It is not the students’ fault. If you set up a system where students are judged by their grades, then they will do what it takes to get good grades. Some (like myself) will work hard and others will cheat.
I completely agree with you. I used to be so apathetic about my grades before I started high school. But in high school, I realized that my letter grades define me and dictate my future. Colleges primarily judge students based on their grades.
There is one thing more important than grades that determines your future: character
Cheating is a product of the system that favors grades over actual learning. Colleges rely too much on grades for acceptance. I’m in favor of more standardized testing, it’s hard to actually cheat on the SAT/ACT.
"It is not the students’ fault."
"Cheating is a product of the system"
Call me old fashioned, but I still believe in free will.
^me too. Motivated by the prospect of higher grades, student freely will themselves to cheat. If our school/college systems rewarded actual learning instead of grades, perhaps students will not have the free will to cheat.
@WasatchWriter
Ever heard the saying “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”
Exactly. The @WasatchWriter would blame the Hunger Games participants for killing each other. More perceptive individuals would see that the Hunger Games / Hunger Games organizers are responsible for those deaths. The high school/college grading system is just a real-world (and less dramatic) version of the hunger games.
smh
I absolutely hate cheating and I see it a lot, but I never tell on cheaters because it usually catches up to them down the road and because I don’t know what the person is going through. I know several kids who have extremely intense parents and I can understand how they feel pressured to cheat. That actually reminds me of the Nigerian girl who killed herself because her teacher caught her cheating and humiliated her in front of her classmates and she was too ashamed to tell her parents. I think it was said best here “Cheating is a product of the system that favors grades over actual learning.” That’s one of the main faults in our education system.
However, if kids are blatantly just cheating to cheat by all means report them. I’ve never seen it like that at my school, but I guess it happens.
@midwestdad3, Holy moly! I humbly disagree with that advice. Nice in theory, but you go up to some kid and say that to him, you could be targeted by all his friends, and if he’s higher up the social ladder (which he probably is if the kid is hesitant to say anything) then you can get half the class against you. There is the Snitch Code, for better or for worse, and even kids who agree with you will still adhere to it, if for no other reason than self-preservation.
Re: telling a teacher, that could also be a pitfall, as I saw happen at my daughter!s elementary. A male peer of hers went to the principal to report a bullying top-tier kid in their fifth grade (who was in that position due to his fear factor). Policy is to keep these things anonymous. Duh!
Anyway, the principal called both kids in and told the bully to his face that Matt had made a complaint. From then on, through the rest of the year Matt was targeted by the kid and his posse, I mean outright bullied. I’ve seen that happen more than once. Sadly, you cannot trust that a teacher will keep the reporter anonymous.
Best thing to do is send an anonymous note. Obviously, extreme behavior needs to be reported, but cheating, I think most kids would weigh the inherent risks.
Maybe you have some useful recommendations on how colleges can evaluate “understanding” better than the grading system.
People can make excuses all day long and blame the “system”, but a cheater is still a cheater.
Well, they could start with this thing called the bell curve and grade deflation.
I don’t get it. If you get all the points, don’t you get an ‘A’?
I think a cheater is a cheater no matter what.
There are many people in the world who don’t cheat and get in good colleges.
“Bad system” excuse only explains the loss of learning’s true purpose, not cheating itself
Once you “justify” cheating and start down that road, your character is blackened and you may never stop. Think about it. Do you want to cheat in Med School too and eventually kill a patient because you didn’t know the procedure or dose? Do you want to cheat in the financial world too and go to jail?
An AP course where A students’ AP test scores range from 1 to 3 reflects poorly on the teacher. This is especially true for an AP course that covers a semester or less of a college course over a year (like AP CS A commonly does).
It’s true that cheating does not ALWAYS occur with 4.0 students. I can testify that I have been honest throughout my education, and intend to continue to do so.
However (I will try to make this quick), I cannot say the same for some of my fellow peers at the top. Last year, I took Calculus along with many students who are near the top of my class with me. Long story short, two of the students (above me in class rank, by the way) got a hold of the answers to our final exam and memorized them to make sure they got a perfect score on the final, and an A in the class. The teacher found out, he took action (and basically screwed them over), then the students parents complained to the school and they got their way, and received their A’s in the class. It was not deserved at all.
One of these students is on track to be my class’s valedictorian at the end of the year. I would have had a shot at this honor if it weren’t for this situation (and also, if I had taken study halls and lunch periods instead of working by butt off in music classes, but that’s a different opinion for a different thread…).
I think it’s ridiculous how anyone could think of cheating. How could someone place such little value on knowledge so as to stoop that low, just to receive a mark on a report card or see on high number for a grade?
However, standardized tests sometimes are cheated on (by stealing tests, or by having others take the test instead of the person registered). They are also heavily (and legally) gamed, with many students doing lots of test-specific preparation that is of less value in real world learning. For example, vocabulary is considered a proxy of the amount and type of reading that one does, so vocabulary is a significant portion of the SAT critical reading section. But many students who do not read much instead learn lists of SAT vocabulary words in isolation. The SAT writing section was considered by some influential colleges (both private and public) to be a stronger predictor of college grades than other parts of the SAT, but some SAT test preparation services have figured out ways to game that section, so that test gamers can get high scores on it with a mostly memorized stock passage to write, even if their actual writing skills are weak.
I have found that high scorers on standardized tests to be the more genuine students who would be less reliant on cheating (when comparing to lower scorers with similar GPAs)- just my personal experience. By standardized tests, I mean SATs, ACTs, APs, PSATs, SAT Subject Tests, PSATs… If a group of people in a class- say AP Chemistry- have As, but score an average of 2 or 3 on the AP Exam, there is either: 1) incompetent teaching or 2) cheating – maybe both. Please do not make an argument of the teacher “not teaching to the test, and actually teaching the subject” to the students. Anyone who successfully completes a College-Level Chemistry Class with an B+ should easily score at least a 4 on AP Chemistry. I have noticed that, in general, the AP classes in my school where cheating can be done the least also have the highest AP scorers…