Well, I guess that would tend to lend support to the notion of “our cheating society”. If you are really seeing this, what it represents is the tendency for pervasive corruption to creep in when people start looking the other way because “it isn’t any of my business”.
The simple solution is that you take it to the next level.
Students cheating? Tell the teachers.
Teachers cheating? Go to the school administration (principal).
Principal participating? Go to the District administration.
Bad administration? Go to the school board.
School board corrupt? Ha! They’re elected. Get them voted out.
If that doesn’t work, you are ready to leave and never come back. When you’re a columnist for a major network do an expose’.
In my opinion, JustOneDad is grossly oversimplifying the possible situations. What if, as I have personally experienced, a student uses non-traditional ways of cheating to gain an advantage on the system. For instance, the valedictorian of my graduating class, as she has even admitted to other students including me, purposely comes in late to school or is dismissed early such that she does not have to take a major test. She then proceeds to ask her friends, who willingly agree, to tell her what questions were on the test so that when she does take it, she has prior knowledge on what exactly to expect. However, another example I would like to highlight does coincide with the “bad teacher” theory. If the valedictorian doesn’t complete a homework or classwork assignment, she will ask for a time extension so that she can “study the materials”. Teachers usually agree and she is not penalized for not having done the work on time. Now although the valedictorian does “play the system” to work in her favor, I do not want to take anything away from her accomplishments, as she truly is a very bright student. I just believe that there are many ways that students can cheat in secretive ways such that it is hard make an argument against them.
When the rules are set up to promote cheating, I hope you aren’t surprised that there are people who will take advantage of it.
Maybe your school district should adopt a policy in which there are no time extensions offered and no late tests given. Any teachers I know who give late tests for any reason take care to make sure they are different from the one already given.
Teachers (high school or college) who reuse the same tests year after year should not be surprised that there are students who have seen the same test before taking the test.
Once these kids get to college, they are COMPLETELY screwed. They now are on their own and have to form some type of study skills, that they obviously have never had before considering that they cheat. College is another world from high school and these kids are in for a wakeup call. As for you and the others, you are well prepared if you’ve formed great study habits and have gotten those great grades in high school on your own!
What goes around comes around, and these cheaters will one day see that.
Well, I definitely don’t think its a good idea for teachers to let classmates “grade” your quizzes/ tests. At my school, I have also witnessed A LOT of honor roll students cheating their way through school. I will probably talk to my school about making it a rule for teachers to grade quizzes and tests and not have the students do it.
Someone just cheated off of me on a math quiz today. Surprisingly, I didn’t even care and I usually care a lot. I’ve just gotten used to everyone cheating off of me and although it is annoying, I seriously don’t want to stress myself out anymore than I am and I guess maybe I’m not the type to be a tattle tale or whatever but sometimes I have just gotten really angry and I cover my test up with my arm
I teach Gen.Ed. courses at the university level. High school cheaters need to realize that the stakes are raised at the college level. Cheating can be grounds for dismissal, period. Don’t go there.
^ Agreed! At the school where I teach, we even have a special rule that means a student who has cheated cannot drop the class to dodge a failing grade. If the instructor things you should fail, you fail, even if it’s only 2 weeks into the semester.
And even the smallest act of plagiarism means a hearing before the Academic Standards Committee. That’s the meeting that turns most students into sniveling cry babies. No one wants to go there.
Concerning about plagiarism, did you know that international students unintentionally commit plagiarism in colleges because they weren’t taught to cite every single things in their countries?
It’s pretty clear that cheating is dishonest and terrible for education in general, but it’s also more widespread than most people would be willing to admit. Well over half of any college class cheats in a very explicit way on homework and exams, but you would have to see the extent of said cheating for yourself to believe it. Whenever I had a professor leave the class for 5-10 minutes during an exam, it became a “group exam” for 90% of the people there. Whenever students were caught using old homework solutions, it turned out to be about 70% of the class. Many other such cases, unfortunately. Also keep this in mind: if a school admits that there was a class with a large portion of the students cheating, who does that reflect poorly on? This might explain a school’s reluctance to admit it.
It doesn’t get any better because there are always students who will try to game the system if they think they will get away with it. But you can take solace in the fact that in the long run, real merit is far more valuable than the ability to cheat your way up the class rank system.
I think cheating is something that’s always going to be a problem. You can try your best to reprimand people when you see it happening, but a lot of the time people get away with rule breaking all their lives, and it’s not particularly rewarding to just take pride in morality when you work your ass off 80 and the cheater has a 95. What pisses me off the most is when people “cheat” within the rules and then delude themselves otherwise.
It’s definitely more complicated than copying off of someone during a test. A lot of the time, it’s a group thing (either people share answers or they tell each other what’s on the tests, etc) and you can’t simply point out one person who cheats and punish them without making them a scapegoat for a large chunk of a class. Also, cheating is hardly ever an isolated incident- it’s one of those things that builds, either as a habit or from one person to an entire group, making it really hard to control. People may be unwilling to admit or acknowledge it because it makes the work of authorities more difficult. From their perspective, there’s not much they can do about cheating if they’re “unaware” of it, or if they don’t have “proof”.
The obvious advice regarding cheating would be to not do it and report it when you see it taking place. There’s no point in stressing over things beyond your control.
High-achieving kids at my high school cheat ALL the time, but the administration, interestingly enough, often doesn’t punish them when they get caught because they want to preserve the school’s recommendation and ensure that their students go to good schools. Last year’s valedictorian, who ended up at Cornell, set up a cheating ring in Physics his junior year where he would sneak into our physics teacher’s office and take photos of exams before taking them. Many kids brought this to the attention of the administration, but because he was ranked so highly and likely to head to the Ivies, they chose not to do anything about it. I wonder what Cornell’s cheating rules look like? Hopefully they aren’t so forgiving…
I have heard stories like this before and they often turn out to be empty talk by boastful students (not the poster, but the kids who make the claims). Cheating that blatant and widespread would get pretty good attention with serious consequences for the staff and administrators if it came to light.
Wow, looking at these post from users, I didn’t think that cheating in college was very strict. I’m in high school, and there are unworthy educated students with 4.0 GPAs cheating on tests, or sometimes begging the teacher to change their grade. These ridiculous habits among my high school is very common. In fact, I believe that 80% of the school has that mindset. They often ask people for help, or think that other intelligent people have done their homework so that it can transferred into their paper.
Either way, I’m not upset. It’s funny how they complain about college applications processes though, thinking that a 4.0 GPA is good enough to get in.
I observe people’s unexplainable habits in my school and I don’t bother to report it to the teacher. Don’t ask why, because I just don’t. I focus on me and on getting my work done, even if I don’t get a good score.
In fact, one of AP classmates (I know him very well) cheated on a mid-term exam. The exam was a 74 questions test, and he got the first 50 right but the last portion wrong; how suspicious?
It was his second time doing this as well; his first time was in another AP class that I have with him, in which he cheated by peeking at the answers from another student.