It has been said, “Your attitude determines your altitude.” When it comes to education that is certainly true. When it comes to learning in today’s society, one’s attitude affects a lot of one’s learning. Attitude and education go hand in hand. Today, students are learning that grades are the most important thing about school and not necessarily the learning that comes along with those grades. Students spend time blaming others, especially teachers and their teaching styles, instead of taking initiative and doing the work. Students also, unfortunately, resort to cheating because they feel like that’s what they have to do to pass the class. When in all reality if students just had a better, more positive attitude towards education their learning …show more content…
Today, students have gotten into the habit of blaming others for their mistake, or their failures. In his book, Sanders wrote about students who “blamed their struggles on the professor’s teaching style” (20). In high school, I took a spinning class. I was excited because I had taken a class the year before with a different teacher. The teacher this semester, however, had no idea what he was doing. He was the football coach, not a spinning instructor. He would come into class everyday tell us to run a couple laps, then get on the bikes and “run” or “jog” or “climb” or “squat” on the bikes. He would then leave the room and go next door to the weight room and talk with another coach until class was over. He never came and checked on us, so everyone, except a few students, just lounged around and barely moved on the bikes. I unfortunately was one of the lazy kids who did nothing all class period. At the end of the semester I was so mad because the class hadn’t really done anything for me. I hadn’t lost the weight I wanted to, like I had the year before. I blamed my lack of effort on the teacher, when in all reality it was my fault. I knew what I needed to do and how to do it, but I chose not …show more content…
There’s the obvious form, stealing someone else’s work and calling it your own, looking up answers on the internet for a test, etc. Then there is the not so obvious form of cheating. It takes a form called “cheating yourself”. Because the system today focuses on almost solely grades, students take the easy way out. Mr. Kohn insinuates, “The more pressure to get an A, the less inclination to truly challenge oneself” (1). This is so true. More times than I can count, I can remember hearing fellow students whisper, “let’s just do whichever one is easiest”, as the teacher outlined a project to be done in class. I can think of a few times where I have cheated myself. Back in grade school, we had what was called “50 in a Minute.” This was a piece of paper with fifty math problems on each side. You had one minute to complete a side, then you would move onto the next side and try to get farther the next minute. I am really bad at math and so I never did well on these so I started to cheat so I could pass these. I would write the answers on the desk and then when the time started, I would just write down the answers in order and not pay attention to the problems. Back then it didn’t seem like a big deal, I just wanted the ribbon for finishing all the different levels. Now however, I really wish I had been better and not cheated my way through, because now I am really bad at doing mental math. Which isn’t that big of a deal we have technology to do
In this final chapter, Christian Miller speaks about cheating. There is a cheating behavior that many people do for various reasons. This assumes that the cheater might not be the one who is advantaged. Most humans today cheat when the opportunities arise. In studies, it is clear that many students cheat while in college. Of the many students who cheat, only a small fraction of them get caught. In a very large group of people, it was seen that only 3 people stated that they have never cheated while in school. In one case, a student found an exam on the printer and mass distributed it to the class and the class finished the exam quickly and scored higher. This made the teacher skeptical and a retake was made. It is clear that cheating is very prominent on college campuses. In an experiment, participants were told that they could only take 5 minutes on a
That stomach churning feeling of guilt for many seems to appear as a small price to pay when completing an act of academic dishonesty. Colleen Wenke wrote an essay on cheating eighteen years ago called “Too Much Pressure”. In the past fifty years, the number of students who admit to cheating has increased fifty to seventy percent(Gaffe). Many people wonder what leads the students to make this unjust decision. Today, the reason for a rise in cheaters is because of how easy it has become, leading many students to the false conclusion that they aren’t breaking any rules; It is simply viewed as a shortcut to success in the classroom and beyond.
Situations of cheating have seemed to become more and more commonplace when the student is bored by the subject material, poor teaching and or feels they have no use for the knowledge. Kohn even states in his article, “cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming.” This infers that if a student were attending a school interested in learning about art, the student maybe more inclined to cheat in a business accounting class due to the fact the student would find the subject material irrelevant to them and their future. Students seem to be less inclined to cheat and it “is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor”” (Kohn). To simplify everything mentioned above; students are inclined to cheat in school when they are disinterested in the subject material and or are overwhelmed by in assignment or finally the result in a poor teacher. Everyone who has attended school can relate to this in some way or another, most people do not want to retain knowledge they have no interest in or use for in their
How bad has cheating become over the years, the numbers in some cases are mind-boggling. In today’s day and age the amount of college students cheating is numbered to have maintain a steady figure of about 75 percent. (Lang, 2013) Cheating has been around since the beginning of time, some of the reasons behind most of the prolific cheaters are centered on what seems to be three main issues plaguing our society. Cheaters be it young or old, all seem to have what I call the “Big Three” in common. In my research on cheating, there were three things that continued to stick out, such as; procrastinating, the pressure to make the grade and it is easier to cheat rather then to do your own work. To the answer the question why college students cheat, we must first understand why, in order to find a solution on how to help avoid this continuing going forward. After reading this paper you will see that cheating has become prevalent in college, caused by a need to get better grades with less original work being done eventually the ends don't justify the means.
