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Cheating
By Ruben, a high school senior
August 15, 2008
Cheating is how people find easy and quick solutions to lifes inconveniences. It really requires no extra effort, and if no one is caught, then no one really gets hurt. Cheating helps in a time crunch or if the person just does not feel like doing work. If you adopt this easy way of doing things, there really is no reason to make any actual effort.
Remember when cheating was either right or wrong without any exceptions? Things arent so black and white anymore. Today theres a gray area for cheating that most teens tend to lean towards. People have cheated at almost everything once in their lives, whether it was cheating on their significant other, a test, or a game of Uno. There are sure to be teens that cheat on their boyfriend/girlfriend with a not so great outcome, but one of the biggest things teens cheat at is school.
Cheating in school is predominately the reason why this gray area has emerged in the traditional black and white view of cheating for teens. Cheating is no longer seen as a bad thing because it provides something that people in our society crave and that is fast, easy results. Cheating in school is no longer reserved for the occasional pop quiz. It can range from a quiz on a recently covered lesson to a test covering the past school term, and to make life less complicated, homework and even class work is freely exchanged for answers. For most of these offenses, little is done maybe a simple warning or failing that one assignment. But is that enough? The biggest penalties are handed out only if someone happens to score the much-sought out answers to an important test, which isnt as uncommon as one would think, with very slim chances of any authority figure catching on. To teens, as long as no one is the wiser, they continue cheating until it is ultimately an automatic response to doing any actual work. This habit almost always leads to cheating on papers, which in most schools can result in suspension or even expulsion.
How do teens get away with cheating if so much is actually going on? Well, we can be sneaky, conniving creatures. The facts are that the days of cleverly writing the answers on ones entire forearm went out when teens were introduced to technology, and then were allowed to bring it to school. Todays modern teen can cheat through texting other students for answers, using the internet on their phones to look up answers, and if they dont have internet on their phone, they can just as easily text Google. Even iPods, something almost every teen has, can be uploaded with tons of helpful information - for cheating, that is. Most teens are determined to find a way to do as little as possible, and with countless resources, there isnt much that can be done to stop them.
With such little consequences for cheating and so many possible ways to do it, what can go wrong in this new way of getting school work done faster? Unfortunately, like almost every quick and easy fix, there are long term effects. The biggest are that they build poor academic habits that will be of no use to them in college, they dont tolerate that kind of crap. Besides, everything that should have been learned in those previous years hasnt been, making college that much harder the priority in high school was to do as little as possible by cheating, and not a lot of learning actually got through. Cheating right now provides a lot less work, but leaves an academically stunted teen down the road.
August 15, 2008
Cheating is how people find easy and quick solutions to lifes inconveniences. It really requires no extra effort, and if no one is caught, then no one really gets hurt. Cheating helps in a time crunch or if the person just does not feel like doing work. If you adopt this easy way of doing things, there really is no reason to make any actual effort.
Remember when cheating was either right or wrong without any exceptions? Things arent so black and white anymore. Today theres a gray area for cheating that most teens tend to lean towards. People have cheated at almost everything once in their lives, whether it was cheating on their significant other, a test, or a game of Uno. There are sure to be teens that cheat on their boyfriend/girlfriend with a not so great outcome, but one of the biggest things teens cheat at is school.
Cheating in school is predominately the reason why this gray area has emerged in the traditional black and white view of cheating for teens. Cheating is no longer seen as a bad thing because it provides something that people in our society crave and that is fast, easy results. Cheating in school is no longer reserved for the occasional pop quiz. It can range from a quiz on a recently covered lesson to a test covering the past school term, and to make life less complicated, homework and even class work is freely exchanged for answers. For most of these offenses, little is done maybe a simple warning or failing that one assignment. But is that enough? The biggest penalties are handed out only if someone happens to score the much-sought out answers to an important test, which isnt as uncommon as one would think, with very slim chances of any authority figure catching on. To teens, as long as no one is the wiser, they continue cheating until it is ultimately an automatic response to doing any actual work. This habit almost always leads to cheating on papers, which in most schools can result in suspension or even expulsion.
How do teens get away with cheating if so much is actually going on? Well, we can be sneaky, conniving creatures. The facts are that the days of cleverly writing the answers on ones entire forearm went out when teens were introduced to technology, and then were allowed to bring it to school. Todays modern teen can cheat through texting other students for answers, using the internet on their phones to look up answers, and if they dont have internet on their phone, they can just as easily text Google. Even iPods, something almost every teen has, can be uploaded with tons of helpful information - for cheating, that is. Most teens are determined to find a way to do as little as possible, and with countless resources, there isnt much that can be done to stop them.
With such little consequences for cheating and so many possible ways to do it, what can go wrong in this new way of getting school work done faster? Unfortunately, like almost every quick and easy fix, there are long term effects. The biggest are that they build poor academic habits that will be of no use to them in college, they dont tolerate that kind of crap. Besides, everything that should have been learned in those previous years hasnt been, making college that much harder the priority in high school was to do as little as possible by cheating, and not a lot of learning actually got through. Cheating right now provides a lot less work, but leaves an academically stunted teen down the road.
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