Consequences Of Cheating In Exams

In todays age when you look at the word Cheating, you may find many different definitions or meanings. Whether you cheat at work; known as fraud, cheat at home; known as dishonesty, or at school, this act of conduct can lead to many consequences made by ones choice. Cheating is defined in the dictionary as, to deceive by trickery; swindle, however the dictionary fails to tell you if it is right or wrong to cheat. People have many different beliefs when it comes to cheating; some think its fine to do while others completely disapprove.

School systems today are so lenient in their rules, guidelines and consequences; thus causing cheating, copying or forgeries to be frequently used. Many students take advantage of copying someone else’s work whenever they are given the chance. Other times, students will simply have someone else do their work and turn it in as their own, not realizing the effects this behavior can create. This creates a lack of creativity, no sense of responsibility and the students will never acquire new knowledge. These practices of cheating, copying and forgery by students are unethical and should be brought to the surface whenever possible.

Students that copy other student’s work are hurting themselves in the long run. Their creativity level drops every time they copy or have someone else do their work. After a while of copying and forging, the student’s ability to think creatively and successfully becomes next to nothing. “Educators must continue to socialize students of all ages about the importance of maintaining high ethical standards,”. The educational system is where students learn these tricks and proceed to carry them on into there professional careers. Corners are too easy to cut these days, and in order for people to keep their minds as functional as possible, they need to do their own work. It is too easy for students to buy a students paper that had the same class the quarter before, reword it a little, and turn it in as their own. Students are no longer able to write a fictional story by themselves because the computer or someone else can do it for them.

Students also begin to lose the sense of responsibility when they have other people do their work. They don’t feel that they have to do anything to pass a class, only that as long as they turn in a paper, their thoughts or not, they will receive credit for the assignment along with a passing grade. This creates the feeling that life will always be a handed to them on a silver platter. This type of thinking is what is going into the work environment when these people leave the education system. Employers don’t want workers that can’t pull their own weight, and that is all they are going to get from these people that think cutting corners is all right. Even worse is when these people that “cut the corners” hold management positions. These “crooked managers” infringe on the ethical workers by asking them to do unethical practices on the job, such as asking their factory workers to pretend they didn’t see the failing scores from the health and safety inspections. Thanks to “ethical resisters” some of these unethical practices are being brought to the surface, exposed and corrected.

Along with losing their creativity, the students that copy other’s work never get to feel that sense of accomplishment that comes when the paper you have been working on is finally complete. They don’t get the uplifting feeling when they get their paper back and they have received a good score. The feeling isn’t there because the work isn’t their own. They use other people to receive the score, but they feel nothing. If they never have that feeling, there is nothing to motivate these people to do better the next time around.

Yet, there may be one thing that is the worst of all when people pass off someone else’s work as their own. That would be that the forger doesn’t gain any knowledge. People can only learn from the things they do, and if someone else is doing their work, they are never going to learn anything. Making mistakes and learning from them may be one of the most effective methods of learning. For instance, if a student performs extremely poorly on a very important paper, chances are that student will always remember what they did wrong and what would have been better. Where as the same student won’t even remember the lecture that was taught for an entire week straight. If people don’t do the work themselves, they can never learn from their mistakes.

These people that cheat will go through life expecting someone else to always be there to do their work. When the time comes that they will actually have to do the work themselves, they aren’t going to have a clue on where to start. They won’t know to take responsibility for the things they do and they will never be able to think something up on their own. They will be so used to simply grabbing someone else’s work that they will fail at anything they try to accomplish themselves. These people need to be stopped not only for their sake but because it is not fair to the people whose work they are always stealing. People work hard and should receive credit for the things they do, the people that don’t work hard, should not receive credit. We must reward the “ethical resisters” that are brave enough to speak up when they notice these unethical practices taking place. “For ethical resisters are,indeed, the heart of a national resolve for individual responsibility on behalf of the common good”

Cheating in academics is never the proper way to achieve academic greatness, but it can be an easy way out for any level student. In less technical days, cheating in education was left to hiding notes in odd places or glancing over another students shoulder. Teachers were able to catch cheaters either by visual proof or evidence within the similarities of test. Cheating held consequences but nothing that could ruin an educational future. Today’s technology is so advanced that cheating is on a whole other level. Computers, cell phones, and hand held devices all add to the cheating craze that has swept high school and college level education. Different technologies provide different ways to cheat that make teachers and professors jobs to educate a bit more difficult. The cheating era has made cheating a more serious offence with education ending consequences.

Computers come in small packages in present day and can offer students the opportunity to cheat more accessible. Not all cheating is done with ill intentions. Students use the internet for research all the time and there are instances that those who cheat are unaware of cheating. Students often share information via “blogs”. According to Problogger.net, “a blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom (Problogger.net 2008). Some students may find information on those blogs and use it as their own without properly citing them or determining if they are reliable or not. Some students will exchange emails with answers to test or study questions which is cheating. One final issue can be that students lack investigation skills to find out if their sources are reliable or not. All these issues with computers just scratch the surface of the issue, as technology continues to grow so will the opportunity for students to cheat. Students…