Lie, Cheat, Steal: High School ethics surveyed

Pre-College Topics High School Life
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<p>When they write ‘A’ on a multiple-choice test, should we write that, too? Well, obviously if it’s the right answer, but I mean if you’re cheating. Monkey see, monkey do? Monkey doesn’t know the answer… monkey becomes a leech?</p>

<p>Monoclide, I think you should read The Students are Watching. It might reinforce some of your views; it might give you some new and different ones. But I think you might find it interesting.</p>

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It’s interesting that you should bring this up; I was thinking about this a while ago and then we talked about it in school today… I get what you’re saying. And it does make sense, and I agree with you to an extent. But adults are people who have lived longer than you; who have gone through a lot more than you; who have learned more than you, who have seen and done and experienced more than you. Naturally they’ll be wiser than you on some issues. And I think that does deserve respect. Are you going to be smarter than them, say, when it comes to computers or cars or x or y or z? Sure. But the fact that they’ve been through more than you is something to keep in mind. If your parents raised you, fed you as a baby, clothed you, changed your disgusting diapers, bought you stuff, etc. etc. are you going to grow up - reach the grand old age of 17 - and say “I’m your equal”? Since we’re talking about expecting “equality,” what have you done in return? </p>

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Wow. It takes some serious denial, defiance, or I don’t even know what to say that and honestly believe it. Ha. Yeah, let’s just leave that… I won’t even go there.</p>

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***? NO.</p>

102

<p>Cheating Really isnt going to hurt anything…i cheated so much in high school it was rediculous…and are u kidding me proffessors dont give a flying f if you do your assignments hahahaha…i still cheat in college…its harder but it can be done…</p>

<p>And i know what your thinking…but how are u gonna be able to do it when you get job</p>

<p>The Answer: A Computer
I dont know if alot of kids realize this these days but the work you do in your first two years of college is in case one day every computer in the world FAIL. Otherwise there is some genius out there that has already written a program that you plug variables into, and that 2 hours you spend on a statics problem can be done in a minute! </p>

<p>In the real world time is money…and they dont have time to wait for your ass to write out a problem!</p>

103

<p>I completely agree with makiri, who said that people lie on these surveys. I mean come on, when those surveys are passed out and you know its anonymous, what do you do? You try to have some fun and skew the results by saying that you smoke crack 7 times a week and that you cheat on every test. These tests are bogus, and you can’t make any conclusion with them because they are anonymous.</p>

104

<p>I agree with the fact that many teachers assign “busy work”, and kids realize this. So they leave it to the last minute and copy off someone at lunch. In the end, there is no great discrepancy in grades between those who do the work and those who don’t. The rationale behind it is: “why do it if it won’t help me?”</p>

<p>I disagree with the those who claim that “cheating is cheating no matter what”. Letting someone copy your homework is less of an offense than copying off someone, which in turn, is less of an offense than cheating on an exam. Think of our penal system. The end result of murder is the same, but there are 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree murders, each with a corresponding punishment that is different than the others. Personally, I’d be extremely surprised if a school expelled a student for letting another student copy his homework, whereas I wouldn’t be surprised at all if a student was expelled because he cheated on an exam.</p>

105

<p>Wow, the exchange between Wharton and Alex captures the dilemma perfectly! I never cheated in high school or college, and I resented those who did. My grades were mediocre, but they were my own. Still, when I look back, I sometimes ask myself who was served by my uncompromising stance? When recruiters from the big firms came to campus, I saw them make their best offers to cheating candidates who were less qualified than I, but who boasted superior GPAs. Thus, dishonest people made their way to positions from which they could shape policies and influence businesses to a greater degree than I ever could.</p>

106

<p>One other point, hurriedly: When you cheat, and blame it on the awful school environment, lousy teachers, boring classwork, and so on, your are letting yourself be part of the problem, not part of the solution.</p>

<p>Instead of cheating, students can go, singly or in a group, to an administrator to try to address problems in their school.</p>

<p>One of our daughters met with the principal about a teacher who did not teach, but used class periods to talk about his own life- to a very extreme degree. She told the principal she would like to learn some history. She convinced some others to tell the principal the same thing. The teacher was taken off that class the next year, and demoted. So, instead of cheating in a useless class, she and her classmates benefited future students.</p>

<p>This is just one example of how being proactive in solving problems can be a lot better than giving in to the problems in our lives, and cheating our way around them.</p>

