<p>Several people in the thread said that it's OK to cheat. As I said in my response, there is something seriously wrong when cheating and getting away with it is OK but earning a lower grade is the mark of a scumbag.</p>
<p>I posted a response on the original thread in High School Life by mistake. As a public h.s. teacher, I have seen so many teachers who idly stand by and ignore blatant cheating. Many actually encourage it when they allow kids to grade their own papers or classmates' papers. Lazy teachers do nothing more than facililtate cheating in their classes.</p>
<p>I remember several interesting (and rather heated) threads on cheating from last spring on the parent forum:</p>
<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=57244%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=57244</a>
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60396%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=60396</a>
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=64153%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=64153</a></p>
<p>In part, these are about the way schools/teachers respond to some very flamboyant cheating. </p>
<p>As to how common it is - who can say for certain? Quite apart from the moral issue, I would think the shame of being caught and branded a cheater would more than offset any momentary gain to be had from cheating. But apparently many students think it's worth the risk. Or maybe they're certain that they're too clever to be caught? Wouldn't it be easier - certainly less nerve-wracking - just to study?</p>
<p>I think there is certain amount of question about what is cheating. Obviously, plagarism, copying test answers, and copying homework are. But what about checking over homework with your friend after you've both done it and examining your answers again. Is that cheating?</p>
<p>If it's for a grade, then comparing answers and "examining your answers again" is certainly cheating if "examining your answers" involves changing them to conform to someone else's. </p>
<p>I think part of the problem lies in such rephrasing as it tends to reshape one's view of actions to make simple cheating feel better.</p>
<p>Most teachers that I work with do not have a problem with students comparing homework answers as long as both students have actually tried the assignment and have not just copied the other one's work. I encourage my students to discuss homework in order to help each other better understand. In fact, I go over homework assignments in class before collecting them and actually allow students to write in corrections. That forces them to pay attention, because I am very strict in my grading when I have actually gone over the answers aloud. I go through them in such a manner that one has to really pay attention in order to keep up. It would be tough to actually do all the work for the first time as we go through it in class. </p>
<p>Homework grades are only a small percentage of my students' overall average in the class, so they do not usually make or break a student unless he/she is just lazy and does not turn in work.</p>
<p>At my school (college) for problem sets and most other work besides tests we're allowed to seek help from other students as long as we cite them.</p>
<p>I am a member of the Academic Integrity Committee at the HS where I teach. We have been active for three years, because cheating was reaching monumental proportions! Kids feel it's OK, so long as they aren't caught. I catch cheaters throughout the year, and write them up. They lose their exam exemptions and cannot get into NHS, etc. Apparently it is such a huge problem that more colleges are instituting an Honor Code. At Amherst, if you don't sign it, you can't register and you are out. If you sign it, and you are caught, you are out. As to what truly is cheating, our Honor Code outlines it all. And really, although there may be a couple grey areas, we all know what cheating is - using someone else's work to get a grade. There is such a drive to "beat the system," in our society that a couple years ago, one of the kids in the top 10 bragged about cheating his way there. "Everyone does it, he said." Well, that is not true. The kid who gives the info is just as culpable, but until kids see cheating as not just a means to a grade, but a way of knocking their own class rank down or GPA down, and see it as unfair to themselves and others, we will not curb it. If the kids put the energy they use from finding creative new ways to cheat into their studies, they wouldn't need to cheat. You wouldn't believe some of the things we have come across. Plastic water bottles, with the labels removed, answers written on the inside and reapplied, so the teacher just sees the label, kids writing answers on their jeans seams, the kid who when the teacher went up and down the rows passed his workbook to another who didn't have his, so the kid wouldn't get a zero. And these are just commonplace. Why do you think you can't have a cell phone at the SAT? Because kids were text messaging to kids in CA who hadn't taken the test yet, or to get answers. And some of it is really stupid - the kids had time in class to make flashcards, then had a flashcard quiz the next day. Kids who passed their flashcards to someone else! I don't get it - just make your own, and you have the answers right there in front of you. But do they? No. They take the "easy" way out. The kids on our committee have had a really hard time, with others calling them "traitors" and "teacher's pets," etc.</p>
<p>My sons' private school is struggling with the cheating issue right now. The principal has told me that he has never had so many incidents. The kids are getting more and more "clever" with their cheating. </p>
<p>Parentofteen makes a good point --- a few years ago, I told 2 different teachers how one particular student was cheating in their classes. Their demeanor clearly indicated that they didn't care. I was shocked. </p>
<p>Teachers have to be careful when they accuse a student of cheating -- they literally have to catch them "red-handed". Otherwise the student will deny and the parents won't believe the teacher.</p>
<p>Would those of you who are teachers, please post some of the more clever methods your students have used to cheat. Our principal would love to be "clued in" to some of the new ways. (The kids aren't allowed to have cell phones with them so text messages are out - unless they go to the bathroom and use them there.)</p>
<p>By the way, a couple of kids who were caught cheating told the principal that "in a way" it is the school's fault because the teachers assign too much homework and the students can only get it done by copying each other's homework when they have a game or practice that day. The principal confided this to me after I had complained that the school assigns tooo much homework and my kids were consistently going to bed after midnight because of homework load. I brought specific examples with me to demonstrate that the assignments could not be completed in a "timely manner". (after my demonstrated complaint, he got the teachers to cut back.)</p>
<p>parentofteen: No one minds when kids do homework "together" as long as both are working/contributing/learning. However, now kids "split" their assignments (such as "you do problems 1 - 10 and I'll do problems 11 - 20" or "you do the English assignment and I'll do the history assignment."</p>
<p>That is a great point.... What is cheating.... </p>
<p>some wonder if comparing and then changing homework answers is cheating. </p>
<p>If it is, then is it cheating when parents proof-read essays or go over math answers and point out mistakes that need to be changed?</p>
<pre><code>"Chris doesn't consider himself a cheater. Yet for the past four years, the 21-year-old senior at one of California's most prestigious universities (which he doesn't want identified) has used an arsenal of tricks to pass his classes.
