Cheating in High School
I have observed High School to be a transition period from the behaviors associated with childhood experiences to adult responsibility. It is a time of much change and personal growth, and one aspect of that growth is integrity.
Cheating ran rampant throughout my High School, and I witnessed many instances when students were faced with difficult decisions regarding academic integrity. Although these students defended themselves and never admitted to any wrongdoing, teachers had the available tools to confirm the cheating.
Experiences from High School often give cheating and dishonest students a peek at the real world, but they always stop short of teaching them real world lessons, as if a buffer has been placed between the students and the harsh punishments that they would face in the adult world. Some people may argue that High School gives students a wide range of adult experiences, including having to take full responsibility for their wrongdoings, but I disagree. High School students do not face the same consequences that adults do, which in turn affects their writing styles.
The average High School student may cheat in small amounts. Maybe a student forgets to cite a source on a research paper that is due. I have witnessed students fabricating information about their sources, and in some instances, the entire sources themselves. The protective environment of High School keeps punishments for cheating within its bounds, which is unlike any situation an adult would face for the same accusations. An adult would have to worry about getting fired, kicked out of school, or even about facing a jail sentence. It would not be easy to escape from cheating accusations. High School students only have to worry about, in the worst-case scenario, getting a suspension or failing a paper. The knowledge of previous cheating accusations would probably not be revealed to prospective colleges.
When I was in High School, I noticed that students would often develop writing styles based on any form of cheating that they could get away with in order to lighten their workloads. Teachers condoned cheating and, if anything at all, tried to use scare tactics to keep students from doing it. These tactics failed because the incentive to cheat was much higher than the punishment that students would face for doing so. Cheating, in small amounts at a time, is a way to rid oneself of some of the pressure associated with a writing assignment. High School experiences teach us that intellectual property is similar to Wikipedia, where we can borrow and alter any material we want without acknowledging the original authors. I have seen students copy research papers from each other and then change some of the text to create the impression of a new paper. These tactics seem to occur mostly in classes where the teachers do not spend the time to check students’ papers for sources or to enter the papers into a cheating database online.
While some may argue that High School students do face the same consequences as adults for cheating, I believe that students are only bound by the rules of their schools and not the real world. High School shows us that it is possible to cheat and steal intellectual property without getting caught or facing harsh punishments. Academic integrity becomes associated with idealism and is largely ignored until students reach a level of personal growth where they realize the need for it.
Comments