Cheating is a big issue that has reached the most competitive campuses around the United States. It is increasing more and more with the new technology that we have in the 21st century because students have easy access to many sources of information. Cheating is something all students have done at some point in their lives, but as they reach a higher academic level, they are faced with more rigorous consequences that can affect their futures in many different ways. Cheating might be seen as an easy way to obtain a good grade, get into a good college, or maintain scholarships or financial aid, but the consequences could affect the life and the future of the student.
Modern students face many pressures for academic success. They are often unwilling to disappoint their parents or spouses. Some fear that not cheating will weaken a student’s ability to compete with their peers. They rationalize their unethical behavior, unwilling to accept a poor grade, consequently justifying cheating as the only means to that end.
In today’s America, the educational system has been blaming teachers for the failure of students. This pressure put on teachers causes a lot of unneeded stress and can even be demoralizing. Instructors are always trying to put the student’s
"I’m preparing for the real world. Business is unethical. Cheating is just good training. I’ll be better able to handle what’s put at me when I get out." "‘Oh, it’ll only be this once’ or ‘Everyone else does it, so why shouldn’t I?’" Sly glances at a neighbor’s work, an open book on the lap, or even high-technology methods—the resources of the cheater are many and varied. Whatever the methods, there are many statements like those above to justify cheating. For example, in the United States, surveys show that more than half of all students cheat, or have cheated, during their school years.
Cheating before Cells used to simpler, look over at their paper, write the answers down on a piece of paper or anything the teacher won’t see. Now a student can just their cell phones and use the internet, or text, or use pictures to cheat in school. A 2009 Common Sense national poll showed that “more than a third of teenagers with cell phones admit that they have used them to cheat in school, while just over half have used the internet to do so” (Kennedy Manzo 4). Now that in school a lot of the homework is done online and quizzes it’s so easy to have your quiz open and a web page open where you can locate the answer and not fear at all of getting caught because the teacher will never know. Or even for writing a paper you can purchase one online and unless that teacher is familiar with your way of writing that may even slip by the
Academic knowledge is the basis on which future prosperity, and financial security has been determined. As a consequence, students feel inclined to perform above average in school. Now, as students perform less and less, they sink to obtain good grades by cheating. This method to acquire the desired grades will only harm the student, instead of the imagined result. Prompted by a child’s inability to perform basic tasks throughout his education , academic cheating spawns numerous negative consequences.
Cheating on academic work is a serious issue that most students admit to doing at some point in their academic career. Elite students are surprisingly the culprits of cheating, but hide it well. (Romm, para 5) Cheating is such a large issue that “70% of students from a sample of 1,800 from nine campuses said they had cheated at least once during their college careers.” (Schneider, para 9) Students cheat on academic work because of different, ongoing pressures in their lives. Understanding the student’s motives and pressures are essential to preventing cheating from occurring in the future. Students cheat for different reasons specific to them regarding their priorities, pressures and because of how easy it has become. Even though eliminating cheating will not happen, there are actions that educational professionals can and should take to prevent most of it from happening so often. Therefor cheating problems are minimized and have a positive impact on the student’s education and understanding of concepts.
The first cause as to why students cheat is because they are lazy. It happens all the time, where students go home from school, have a snack, watch television, take a nap, play some video games, and just keep saying that they will do their homework later. The next thing they know it eleven o’clock at night and time to go to bed, but no homework was accomplished. The student keeps pushing back the assignment until the last minute and the last minute is not enough time. This is also known as procrastination. The student does not want to fail, but they were too lazy to do their own work, so they ask to copy the work from a friend that did the work. I once said something to a guy about how this was cheating and he told me that he was, “using his resources wisely”. Another time I asked a student next to me to stop copying my answers in class and he told, “Then you shouldn’t let me see your answers”, he blamed his cheating on me. One time when I was in seventh grade in my ecology class we had to put together a presentation with a partner. My partner was a close friend at the time, and our topic was solar power. I ended up doing all of the research and put together the presentation a...
From a young age we are taught the differences between right and wrong, but as we get older the line between moral and immoral is often blurred. Things that were once thought of as unacceptable are now perfectly fine in our minds. Have you ever seen anyone cheat on an assignment or exam? Do you know anyone that’s been expelled from school for cheating? What if it was discovered that a U.S. senator plagiarized his college thesis paper? Imagine if it got out that one of the most respected universities in the U.S. was involved in a huge fraud scandal that involved thousands of students. Academic cheating is a terrible offense because it is unethical, self-degrading, and can be detrimental to the learning environment.
The problem that most students run into is their attitude toward school, they think school is a waste of time. Almost every students don’t like school, they think do homework and go to school is not the best way to live their life. This is the attitude that will not help them in school if they want to learn. Students can fix this attitude if they want to change their way of seeing school. First what they have to do is change all of their thought such as, school is a waste of time, I can do
We might want to first follow that question with another question. What is cheating and why do so many people do it? Most people would agree that cheating is deceitful and one who obtains answers by cheating is not practicing good integrity. We could further add that cheating also prevents the student from having to put in long hours of studying and preparation. Recent technology has made this “time saving method” even more efficient.