<p>This is from the 2013 Princeton Review ACT book.</p>
<p>Prompt: "Most schools have established honor codes or other rules to prevent students from cheating on exams and other school assignments. Many students admit to cheating, arguing the practice has become so common - and is so rarely penalized - that it is the only way to survive in today’s competitive academic world. Educators, however, feel that such behaviors only hurt the students, and that cheating in school is just the first step to more academic dishonesty, professional misconduct, and unethical business practices in the future. In your view, should high schools become more tolerant of cheating?</p>
<p>In your essay, take a position on this question. You may write about either one of the two points of view given or you may present a different point of view on this question. Use specific reasons and examples to support your position."</p>
<p>Essay:</p>
<pre><code>Cheating on exams is one of the most common scandals in school. These days, students cheat so often that they are willing to defend the practice as a necessary way to survive along societys strict academic rules. In addition, cheating is so rarely penalized that most students feel no remorse in doing so. High schools should tighten their reins on cheating in order to decrease the frequency of the habit amongst students. Cheating is unfair to students who are the victims of cheaters, and it does not guarantee right answers, so the best solution would be to enforce its prevention harsher .
Hypothetically, if a student who did not study for an exam cheated by copying answers from a student who did study, it would be unfair to the student who studied because he/she put the time and effort into studying while the student who did not study did not . They would receive the same grade on their exams and only one of the two students would have earned that grade. Similarly, if a student decided to cheat by using notes or copying the correct answers from an outside source , it would also be unfair to those students who actually took the time to study the material. Cracking down on cheating by monitoring students during exams more carefully and punishing those who are caught in the act establishes equality among the students and also forces the usual cheaters to actually study and understand the material they are taught, which is the whole point of the institution that is school .
Furthermore, if a student happens to copy answers from another student, the answers they copy are not guaranteed to be correct. For instance, once I noticed a classmate was cheating off of me during an exam, so I purposely wrote down incorrect answers with the intention of going back and replacing them with correct answers later on, almost as if to sabotage my classmate. In other instances, the copied answers could be incorrect because the student being cheated off of could have the wrong answer unintentionally . Even notes and answers are not always reliable and guaranteed to be correct.
Cheating in school can lead to a whole slew of problems. It is unfair to students whose work is copied and creates an imbalance in the learning environment because students who cheat are most likely not absorbing the material. Additionally, cheating does not always guarantee correct answers. For those reasons, high schools should enforce stricter rules to prevent cheating and penalize cheating students to ward them from the habit.
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