’s TV series. Also, as a retired teacher with many years of teaching behind me, telling lies to teachers and each other was very common and accepted as the norm.
I believe that the essence of the problem lies in my following obeservation.
When I was in school (1960s – rural) there were but two times police came to our school. With one, a friend of mine hit a deer at an amazing distance with a .22 and dropped it dead – with a game warden watching. The second, I don’t know why the policeman was in the school, but the common questions brought about by his presence were of the nature of, “Why is he here?”, “Who did something so bad as to cause him to come?”, and, “Why can’t the teachers and principle take care of the problem?” Thus was our attitude illustrated at that time. Today I note that there are police on staff and present in the schools for much of the day. Children accept it as usual. They have no pride. They seem to have the attitude that one gets by with whatever one can get by with. Getting caught is the problem.
God has been evicted from the schools and I don’t know how to invite Him back.
Don
Not much power in a 22. Must have been a direct hit to the eye.
I trust the game warden came to congratulate him?
19. Clueless:
“Not much power in a 22. Must have been a direct hit to the eye.”
Precisely! He says he didn’t even aim – all the way across a large gravel pit. It was the most unlucky situation I have ever heard of. We did, however, learn that a gun used carelessly was capable of severe damage.
Don
Having been in highschool in the early 40’s, as boys turned 18 they went off to war. Everybody was involved, scrap drives, war bond rallies, and memorial services for both students and teachers when we lost them. The West Point Code was also ours, DUTY, HONOR, COUNTRY and churches preached the GOSPEL, and the hard portions were not excluded. I hate to say it but we have sunk a long way in all three.
Soryy ended up with three but meant four.
“But there’s hope. The 1993 study suggested that cheating dropped in schools that encouraged a culture of integrity — either by formally instituting an honor code or by stressing at every turn the importance of honesty and integrity.”
This point is crucial. I addressed this topic in a recent op-ed piece in the Washington Times:
http://74.125.45.104/search?q=cache:EPeYy_kPGGUJ:www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jul/03/learning-responsibility-and-honor/+david+hein+honor+responsibility+washington+times&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
At my college, almost all exams were “take home” — but all were timed, and some were open book and some were not. Students were on their honor to abide by the terms of the exam when they took it.
This system was — and so far as I know still is — so universally adored by the students that cheating was extremely rare, because we were all smart enough to realize that if the system was abused it would go away, and we’d be taking proctored exams in lecture halls and nobody wanted that.
Don’t trust anyone over 30. Ring a bell?
David Hein [#23]: Good article!
No. 26: Thanks very much for your comment. David
The best answer to this problem, which has indeed mutiple causes, is the one given above, that education has become the achievemen of a number, not the acquisition of learning. If the end of learning is the old humane standard – the acquisition of a well furnished mind – then it becomes clear that the cheater is cheating himself. Substitute this standard with certainty that an A by any means is better than a B by honest means alone, then cheating has a truly useful function. If you don’t get caught, as is now often the case, or get caught and don’t fail as a result, often the present case, the it is wise and productive to cheat. Why should one not? Your goal is Harvard, not integrity.
It is worth noting that grade inflation, now very widespread and very significant, makes cheating even more worthwhile, for grade inflation is also a serious form of dishonesty, and a little cheating can get an A when in past years, prior to grade inflation, cheating rarely produced so easy a grade. At the present moment in college, any grade lower than a B is regarded as failure. I know the Ivies, and it has been t hat way since the left wing took over academia in the late sixties. Larry
#18 Don said
“Today I note that there are police on staff and present in the schools for much of the day. Children accept it as usual. They have no pride. They seem to have the attitude that one gets by with whatever one can get by with. Getting caught is the problem.”
I went to a highschool with police officers. The sad truth is that they did little more than to stop fights that broke out. In fact, I know at least one of them would go and catch students smoking in the bathroom and the only thing this particular ‘officer’ did was require them to give her a smoke. Can we say corruption?? The sad thing is that as I said before, there is plenty of blame to go around.
I teach high school math. I have students who need a motivational speech to pick up their pencil and write their name. Cheat? Some of my students don’t even get that far. If the test I give is too long, more than half the class gives up after the first half. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Idiocracy”, I fear that is where we are headed.
#30 is the other half I did not write about. When students have no reason to care whether they pass or fail, then cheating is simply easy. But as #30 noted, there is a broad class of “students” for whom a public school is merely a holding pen, large groups for whom cheating is meaningless because its gets them nothing they want or value. The Driven cheat because it gts them something they want. The Slackers do not cheat because it gets them nothing of value. An interesting playing out of standards. And behind all this, we hear the persistent voice:”I want what I want, and I want it right now because I deserve it.” The difference is simply in what is wanted. LM
What would happen if all electronic gadgets, cellpones and any pictorial transmitters were locked up in a a safe that wouldn’t pass all this cheating transmissions, and kept there when the exams were taken??