Cheating In Education

Introduction

Cheating means fraudulent actions committed by students to get better grades or test scores or by adults who seek to make their children, students, schools, or districts appear more successful than they really are. Students who cheat may commit plagiarism, surreptitiously bring the answers to test questions into an examination, or copy another student's answers during a test. On rare occasions, students have persuaded or paid others to take tests for them in situations where the test takers are anonymous. Adult cheating occurs when parents do their children's schoolwork, when teachers give students unearned grades, or when district officials inflate test scores or graduation rates. This paper discusses cheating in education.

Discussion

Cheating, like lying, involves deception and dishonesty, except that lying is basically verbal, whereas cheating generally is nonverbal. Lying, as Bok defines it, is a statement of deception. Cheating, on the other hand, is an action meant to deceive.

Cheating can take many forms. As stated earlier, adultery usually encompasses both “cheating on one's spouse” and lying to cover up the action. People can cheat on their income tax, on forms used in their businesses (e.g., deductions for expenses), in games played with others (whether simple games or serious gambling, e.g., poker), on insurance claims, on tests in school as already mentioned, on applications for employment or unemployment, and in sports. (Whitley, 235-274)

Cheating, like lying, is a serious infraction of most moral systems because, like lying, it shatters the trust needed for the continuance and survival of human relationships. For example, if you buy a used car that is supposed to have 40,000 miles on it, but the dealer has turned the odometer back and it really has 140,000, then you have been cheated. You probably will never buy a car from that dealer again and may be wary even of honest businesspeople. If you are playing poker with presumed friends whom you think you can trust and you discover that one of them has been playing with marked cards, you probably will never trust that person again—certainly not in a card game where you stand to lose a good deal of money.

Issues of Cheating

Teachers should be alert to the possibility of cheating on tests, projects, quizzes, and assignments. Unfortunately, cheating is a common occurrence, both in school and in life. Students cheat for many reasons: external pressure from teachers or parents; failure to prepare and study for tests; internal pressure from being in an intensively competitive major or course that gives a limited number of high grades; danger of losing a scholarship; and, unfortunately, because “everybody else does it.” Some even blame their cheating on the practices of others. For example, some try to justify cheating with excuses like, “No one near me was attempting to cover up their exam paper,” “The course material is too difficult,” “There's just too much material to learn,” or “The instructor gives tests that are unfair.” However, no matter how and why it is done, cheating is an ...