<p>In the end, cheating is a sign of helplessness.</p>

107

<p>Compmom, what if what your daughter had said didnt make any difference and they still had to take the class with the same teacher? What if the teacher kept teaching the class year after year without changing anything? Just as you can flip cheating around, you can flip this example around too. For example, your daughter talking with the principle could be seen as a sign of helplessness. She was upset with her current class and wanted to change, giving up in other words. Not only that but you said CONVINCED others to say the same thing. She rigged the system in a manner, stilting the game in her favor, because she was HELPLESS in the class before and wanted a change.
Now Im not saying that its a bad thing she did, quite the contrary, I think its great that teens are standing up for something they believe in. But I just wanted to show you how there is a good and bad side to everything, and that you can manipulate either to your advantage.</p>

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<p>Okay, but you’re making it seem like it was a bad thing the game was “stilted in her favor.” It’s not like her talking to the principal was only so that SHE could benefit; she talked to the principal so that she and everyone else could actually learn. Changing something so that people other than yourself benefit, so that everyone is at an advantage, is different from “rigging the system.” Cheating, on the other hand, benefits only yourself. You can’t flip this example to back up your point in a way that makes sense.</p>

109

<p>Yes it did benefit the whole class and other kids as well, or at least thats what we think. How can you be so sure that there werent other kids who liked the class and didnt want it to change. And if you get the answers for homework or a test and share them with others, then they do benefit. Usually that is what cheating is, at least in my school, getting the answers and then making sure everyone knows them.</p>

110

<p>In the interest of not incriminating myself on the world wide web*, I’m not going to admit anything. But I’d have expected the cheating figure to be higher. Not that I have anything to incriminate myself about.</p>

<p>*This is not an admission of guilt nor should it be construed as such. ;)</p>

111

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Oh right, sorry. I forgot about all those kids who didn’t want to learn, who didn’t want to be in school, and who were having a perfectly good time slacking and not doing ****. My b.</p>

<p>All right, now I kind of see where you’re going with the benefiting others thing. I was only thinking of individual cheating before, not a whole mass of students all cheating together.</p>

<p>But what about those other kids who don’t cheat? Do they benefit? They don’t - instead they’re the worse off for having a decent sense of scruples, like so many others have brought up. I especially liked what one person said about cheaters getting ahead in life AND having more/making more money and material goods AND having a guilt-free conscience, while non-cheaters only have a guilt-free conscience, nothing else.</p>

<p>Basically, it’s just not fair. It’s not fair that all too often, honest people don’t get rewarded. It’s not fair that cheaters get ahead for being morally corrupt. Yeah, life’s not fair. But can we do something about this? Someday in the future, is it just going to be the standard for everyone to cheat? Or for no one to cheat? Are we just going to have to accept that society is deteriorating and that morality is going downhill too?</p>

112

<p>“Oh right, sorry. I forgot about all those kids who didn’t want to learn, who didn’t want to be in school, and who were having a perfectly good time slacking and not doing ****.”</p>

<p>There are a lot more of those kids than you realize i think. for every student who is dedicated to learning as much as possible there are at least two others who wish they were somewhere else. Seeing as they dont even want to be in school, they prolly wouldnt want a teacher change with more homework. </p>

<p>As for individually cheating, i can tell you that whenever i <em>create</em> a cheatsheet, it is immediatly copied and used by at least five students. However, it isnt very often that i <em>create</em> a cheatsheet because usually some other student already has. Cheating is really a group thing, like studying together but one step further. (Just kidding on that, they are totally different, so dont freak out :))</p>

<p>I think we finally got down to the point though, life isnt fair and the kids who cheat will get what they want, not what they deserve. Is it morally wrong, for the most part, yes. Is it unfair to the kids who dont cheat, yes. But is cheating worth worth it to me, 100% yes, because the benefits heavily outweigh the pitfalls.</p>

<p>I dont think that the world will deteriorate because in the future it will be exactly the same, just will different technology. Maybe we will be beaming answers back and forth between space shuttles or something, but i can tell that there will be cheating no matter what.</p>

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<p>I would like to point out that there is more than one morality,compmom (I believe) has recognized this multiple times. Could it be that a new generation of students are simply growing up with a different morality than before? Some responses here are quite startling. They are filled with hate and bitterness towards others that simply have a different set of morals. Morals, I might add, that are not completely absurd. Students are making the best of the situation that they are in. If cheating is going to become less prevalent, society itself needs to change. There needs to be less of an emphasis on grades (I say, get rid of grades all together) and focus on learning. I think a simple one-on-one discussion with a teacher can pretty accurately gauge what the student has learned and what they are having trouble with.</p>

