Matthew Polakowski: Blog #1: Cheating in High School

Blog #1: Cheating in High School

If you don't know that cheating is wrong before you get to high school, you definitely won't learn it in high school...

High school cannot teach a student anything about academic honesty and integrity. While this may seem to be a bold statement, personal experience has shown it to be true. I attended an all male, Catholic high school; supposedly the epitomy of integrity and honesty. However, I soon realized that this was not the case. Many of the students cheated to get ahead or even just to stay in school. What came as a surprise to me was that the teachers did not seem to care. Every year, the class would listen to a lecture about the dangers of cheating and plaigarism, and the consequences of being caught. These lectures had not the slightest effect on students or faculty. I often found it hard to hold my tongue when I witnessed cheating, but it simply wasn't worth telling the teacher, nothing would be done.
I specifically remember taking a chemistry test and watching one student obviously pull out a formula sheet and copy onto his test. When I finished my test, I discreetly told the teacher about the student's actions. I expected that the student would at least receive a zero for the test, if not a full report of misconduct (three of these and you're out of the school). When we received the graded tests back, I was angered to learn that the student had not only gotten away with cheating, he had done better than I had (a rather unusual occurrence in that class). Several times I ran into this problem with teachers not caring about cheating and dishonesty.
Cheating is acceptable in today's society as a way to get ahead. That said, it becomes the resposibility of the parents to educate their children with the moral values that prevent cheating and dishonesty. The schools can no longer be trusted to do this. If a student goes to high school without the concept that cheating is wrong, they have no real opportunity to learn this concept. Plaigarism in college and high school just becomes a form of cheating, instead of theft of intellectual property.
The concept of intellectual property is also not introduced in high school. Many high school students are not aware that it is considered stealing as well as cheating to use the ideas of another person without credit. Those who would not steal from a store would copy from an older student's paper without remorse. Another reason for the rampant cheating in high school is the ease with which materials are obtained. Many teachers use the same tests and essays every two or three years. With an all male school, it was very easy to find someone with an older brother who had done the same assignment before. Most plaigarism at the high school level came from situations such as this, not copying from a professional source as at the university level.