What are your views on cheating?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
161

Speaking of the “How was the test?” question…
I have a reputation for 100%s on tests Physics 1 AP (earned totally by my own hard work), and nearly everyone I know asks me, in a legitimate manner, well before the test, how to do this kind of problem or what does that mean, and I explain it to them. (We don’t have the best physics teacher.) Two of my good friends usually ask for help with physics the night before the test as well, and if I don’t have too much homework from World History AP, I re-explain things for a few hours over the phone.

I have physics 1st period, and they have 5th and 6th. We all have lunch together between 4th and 5th, and inevitably the above question is always asked on test day. I do my best to help them in a totally unbiased manner, using no information about the test, especially when after the first test I found myself giving altogether too helpful hints… I review the material mentally before the test, and vow to myself not to explain anything beyond that to anyone, because that would be unethical. But it’s so hard, and I have to watch myself so much…

Do you have any advice? opinions?

I’m so glad we’re all taking different science classes next year so I don’t have to think about this again.

162

hey, lovesmath, the best thing you can do is just review the all of the material that your teacher taught for the test. That way, you’re not just helping them with one problem but you’re helping them with all of the material. Another thing you can do is just ask them what they’re having trouble with, and help them with just that.

163

I go to large public school that’s famous in the local school districts for its IB program and academically driven students. However, because the environment is so intense, recently there’s been a problem with Adderall and Ritalin in the junior and senior classes.

Our newspaper did a spread on this issue and surveyed students in our school about whether taking ADHD drugs to increase focus was cheating or not–and over a third answered that it was not. I’m curious to see if this opinion is shared by other people outside of my school, and I think this is really interesting food for thought, so I just wanted to put this out there.

164

@mochafrozen I don’t feel that taking those drugs is cheating, but I don’t think that taking drugs unnecessarily is ever a good idea.

165

I personally don’t mind cheating at all. A grade is a grade: how you earned it is irrelevant. Besides, on transcripts all grades look the same, whether you learned everything or simply cheated.

166

well I used to mind more, but now that I’m a second semester senior, I really don’t care…

167

Honors students cheat more than anyone else. I personally abhor it, but a lot of my peers don’t seem to be above it though

168

^ same situation at my school
i go to a very competitive school, so we have a pretty bad cheating problem
i think it’s a horrible and unfair way to go about getting good grades, but what can you do :confused:

169

Assuming from the tone of the OP, this topic seems to discuss of cheating to the extent of people copying someone’s work, inflation, plagiarism, etc…not glancing at someone’s paper during a test due to stress or copying answers from the answer book from time constraints.

Honestly, I’m not against it at all. Cheating (to the OP’s extent) will eventually lead to big time karma in the butt. Cancellation of standardized tests, rescinds from colleges who are rich, and if still not caught they’ll probably get kicked out of the 4-year college/grad/prof school eventually. I find it an amusing tool for someone’s conscious because after the punishments they have learned a valuable lesson and won’t do it ever again in a worse time (I would much rather learn in kindergarten than in the job market, for example).

Colleges don’t give a poop either - at least in high school, if they really see a student dying to go their institution well of course they’ll let them in for the money (UCalifornia system…happens a lot {hi tuition rise}). From a rumor in my secondary school, a person was caught cheating from changing everyone’s grades for Pre Cal H, AP Cal AB, & Pre Cal for money. District found out, gave the student and the teacher a punishment which led to the teacher just getting a break since it technically wasn’t his fault since he was unaware, although probably lazy to consider of who’s around the computer. As for the student (this is funny), forced to transfer to our rival school, colleges he applied found out, and from rumors he still got into a UC. Hah.

The only people who do care about cheating are the people in College Board and ETS, they try to attempt to give standardized tests to the NATION and still expect to get ideal scores. Also some teachers and faculty of your respective school, probably…yeah outliers too. Even if you were to get caught and not able to go to a 4-year college from a rough punishment, there’s still community college and you have the 2nd chance (although much harder).

As for me, I don’t cheat because I’ve already learned my lessons back in elementary school and I don’t need it as much (I’m sticking with state, so bleh). The only time I ever cheat is occasionally in tests when I glance around and see answers of another individual by accident. However, I’m for cheating…like I said, valuable tool for an individual to learn their lesson and save them from worse scenarios in the future.

Personal comment to the OP: Those “valedictorians” will learn their lesson eventually, don’t you worry.

170

Lmao I might as well share my story. Recently in my biology class, full of degens and taught by a teacher who is force-resigning at the end of the year, we had to do a 20- page biome project. I kinda BS the whole thing and copied from websites (it was a scrapbook, not a research paper) to finish it quickly. My teacher said to not plagiarize, and surely enough I got caught. Got a 42/115 on the project, and she tracked every website down! This wasn’t an electronic assignment, meaning she typed 3-4 lines into google from every page to find where I copied from. As horrible as this incident was, my friends and I got pretty weak because she spent her time to find website I used such as grassygrass.■■■■■■■■■■. Fortunately, a 36% on this project only brought my grade down 2% because the class is weighted… or I got lucky and I’m jinxing my self and she’ll change it to the 85% weight… In the mean time, rolling with a 92.02…