Sociologists argue that the upsurge in school dishonesty also reflects attitudes in the culture at large, where cheating has become acceptable and even admired."
</code></pre>
<p>From the this article, the kids who cheat don't consider it cheating, because they say everyone does it, so it's okay. They don't seem to hold themselves accountable. How much of this is the pressure to succeed at any cost, laziness, greed, and/or lack of any sort of self disipline?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Would those of you who are teachers, please post some of the more clever methods your students have used to cheat.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My chemistry teacher last year mentioned one. At the school he first taught at, there was a girl who would wear a skirt during every test. In her skirt, she hid answers, notes, etc. My teacher said he could never do anything about it because if he did, she could have gotten him on sexual harassment charges.</p>
<p>Gold: My son told me that some girls at his school were doing the same thing -- writing answers on their legs and wearing skirts.</p>
<p>As a teacher, there are ways you can reduce cheating.</p>
<p>*Assign papers that make it difficult to cheat (i.e., not a straight biography or book review)
*Give open book and open note tests (so everyone can use their notes, not just cheaters)
*Not grade homework on anything other than completion, so that students TRY it but don't have to get it right--it's supposed to be practice, right</p>
<p>Interesting methods to cheat: why would I post such things on a public forum? I wouldn't want to give anyone ideas. However, I will say that I catch a LOT of cheaters just by taking a phrase from the paper and typing it into google. </p>
<p>There is also turnitin.com, which tracks student papers so they can't cheat off each other.</p>
<p>What about parents aiding students? I think that many parents are aiding their children in cheating, but this of course cannot be proven. There was a big deal here in NJ about a Judge who helped his daughter with a disabiliity become the valedictorian at her high school, only to be found out. I think that many parents are aiding their children (not only with doing homework) but for scholarship competitions and college applications.</p>
<p>Do these students know that, if they are caught cheating at the college level, it is an automatic F for the course? Even worse, they are brought before the disciplinary committee and may be expelled.</p>
<p>In college, there is a zero tolerance policy for cheaters.</p>
<p><<< Interesting methods to cheat: why would I post such things on a public forum? I wouldn't want to give anyone ideas. However, I will say that I catch a LOT of cheaters just by taking a phrase from the paper and typing it into google. >>></p>
<p>You're right.... So, anyone with some methods, please PM me. I will be meeting with our principal (we're on a committee that is focusing on the problem) and would like to come with a list.</p>
<p>Just a little story I told here once before that's relevant to the attitude problem: At the university where I used to teach, I once had two members of the same class turn in the same paper, with only a couple of paragraphs' order changed. (Yes, I know--pretty silly--and the class had only twenty-some students in it, at that!)</p>
<p>The student who had actually written the paper had allowed the one who copied it to read it "for ideas on how to write the assignment." They both played on the same sports team, and I think the better student really did just want to help.</p>
<p>When I confronted the two privately after class, the one who had copied from the other rose from his chair and tried to attack me physically. I had never raised my voice or done anything else to incite such a response. All I had done was quietly inform the two that they would be required to rewrite the papers in my office within a week to avoid taking the matter further. I thought that was extremely generous. (Both were freshmen and I wanted to teach them something rather than punish them at that point--my mistake, I know.)</p>
<p>The one who had written his own paper pulled the one who was trying to attack me down and took him out of the room to explain reality to him. That's an absolutely true story, and it happened over twenty years ago. Things have probably only gotten worse in terms of feelings of justification.</p>