Cheating - Dangerously Easy

Cheating is a rather myopic endeavor. Generally when someone cheats, whether it is on a test or on a spouse, they are not necessarily thinking about long-term consequences, but what they want to accomplish at that moment in time.

When I was a junior in high school I decided to take physiology for my third year of science. It was not a requirement; I chose to take the class because I knew that it would look good on college applications if I took another year of science. I knew that I would never pursue science as a career, so when I started struggling in the class I leaned on a friend who I knew was planning on going into medicine. Emily was not only my lab partner (where she did all of the dissections on our cat), but she also helped me cheat on two tests. I studied and studied for those tests, but science is not my forte. So after earning (kind of) a C first semester I opted to drop the class and take study hall second semester instead. I could not bring myself to cheat through another semester.

Since then I can honestly say that I have not cheated or felt the need to cheat. Even when I had to pay to retake a subject test for my teaching credential, I studied and retested and felt great pride when I finally passed the test. Cheating would have saved me money, but I know that the experience would have haunted me and made me feel ill-prepared for my future career.

What struck me in our Socratic Seminar was how many of you believe you have it so much harder than previous generations. First of all, comparison is the death of life. Your experience, my experience, my mother’s experiences…. No one has it “harder”, we have just had different experiences (challenges and benefits that can really never be measured). If anything what makes it harder for you is that fact that you have SO much information at your fingertips that it may be challenging NOT to cheat. But the material you are being taught is not harder, it is just delivered differently.

My other concern, not just with this class but in general, is how easy it seems for this generation to point the finger rather than take the blame. As Jackie said – “it’s on you.” I had some very difficult teachers in high school and in college, and as much as I wanted to blame their teaching styles it really did not matter. In the end I had two options – study and take advantage of office hours and other resources, or drop the class. Blaming the teacher is not only a waste of energy it does not really help to accomplish anything other than getting your thoughts off of your chest.

Though I understand your reasoning for wanting to cheat, I hope you understand the consequences. Not only do you risk getting caught, but you also risk never fully understanding the material that you are supposedly “mastering” by passing the class.

Fernando was right. Cheating is a moral issue. If you are just looking for a grade, then cheating doesn’t seem like that big of a deal; but if you are looking for knowledge you are cheating yourself out of acquiring said knowledge by cheating. Yes, you are using your resources, but would you rather have a doctor that earnestly achieved his medical degree or a doctor that cheated his way through medical school?? (which, honestly, I don’t think you realize how difficult that would be).

The other issue that your generation faces is that as easy as it is for you to cheat, it is just as easy for teachers to find the original source. All I have to do is type in a single sentence from a plagiarized essay into Google and – bam! – there it is! Many schools and colleges also use cheating software to quickly detect plagiarism. At the last school I taught at, students were expected to turn their essays into a website called turnitin.com. The website not only tells you where certain information in the essay came from (i.e. other websites), but it also notes the percent of “originality”. (By the way, our district is currently working on acquiring this software).

This is not meant to scare you, it is meant to motivate you. Life is challenging, and the further along you get in your education and career, the harder it gets. But I will tell you that because I worked hard to achieve my current career status my knowledge of the subject matter and competency in my work makes me feel prepared to take on any and all tasks before me. My knowledge and competency have been tested by actual tests and difficult situations, but hard work pays off. In class I stand before you prepared to teach, and humbly willing to work on my own growth and knowledge, but I will always do so honestly and with integrity.