171

Haha
My entire class cheats, and they get their way out, because our invigilators, are the worst.
It’s not fair, to the people who work their ass off, to get good grades.
In fact, in our igcse exams, a lot of people cheated, and they ended up getting some of the highest marks in the school, which is unfair, and ridiculous, but they still got it their way.
Honestly though, cheating is horrible. You’re lying to yourself when you cheat, just remember that.
I cheated before because I was like “hey, why not be a roman in rome” , but later I felt so bad inside, and I swore i’d never do it again.
The only way success is rewarding, is if you do it whole-heartedly, and truthfully.
Nothing is better than that satisfaction ^
But yeah, cheating won’t help you out in the future, like when you go to college, so it’s really not worth it, in all honestly.
You’ll be screwed one day or the other if you subject yourself to cheating :slight_smile: x

172

I am going to get straight to the point. Yes, these people who are cheating my have higher GPA than you and may
get into great colleges with that GPA,but is that really worth it? First of all, if one cheats they are “cheating themselves” out of knowledge and later will find themselves not being able to apply what they learned. It is one thing to copy and another to actually know how to apply something. There is this girl at my school and she cheated her way into NYU and that pissed the whole school off ,but guess what? She knows nothing and can’t even do simple algebra and she wants to be a Business/ Economics Major. The graduating class voted her “most likely to be broke on wall street.” Cheating may seem to be a good option at first, but when you find yourself in a situation where you need to apply what you have learned and you don’t know how to, you will find major problems. CHEATING IS WRONG! When you cheat you HARM YOURSELF and YOUR FUTURE! Anyone who earns their grades fair and square should be proud because being knowledgeable,credible, and independent that is a REAL accomplishment, not having a faux GPA. Why risk expulsion, failing grades, and more? People should realize their are better ways to get effective grades other that cheating such as study groups, tutoring, studying, online resources. I hope I got my point across.

173

This one girl in my grade has a slightly higher class rank than me and she cheats on EVERYTHING. Every test she copies the answers from someone text to her or has them written on a piece of paper. Most of the time, she fakes sick or does not come to school on test days so that people can tell her whats on it. She takes it the next day and gets a 100 it’s so ridiculous. The school is aware of the problem but she was still accepted into NHS and is a Student Council officer. They can’t really call her out for cheating if she doesn’t come to school and gets answers. She told me they called her house many times to tell her parents she’s home on a test day but they still let her stay home. She even went as far to fake a seizure to get out of a test. Someone anonymously sent a letter to guidance about her and a few other people but nothing was done because they couldn’t prove it. So frustrating.

174

I usually say live and let live… it probably isn’t hurting me so I don’t really care.
Although I will admit that whenever we’re taking a test and the teacher leaves the room (its usually German class) we all share answers

175

The thing that I hate the most about cheating is that while others are working hard to earn their As, there are lazy students that will get the same grade without putting forth any effort beyond keeping your phone hidden from sight. But as one of my classmates put it, “Let them cheat and don’t say any thing. When they get to college, they’ll end up failing”.

176

I think an easy way to prevent cheating is just to make it impossible.

For example, don’t make exams multiple choice. Make them open response based, and allow the student to bring in a cheat sheet and even their textbooks. Of course, this will require that you put more effort into writing difficult exams that aren’t based off rote memorization or being able to do well on multiple guesses, but that should be expected of teachers (and we’re presumably talking about AP/Honors classes).

Emphasis in-class activities more, where it’s much more difficult to cheat.

Use turnitin.com for take-home essays, and I would even argue to curve these so that your classmates will have an incentive not to help you, although I do know this is illegal in several counties.

177

I doubt I have ever cheated in school before not even homework(I always do my work because no one else does theirs for me to copy anyways) ; I was the ONE that people would want to copy off my homework (like no, I worked on it for a good 30-40 minutes) I do NOT like to participate in cheating anyway how. I think the system is screwed and people “cheating” are just screwing both themselves and the system. I seriously think it is a vicious cycle with cheating. People do not wake up and say " I cannot wait to cheat on that Chem test", it is the pressures from teachers, parents, peers, standards to do that best or better than your neighbour and they end up cheating.
I have a funny story about cheating; this one girl was cheating with her actual notes out from the class and she still failed the test. It was not because she was caught it was because NOTHING she learned in class and took notes on was on the test. This class was academic social studies (No not honors, no not AP, nothing advanced). This baffles me because the education system needs to be reevaluated, especially with the teachers. I feel cheating will be less if the material was actually important and tests are possible not easy just able to be done; not questions that feel like a magician’s trick. Most likely children who cheat are the honors kids because they actually care about their grades and this makes you think what is on the test to make them feel like the only solution is to cheat?

178

Well at my school we dont have lockers so everyone brings their phones with them to class. most teachers let you listen to music while taking tests or quizzes, and most teachers dont care enough to actively monitor the classroom.

179

Cheating is so wrong. Half of my pre cal class this year cheated by getting the final from someone who took it last year. I actually worked for my B+ in that class while others slithered their way through and got an A by memorizing the answers from the final. Now i am barely in the top 10% of my class :frowning:

180

I have also noticed intense cheeting in my AP Bio class, where people would use lab write up from people who took the class last year and turn them in since we got a new teacher.