114

<p>Alex ( re a post a ways back), </p>

<p>If you knew my daughter, you would not imagine her as helpless! She did not change classes. She remained in that class, but did have an effect on the fate of that teacher, ultimately. The other year she had that teacher, she took the class online rather than have him. She problem-solved and communicated, rather than giving up and either cheating or languishing in a horrible class, and it did benefit others.</p>

<p>She did not have to convince people about anything other than being more proactive, and not feeling scared of the administration. This was in response to teh others’ complaints. The other kids (and parents) had been talking about this teacher for years. She didn’t organize a campaign or anything, The only thing she did was tell the other kids that the principal had listened and wanted to hear from others. </p>

<p>Frankly, I do not think kids should have to put up with years of inept or uncaring or corrupt teachers. I totally sympathize with you. Union rules and tenure can make it really hard to fire teachers like this, and you may go to a school where the principal won’t listen.</p>

<p>But I do think that some problems can be solved if people speak up, rather than sort of passively despairing (and cheating). I guess I was just putting myself in the shoes of a kid in school, and wondering what other tactic could be taken. YOu are right though: it might not work everywhere.</p>

<p>I don’t mean to present my daughter as a paragon, either…believe me, she is complicated like anyone else, and just happens to have a feisty side.</p>

<p>Vicious, I liked your post. This thread might be getting polarized a little, perhaps. Some of the more brazen, angry cheaters here might be different in person. I have talked with many teens about this, and most of them are good kids who just don’t understand, AT ALL, why cheating is wrong. Their definition of 'wrong" is getting caught. These are kids who take care of their friends, keep commitments and are honest in all their other dealings.</p>

<p>While I can sort of stand behind my relativist, sympathetic stance towards “kids today,” I also feel a lot of admiration for those posters who are making their own way without cheating.</p>

<p>So, I guess I am confused! </p>

<p>Frankly, I really like a lot of teenagers, and try to see everything in a good light. I do believe my own premise, that you repeated, that there is a new and valid morality today, maybe even one that varies with each individual and is not shared. But some of these posts really do go too far, and people who do cheat, can at least express some respect for those who don’t. Non-cheaters have a lot of integrity and inner motivation, and aren’t getting swayed by all those external motivators that we can all agree to despise!</p>

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<p>viscious, posts like yours make the world a boring place. If I had a penny for every time someone brought up the neutral stance (different moral values for people, all races are equally racist, ect.), I would be a rich man. Moral values may have changed slightly, but people these days are still well aware that cheating is wrong. I, for one, have felt guilty when I cheated (way back, haven’t done it in forever).</p>

116

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That’s exactly it.</p>

<p>Viscious, you’re right; there is more than one morality. I’m sorry if I seemed to be full of hate and bitterness. I do realize that there’s more than one way of approaching things, and after I read compmom’s post about cheaters not feeling guilty because cheating wasn’t against their personal code, I did spend some time thinking about that and taking that into account, even if my posts didn’t show it. </p>

<p>If I did seem harsh, it was probably because I’m frustrated by this: teachers not believing cases of cheating; cheaters getting ahead in life by taking advantage of others; people who don’t put in their own work getting ahead of people who do put in their own work, who - even if it’s hard work - don’t take the easy way out. I’m a little frustrated because I’ve always believed that cheating is wrong, and now I’m wondering - if cheating is just another way of approaching something, am I the one who’s wrong? </p>

<p>I hope no one thinks that I think I’m “holier than thou,” or that I’m on some high horse preaching about what others should do. I guess I’m just expressing my opinion in the hopes that people will see my point of view. And to the question of whether or not all cheating is is a new generation with a different set of morals – I’m in this generation, and I (and many others) don’t have those morals, so I think we should look at this not as a “generation” issue, but an individual one.</p>

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<p>Just ignore alex456. He’s an ignorant, selfish punk kid who will never understand what morals truly are. “because the benefits heavily outweigh the pitfalls.”</p>

118

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<p>Neutral stances are “boring,” huh?</p>

<p>Euphoria z, I would like to say that attitudes like yours make the world a much more violent and unlivable place (look at the Israel / Palestine conflict). I won’t go into it much since I believe the point is self-evident.</p>

