Declining standards [thread is really about cheating, particularly in school]

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
21

Yes, but I do think it can be complicated to teach this.

My two kids are very different. My older child was a huge cheater from the start! He was always trying to cheat at games even when he was a very little kid, often in a way that was painfully obvious. He also tried to cheat on his school work in early elementary school (again, painfully obvious). In retrospect, some of this probably came out of being bullied at school by another kid who was very arrogant about his supposedly superior intellect. We were at a private school at that time, and some kids were already showing the effects of pressure to perform at certain levels (to get into good colleges and go into the right careers
)

I actually feel lucky that this happened so early in my kid’s life and was so obvious, so that we could have a lot of good talks about cheating. Over time, he started to get a better understanding of how there are a lot more drawbacks than just “you might get in trouble,” such as:

  • not really learning the material as well, wasting precious time and effort by focusing more on cheating than learning
  • stress, anxiety about being found out, feeling imposter syndrome
  • social consequences of kids pressuring each other into cheating, keeping secrets from each other or betraying each other
  • making the teacher’s job harder, making the teacher focus more on preventing cheating rather than teaching the material

Cheating is not just wrong (and risky). It has bad effects on everyone, and even a “successful” cheater is not really effective in the long run, due to all kinds of drawbacks like these. As my kid got a bit older, it was interesting to see him still be tempted by cheating, but gradually turn away from the temptation, and apply himself to actually learning how to get better at games and schoolwork without cheating. I feel that eventually my kid acquired a deeper understanding of how cheating harms everyone, and why it’s important not to cheat.

So it’s kind of paradoxical, but I feel pretty good about the robustness of my kid’s moral code at this point, because he struggled with the urge to cheat so much as a little kid. Parenting is complicated, though :upside_down_face:

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22

100% honest with my taxes.

The way you phrase this makes it sound like that is not common?

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23

Also 100% honest with taxes. We are rule followers here ; )

I used to tell our D when she was little that cheaters end up cheating themselves out of an opportunity to learn and grow. We’ve also taught her that some of the biggest opportunities for growth come out of failing and disappointment. Too much pressure for kids to be perfect these days and “win” at all costs and that just isn’t healthy in any way shape or form.

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24

In 2021, the US Treasury estimated that about 15% of income taxes owed are not collected.

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25

Not hard to see where the problem is:

Table 1: Distribution of the Tax Gap

Distribution of the Tax Gap

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26

I think it’s hard to cheat on taxes if your income comes only from salaried jobs and other well documented sources such as interest, dividends and capital gains/losses.

Anyway, back to the original topic now


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27

Let’s move the conversation from cheating on taxes

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28

I wish I could put more than just one :heart: or :100: on this post. You said this better than I could (and a lot more succinct too)! I wish all the kids out there who feel that they need to cheat could get this message.

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29

Nothing there is all that new. Every decade or so, some article writer bemoans the drop in standards compared to the mythical “old days”

Here is an article from 1999:

https://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2000092200

A study from 1993:

https://www.middlebury.edu/media/view/257516/original/What_we_know_about_

So it’s neither new, nor getting especially worse since the 1990s, at least in the number of cheaters, except perhaps during COVID.

I remember a friend who was doing her PhD at Harvard in the 1980s told be about all the seesay that she got which had been bought - some weren’t even related to the course. Perhaps the difference is that, back then, students were cheating to pass the clases, now they’re cheating for As. Well, and the fact that, back then, when kids were caught cheating, their parents didn’t barge into the President’s office and demand that the professor be fired for failing their precious little child.

It’s really neither faculty nor students, if it’s anything, it’s it’s entitled parents and spineless administrators.

Smaller, teaching-focused schools have different system which probably make cheating less useful. One of those is the amount of writing expected. If you have short answers instead of multiple choice, extended responses instead of short answers, and essays instead of extended responses, copying is a lot more effort. Having almost all of your classes small, also means that faculty are much more likely to identify responses and even writing styles, making copying difficult to hide. People also know each other, and can expect that of they cheat, it will be difficult to keep it under wraps.

