Archives for the Month of August 2007 on David Dirisamer's Online Journal
Society’s Subtle Submission
From the plagiarism scandal that rocked the New York Times to tainted records in athletics, cheating has become as much a part of Americana as baseball and apple pie. While condemning our youth seems a simple solution, the reality finds our society liable. Schools without grades, youth baseball games without scores and inventive spellings are the rule rather than the exception. This fantasy world ends abruptly in high school. Suddenly those pesky numbers on the standardized test do matter and Johnny learns that his 870 on the SAT rules out Harvard. The pressure inherent in facing failure for the first time tempts students to cheat.
All high school students face pressure to succeed. Students at rich high schools view high-ranked colleges as a necessity and a birthright. Students from poorer backgrounds see a degree as an escape, a means to a better life. Students readily acknowledge their academic success is based almost entirely on the numbers on tests and the letters on papers. Alice Newhall, a student in Virginia, proclaims “The better grades you have, the better school you get into, the better you're going to do in life. And if you learn to cut corners to do that, you're going to be saving yourself time and energy. In the real world, that's what's going to be going on. The better you do, that's what shows” (www.cnn.com). Newhall’s phrase “cut corners” shows an attempt to validate cheating as efficiency. Her statement shows that students find their academic achievement inexorably linked to success in life by our increasingly results-driven society.
Students learn this early on. We live in a society that glorifies Paris Hilton, because of her wealth, over brilliant thinkers and humanitarians. Entertainment glorifies cheating in movies like The Perfect Score. Corporate greed is celebrated when profits crest $10 billion a quarter. In sports, Floyd Landis cheated to win the Tour de France, and baseball players Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco admitted steroid use. The fact remains, the youth of America discover that cheating can earn you money, our society’s chief value.
That explains the climate in which students cheat, and like anyone breaking the rules, they push the envelope to see where consequences begin. Just think, if the police only caught a handful of speeders out of 100 and the punishment was a two dollar fine, how many people would observe speed limits? Just as in that hypothetical, before long cheaters find safety in numbers, knowing that if 75% of their class cheats, all cannot be caught. 75% represents the percentage of students engaging in “serious cheating” according to a Rutgers University study (www.cnn.com). Inevitably, people slip through the cracks, but a shocking 95% say they got away scot free according to a survey of successful students (www.glass-castle.com).
Those same surveys report that, disturbingly, over 50% of those students did not feel cheating was wrong (www.glass-castle.com, www.cnn.com). This could easily be blamed on the eroding morals of our youth. But, other indicators suggest the youth of America are not falling into a moral abyss, with one study concluding “today's teenagers are not more criminally prone than past generations. Youth felony arrest rates declined by 40%” while “felony arrest rates for over age 30 adults increased” (www.cjcj.org). If the morals of our generation were slipping, crime rates would rise, not fall.
Don’t confuse my message. I’m not excusing cheaters. It’s always wrong. Cheaters deserve punishment. Also, I acknowledge that there are “bad apples” in every bunch and people make mistakes. Generally, 75% of people don’t make the same mistake. However, they do in this case because our society sends mixed signals. We create an environment of entitlement and then suddenly in high school, not everyone can win. We celebrate the results of cheating, even turning a blind eye to it (see Barry Bonds). These factors, plus our hesitance to condemn anything as an absolute wrong, allow students to rationalize cheating, leading to its proliferation.
That’s my take, but now that I think about it, I probably could have just bought this paper online.
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