<p>Another thing, your statement that “people these days are still well aware that cheating is wrong” reminds me of the attitude that breaking the law is necessarily wrong. I think that both views are inherently lazy. Just because something is law does not make it immoral to break it. An extreme example would, of course, be aiding slaves in their escape. Just like laws, cheating is a man made construct that is subject to rationalization.</p>

<p>Ethics is a very complicated subject and the idea that specific sets of view are necessarily “right” while others are necessarily “wrong” is misguided. How else is it that we can live in such a commercial society while so many die from starvation and easily treatable illness? And don’t tell me that you donate to charities or do anything else that wipes your conscious clean, you obviously can afford a computer and connection to the internet, that money could have been spent saving lives. Now should you necessarily feel guilty? I don’t know.</p>

<p>In our society the original goal of an education has been reduced to rubble. If our education system’s goal really was to educate then grades and degrees would be unnecessary. Cheating in school is largely a response to the enormous amounts of busy work that teachers pile on to students. Some students feel that this busy work is inconsequential and cheating on it is justified because it does not affect their education. The previous point is seen by the numerous responses in this thread questioning whether copying/sharing homework was even cheating.</p>

<p>Personally, I have a similar view to above. In high school I was perfectly fine with copying pointless homework and so were many of my friends. My group of friends rationalized this by refusing to cheat on tests and quizzes, there was absolutely no sense of guilt. We figured that as long as we actually learned the material it was of no consequence that we spent hours every night outlining chapters when all it took to learn the material was reading them. I am now a college student and am no longer burdened with the incredible amounts of busy work that I had in high school so I no longer cheat.</p>

<p>Lastly, it appears that an important difference from my perspective and many others that condemn cheaters is that, personally I don’t try to compare myself to others. It doesn’t bother me if someone gets a better grade on a test, even if I know that they cheated. I don’t know their circumstances and I am not in a position to judge them.</p>

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<p>My god, I couldn’t read past the first three one sentence paragraphs.</p>

<p>"Neutral stances are “boring,” huh?</p>

<p>Euphoria z, I would like to say that attitudes like yours make the world a much more violent and unlivable place (look at the Israel / Palestine conflict). I won’t go into it much since I believe the point is self-evident."</p>

<p>I LOL’d. Sorry for having an opinion, rather than trying to break everything down to a fair viewpoint (which no one finds interesting, btw). I guess taking a stance on the ethics of cheating is exactly what causes wars.</p>

<p>“Another thing, your statement that “people these days are still well aware that cheating is wrong” reminds me of the attitude that breaking the law is necessarily wrong. I think that both views are inherently lazy. Just because something is law does not make it immoral to break it. An extreme example would, of course, be aiding slaves in their escape. Just like laws, cheating is a man made construct that is subject to rationalization.”</p>

<p>OK, it’s evident that you take everything anyone says to an interpretive extreme. When I said that I meant that, IN THE SOCIETY WE LIVE IN, it is pretty clear that cheating is CONSIDERED wrong (hence the penalty for being caught). Doesn’t mean people agree with it, but they are well aware of it.</p>

<p>****ing idiot.</p>

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<p>Ash i completely agree with you on morals. Everybody has their own set of morals and how they act in a certain situtation. Like viscious said, i am not in a position to judge anyone because i dont not know what they are going through. My PERSONAL views/morals are prolly way different than say, Ash’s or Compmoms, and i act according to my morals. Nobodys morals are more right than others, because everybodys situation is different.</p>

<p>Compmom, i do have the utmost respect for those who achieve their grades without cheating. They do deserve it more than i do, i agree with you on that. It is true what you say about speaking up, but for me, it just wouldnt be worth it. I do value learning but i think i differ from your daughter who loves to soak up knowledge. I am sorry, but that just isnt me and i cant change that-therefore talking to the principal and all that jazz would be a waste of time for me as i would rather just lie low and cheat. I am also sorry if i offended you or your daughter, as i did not mean to and am sure she helped her school greatly.</p>

<p>Lastly, another apology. whartonwannabe-i am going to say this one more time lol, i am sorry if i have offended you at all, it was not my intent. I am solely trying to provide an insight as to what a person who cheats quite often thinks and feels about cheating. I am in highschool with lots of teachers who just sling out homework so i think i can relate to the problem. Again, i do have morals but they are just different than yours.</p>