Having an honor-code is very helpful, because it makes cheating an offence of student against other students, versus an offence of students against the college. So students are not allies with each other in cheating. Moreover, if most students do not think that cheating is OK, it becomes much more difficult to get somebody to help others cheat.

To be honest, I also think that smaller colleges, no matter how “prestigious” do not have as many students who are attending the college for a degree with the name of that particular college. A student attending UPenn is much more likely to be attending so that that their degree is “a UPenn degree”, because the name recognition is decent. However, a student who wants to attend Williams is doing so because they want to study there, not just pass classes and graduate with “a Williams Degree”. WIlliams (or any other LAC) simply does not have the name recognition.

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30

I don’t know why it is complicated.
You should just tell them that it is a fundamental integrity issue.
From the time they can understand – like 3 or 4 years old.
What is even the point of teaching? If you disagree, you have the right to get the rules changed.

31

This is a cultural problem and it isn’t just an anomaly of the pandemic period. Colleges can’t solve the problem reactively in the age of ChatGPT or other technologies. Having an honor code and making it the most indispensable part of students’ lives is essential and critical.

Take the school where the honor code is taken the most seriously, for example. Applicants to Caltech are required to become familiar with its honor code and to write about it in their applications. A significant portion of its freshman orientation is about its honor code. At Caltech, all exams (other than a few by some visiting professors) are open-book, often untimed. Students can take the exams anywhere at any time. Libraries (other than the main library) are unstaffed and students can check out books on their own by signing a checkout form. Before electronic locks were implemented, most students could obtain, unofficially, “master” keys that could open every door on campus. Violations of its honor code is among the most serious misdeeds a student can commit (and they are rare).

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32

I work in the Archives of a large university. I was recently reading through the papers of the person who was president in the 1920s. He asked the graduating class to honestly and anonymously answer some questions. For what are the top improvements that need to be made many of them mentioned creating an honor code. His papers also reveal lots and lots of attempts by students to cheat and get around the discipline rules, curfew, etc. And letters from parents who were either appalled at their sons’ behavior or trying desperately to excuse it and get them another chance. Humans are humans throughout history, just the methods change.

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33

The title of the thread is declining standards.
Cheating is as old as time. It was, and continues to be, glorified in storytelling (from myths of mischief-makers/tricksters across many cultures, through the latest heist or caper movies). Any given instance exists somewhere on the continuum between creative rule-bending and absolute sin. In the context of higher education, there are the cheaters and the Cheaters (I think you know what I mean; one of the latter types of people has made a lot of news recently). For those of you who believe we are in a time of declining standards, do you think things like stricter or more granular honor codes should be implemented, or do you think “kids these days” see rules in a different way than prior generations?

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34

It may be crazy, but I’m actually hopeful that young adults are in many cases trying to be “better about things” than the generation or 2 that came before them. I have no evidence, and certainly not in all cases, but it does seem like many are worrying about more than just themselves.

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35

I agree that cheating is nothing new. However, there is something different today than it was a generation or two ago. Technologies have certainly made cheating easier. The more permissive altitudes toward and the lesser consequences for all sorts of infractions in the society may have also played a role.

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36

I agree that attitudes have become very permissive. Indeed expectations for ethical behavior are low.

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37

But have technologies made detection of cheating easier as well?

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38

Yes, in some sense. But the technologies used in detection will always be behind and reactive to the technologies used in cheating. Just look at the technologies on computer viruses and virus detection. We’re fooling ourselves if we think that the technologies for detection can stay ahead of cheating.

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39

If there is a pervasive erosion of values, that is a first order concern. Whether technology can detect or not is just second order detail. We cannot have a police state. In general this society thrives on trust. If trust is lost god help us.

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40

I don’t know if there is a pervasive erosion of values. How would we measure that?

The high school age kids in our circle don’t seem to have worse values, on average, than the high school age kids that I knew when growing up. Of course, I might not be privy to everything that goes on with the kids.

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