Cheating is in the news again. No surprise there, really, considering that two-thirds of high school students admit cheating.
The hot spots? Highly competitive high schools located in college towns. This quote from Jim Kenyon, the father of a student named Nicholas who is accused of cheating at his Hanover, New Hampshire high school, says it all:
“We live in an Ivy League community where the status symbols aren’t the car you drive or the size of your house, but what colleges your sons and daughters go to,” he said.
According to Jason Stephens, assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut, one of the antidotes to cheating is good teaching.
”It’s not only important that a teacher know the subject matter and how to effectively communicate, but there is ethical goodness — fairness and caring.”
Kids are more likely to cheat–and justify cheating–when doing homework assignments or other “busy work” that they feel is lacking in any real learning value or in classes they don’t like. A multiple choice test is more likely to be stolen than an essay test that would require critical thinking and good writing skills.
Consequently, the more we put our kids in high-pressure, ego-oriented, fact-heavy learning environments in which grades and test scores are the holy grail, the more we can expect them to find not-so-ethical ways to get ahead.
1 Comment
March 26, 2008 at 3:10 pm
So now we are going to blame the instructor for student shortcomings? Students caught cheating in my classes (community college level) have been cheating since elementary school (by their own admissions.) So when did elementary school become so hard that a student feels pressured to cheat?
These cheaters are not less intelligient. They have simply learned they don’t have to do the work. They also seem to think they know better than the instructor what needs to be learned. And their sense of entitlement precludes them from learning any information that is heavy on facts, memorization and rules set by someone else which includes all sciences and maths.
So it is not surprising to learn that students lag behind so many other nations in Math & Science.
I give my students every opportunity to earn the points they need to make the grade they desire. But they must rely on themselves. And in the end my students will tell you that they earned their B or A or C.