Psithurism

Academic Integrity?

High school taught me that if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, it doesn’t make a sound.

Reputed laws about copying are acknowledged in every level of society, high school being no exception. For artists: don’t duplicate the Mona Lisa. For musicians: don’t steal chord progressions from Pachelbel's Canon in D. And for the suburbs: don’t copy your neighbors landscaping (this would be creepy).

From observing my peers, however, the laws of cheating on the street seem hazier than they are in principle. If I learned anything about cheating from in high school, it was from my peers, who primarily adhered to the belief that if no one caught them, they were doing nothing wrong.
One of my favorite examples (brace yourself) takes place in my third-year German classroom. The student in front of me had her textbook open on the floor and was copying translations from the index. Not liking the girl anyway, I kicked her book shut.

No more than three days after this, the girl tried something slightly more suave. She copied the necessary vocabulary onto a sheet of notebook paper and pulled the “I need to use two sheets of paper for this quiz that clearly justifies the use of ONE” trick. This time, the teacher was tipped off... and merely told the girl to put one of the sheets away. Did it work? NO. The teacher could have caught her in the act, but instead chose to walk away, trusting the student whom she knew had tried and successfully cheated several times in the past.

I can never remember a teacher address cheating in the open. After talking to my guidance councilor about some students who had gained access to test questions before the test (The Perfect Score, anyone?), the teacher in question never addressed the issue before the class, something that, in my opinion, should have been mandatory. It seemed that the punishment for cheaters was just as much under wraps as the crime. “Oops... we caught you cheating. We are embarrassed. Allow us to escort you back to the office, where we can discuss the matter discreetly.”

If this metaphorical tree fell in a forest and no one heard it, I would search in vain for a student who would tell me that it made a sound. Though the hard laws against cheating in my high school existed, most students simply didn’t care. If they could cheat and get away with it, they would continue to do so. Even once the problem was brought into the open, administrators and others were reluctant to carry on the conversation. This probably encouraged the no-catch no-problem philosophy, for how is a community supposed to address a problem that they don’t even appear to acknowledge?

If my high school (and possibly others) would like to step up to the plate on academic integrity, cheating needs to be addressed in public and become more than something that only happens on paper. Cheaters don't function independently of their communities (or 'forests'), and actions taken to counter cheating are best addressed by the community as a whole.