Cheating in School

            What is cheating if not a systematic mechanism to easily overcome a perceived difficulty in a, more or less, unacceptable manner? Given that, it can be inferred that cheating does not necessarily refer to a student copying from a seatmate during an examination but it can denote a plenitude of different phenomena. The argument, however, is that cheating as a social hazard starts in the school setting or anything similar. Hence to get rid of such a public threat before it can snowball, one must begin to target the source. And since it is the individual student who is in question, it is a necessity to examine and experiment on him in the psychological sense. But must the attention really be directed to the student, him or her alone?

           Why do students cheat? It goes without saying that the question requires the very reasons or rationalizations for such an act – the justification of one’s conduct by offering a more socially acceptable reason in place of real or actual reasons, as Camero puts it in Comments from a Student Councilor. A student is externally constrained by factors such as family and friends. Therefore whenever he or she makes any move, it is always colored in view of these influences. For fear of offending them, the student is forced to resort to extreme measures to get a high mark, to graduate. More than this, however, the researcher thinks that this only displays one side of the coin. The fact of cheating in school points to bigger problems, ones that have successfully evaded the discourse arena because of the preoccupation of reducing everything to the psychological or even genetic make-up of man. Seen as a social menace, it has effectively placed the blame on the person. The point is that, perhaps, the student alone is not to be the recipient of all culpabilities – extension of horizon of study and research – but the society or the school must have a share in such a liability. The disputation is that it has, intentionally or unintentionally, created for itself a problem with which it is bound to perpetually disown. It cannot accept that its very system has created and maintained the atmosphere of cheating and so it has pointed the finger to the student. This may explain recidivism no matter how enhanced disciplinarity and processes to make impossible the phenomenon of cheating. Cheating adapts and it grows simultaneous with anti-cheating measures. Sad to say, cheating is here to stay if the only perceived solution is to subject a student to medical or psychological tests. It appears, nevertheless extreme, that to get rid of cheating activities is to reconstruct, perhaps, entirely the very structure within which a student is subject to. As it is similarly too hasty to conclude that the school or society created the cheater, the corrupt, and the criminal.

            Incentives, recognitions and awards are some of the multitude of apparatuses purportedly used to encourage excellence and perfection in school are themselves the very mechanisms that incite injustice, cheating. Who would not want to be awarded? Who would not want to be recognized? Who would not want excellence or perfection? Who would not want the easy way? Who would not want to cheat?

The presentation has been so critical that the writer might be misconstrued to advocate cheating. He is neither justifying himself. It must not be. In his entire academic life, he is proud to say that he has never cheated. The point is to present that there is cheating not because there is a student, who is morally premature, psychologically unstable, or externally pressured and controlled, but there is a society or school that has become too comfortable and sure with its own operations that when a rupture occurs it says: I did not do it. It could not be me, but you (student/s). Cheating is morally wrong but if it is allowed to lodge on something that ensures its subsistence, do not be pointing fingers.

            As mentioned above, students would not be induced to cheat if not for the shady educational system. Traditional education does not help solve the growing and expanding demand of the modern world. To a great extent, it does not encourage thinking for oneself but only the passing on of centuries-formed and trimmed knowledge. It makes the student lazy. There is a need, therefore, for it to also evolve. To test this point, contrast a class with another as regards their performance and reaction when faced with an objective and subjective examination. Students would almost certainly cheat on the objective part for the certainty and the fixedness of answers cannot be simply their own concatenation of ideas. For if education is really meant to reverberate back to the society for development and progress, right from the school setting, practical application of theories, ideas, laws and postulates must have already been tested, experimented, and thought over. This goes to show that it is not so much on the psychological aspect of a student that he or she is provoked to cheat but the educational system itself. To answer the problem of cheating, therefore, a society or school must be able to precisely pinpoint where the problem is stemming from, for if it has zeroed in on the wrong one, greater evil will proliferate and it will do more harm than good.

            It can be said that cheating, in the general sense, is a consequence of the endowment of rationality. Man would almost always seek for the easier, lighter and less-burdensome road to any endeavor even if this means he or she has to cheat. To prevent, thus, the system must be evolutionary not revolutionary. It must change to accommodate the growth of different kinds of difficulties. After all, it is not only a personal or individual task to form the person, but it involves the whole school or society itself – able to instruct one another.