<p>I agree with the Math Prof that not only are reports of cheating upsetting, but the reactions here are disturbing too. Not unexpected (I have teenagers) but disturbing. What I have found when talking with my teenagers' friends about this topic is that it isn't just that they feel okay about cheating. They do not understand why it is wrong! The end justifies the means, and the only moral wrong is getting caught.</p>
<p>In our high school, cheating is absolutely rampant and blatant. The wrong kid, the one who is not cheating in the whole group, is often the one who is accused. Seriously.</p>
<p>While it may sound like I am on a moral high horse, I totally don't blame the kids. Cheating is the result of a terrible education system, ridiculous parental pressures on grades, and pressure to get in to colleges. The root of some of this is money and prestige, and certainly not learning.</p>
<p>The kids are gaming an educational system that they do not believe in, and that fails to inspire them to anything higher. I recently read that even chimpanzees started cheating in various chimpanzee ways, once Jane Goodall set up a banana reward station. The whole educational system, from age 4 up, depends on external motivators like grades and stars and reading competitions rather than an inner motivator, like, say, pleasure in reading or learning. The books of Alfie Kohn and David Elkind are very interesting on this topic.</p>
<p>Parents in our town actually PAY their kids for A's, some as high as $500 (this is a working class town, too) and I have read that one urban school system is doing this too. Of course, this type of parental or administrative behavior will lead to cheating. The goal is all wrong.</p>
<p>Standardized testing is emphasized now- another external motivator for both students and teachers. Teachers get rewarded or penalized, for these results, and some have even cheated on this. The problem is that the testing, like the federal and state tests, have long ago given up the idea that education is a "fire to be lit," and, instead, go on the "bucket to be filled" model, and filling the bucket well means some sort of reward.</p>
<p>We also have a lot of tenured teachers who cheat themselves, in their jobs. They tell stories and do not teach. They give tests that they made up years ago and don't bother to fit it to material covered. We know teachers who lose kids' work and lie about it, making them do it over again. Etc. How can the kids have values in this environment?</p>
<p>I will tell one story that demonstrates that deep inside, kids still have their own morality. Cheating fits into that morality, when the kids feel that the whole educational game is immoral in the first place. One new teacher in our school decided that grades were in the way of learning. He told the whole class that they would just get an automatic A, and could they all please just concentrate on learning. Guess what? The students protested that this was not fair! They said it would be unfair for some people to work less and some to work more, and for everyone to get the same grade!</p>
<p>Needless to say, this teacher is gone. The school did not appreciate these innovations.</p>
<p>On the positive side, growing up, there is now a big emphasis on group work. Kids are encouraged to help each other out, and work together on solving problems, with the idea that this trains them for the workplace. The problem is, the adults never make it clear in the upper grades that individual work is supposed to be done alone. And, if working together still helps kids learn, then why should they not do it?</p>
<p>My kids met in study groups and helped other students study, or do problems, particularly since the teachers in our school are so incompetent. This was not cheating, but the cooperative spirit one poster mentioned in his classes, among kids who were cheating, can be part of a basically do it yourself kind of feeling kids have, when they have been abandoned by adults. </p>
<p>Finally, I think that the general, relative absence of adults in kids' lives over the last 25 years is also a factor. Kids are with peers very early on, and live within structured environments, often with behavioral tactics of reward and punishment. They are involved in a lot of activities, lessons and so on. </p>
<p>Hanging out with a parent from a very young age usec to be a good way to absorb values. The predominant peer culture that has resulted from social changes in childrearing has left a sort of adversarial relationship between adults and teens. The kids feel like they are winning in a contest with an enemy, not violating a mutual relationship of trust.</p>
<p>So,I totally don't blame kids for cheating, even if, for me as a child and teen, I never, ever cheated and would not have been able to forgive myself if I had (I am in my late 50's)</p>
<p>If there was more to believe in, other than grades and getting into Ivies, kids would not cheat. If learning in school was what it should be for them, and not just about grades and class rank, they would not cheat. All of this is the fault of adults, teachers and parents, and it is up to us adults to fix it sometime soon, too.</p>