Skip to main content

Cheating in School

In 2008, the Josephson Institute of Ethics surveyed 30,000 high school students to find how many had cheated on an exam in the past twelve months. The authors found that an incredible 64% said they had cheated (38% said they’d cheated two or more times). The number of girls who cheated was about equal to the number of boys, and those living in the southeast were more likely to cheat than other regions of the U.S. (70% said they’d cheated, compared to 64% in the west). Students attending religious schools were more likely to cheat than those in non-religious schools: 63% versus 47%, respectively.

Since I teach middle school, I wondered how middle school students compared. It turns out that they cheat less than older kids. The same organization found that serious cheating begins in middle school and increases in the higher grades. Among other reasons, students cheat because of pressure to perform, and because they perceive that everyone is doing it.

Lest you think students are the only ones cheating, teachers, too, have been caught cheating. Because of the pressure of student performance on state tests, teachers have been caught doing things like copying state tests and teaching directly from them, changing incorrect answers on tests to correct answers, and finishing tests for students who didn’t finish. Some (if not all) of these teachers faced dismissal, fines, and even jail.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...
2 comments
Read more

Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
Post a Comment
Read more

Experiment

My social studies students and I are studying Islam right now. The other day, we were reading about one of the Five Pillars, zakat (charity in Islam that means "that which purifies"). Muslims believe that giving away money helps to purify it and also "safeguards [them] against miserliness" (1). I asked the class if this was true, that giving money away makes us less greedy. They generally agreed that it does. I wanted to test whether or not they really believed this, so I handed a volunteer a $10 bill. I told the class that I would ask for the bill back the next day. I said that they should pass the bill around among their classmates, and that as a result, there would be no way for me to know who had the bill. For that reason, whoever wanted to keep the money could keep it. Even if I did learn who kept it, I told them, I would not punish that person. I wanted them to be motivated by their own honesty. The next day, I asked for the bill, and a student handed it to me...
Post a Comment
Read more