Students cheating all
by Macy Linton
December 4, 2009 • written by Jessica Ferrell
Filed under Opinions
Today is the big day, the day that I have been studying for every night over the past two weeks: the day of the big test.
As I look around the room, pondering the answer to one of the questions, I see an array of suspicious activity taking place.
The person to my left is frantically scanning the bottom of her shoe. I begin to think I am an outcast for never taking a full assessment of the shoes that I wear.
The person to my right is awkwardly positioning his water bottle at every corner of his desk.
After investigating this strange behavior further, I realize that these two people have one thing in common: they are both cheating.
I cannot say that I am shocked to realize they are cheating. Cheating happens every day in every class. I see students copy homework, write vocabulary definitions on their arms, and even make tiny cheat sheets to stick in their pockets.
Some students even come up with signals to send to friends across the room such as the water bottle on the desk. The logic behind it is simple: If the water bottle is in the top left corner of the desk, the answer is A and so on. Onlookers can easily fill in the answers accordingly.
A survey conducted by the nonprofit group Common Sense Media showed that a majority of high school students were not aware that they were cheating. And, yes, copying someone else’s homework is cheating – plain and simple. When a student copies the sweat, blood, and tears of another student, they cheat.
Cheating is not about copying the answers off of the smartest person in the class anymore. Yes, students still resort to this method, but they are also coming up with techniques of their own.
What else are they doing?
With technology at its peak, students are more rebellious and are using the high tech gear to cheat on tests and quizzes.
Cell phones, though banned from school, are still in use. The latest cell phones are equipped with Internet, which provides a means of easy access cheating.
Students also use media players as forms for cheating. In one case, a student recorded all of his test information onto an MP3 file and simply listened to it on his iPod during the test.
Clever.
Almost every math and science class requires a calculator; certain models of calculators, nowadays, can download information off of the Internet or save information that could prove itself useful on a quiz or test. The newer calculators can even send messages to other calculators of the same make.
What about the students who studied hard for the quiz or test?
Seeing their peers get away with cheating frustrates those who actually try in the class. They have studied for hours with the hopes of a passing grade, yet their classmates just copy down the answers on shoes knowing that it will scuff off later.
Students use all types of excuses for why they did not study or complete their homework. Procrastination, apathy, and laziness in general are the real reasons. However, some students say that they cheat because their parents hold such high standards for them and if they do not understand a concept, they resort to cheating.
Unfortunately, their futures are affected by the time they spent cheating instead of learning. When students get a job, they cannot expect to get by on the work of someone else, or they will be fired.
Teachers especially deal with cheating on a daily basis. When a teacher does catch a student cheating, he or she can only resort to a limited amount of punishments. Giving the suspected student a zero only affects the student to a certain extent.
Because students are becoming so ingenious at cheating, teachers need to be more aware of what takes place in the classroom. If a teacher is on guard at all times during a quiz or test, the possibility of cheating decreases. Most of my teachers throughout my academic career have sat at their desks while administrating a test or quiz. Though this is understandable because of their workload, teachers would be more conscious of cheaters if they monitored their classes more effectively.
Cheating may act as a temporary solution to the problems of teenagers, but the consequences will catch up with them in the end. Teachers need to wake up, smell the coffee, and realize that students get away with cheating on a daily basis.
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Excellent article! You have to care enough about yourself to NOT cheat. The time and energy spent on cheating could be spent on studying and learning the material. In math classes the material builds on itself. Thus, you must learn and maintain the basic skills in order to do the new skills required in algebra, geometry, and other higher level math classes. You are only cheating yourself if you do not study and learn the required material. Cheating is a temporary fix. It increases your stress level too.
Macy, GREAT cartoon. I love you.