Education Vs Cheating

Superior Essays
Education is the building block of society. Without it, the world would spiral downward. Naturally, individuals should want to receive the best education possible, right? But what is considered the “best” form of education? How can an individual determine what form is most effective when there are so many different ways of receiving an education? Every individual learns best under slightly different circumstances. It is possible for one type of schooling to be incredibly effective for one individual and be incredibly ineffective for another. This paper will focus on two of the more predominant forms of schooling, online and traditional. In a society that passes judgment on someone, based on education alone, it is necessary to determine under which circumstances the different forms are most effective. In the process of determining which course of action to pursue, money must be taken into account. Everything comes at a cost, whether it be a top level educational institute, a public school, or an online school. However, there is a very noticeable difference in the cost of each; some options are much more economically friendly. The cost of running a virtual classroom is much less than that of a face to face classroom, claimed the Florida Virtual School. (Education Week, 2009). School districts pay thousands of dollars each year to educators for teaching less than fifty kids as a time, while an online school can pay a handful of teachers the same or less, to teach upwards of a hundred at a time. With budget cuts, paying all the teachers and faculty members is proving to become more difficult. School systems are downsizing on class selections and laying off teachers in order to save money. Despite the cut backs in staff members, the number of students in each brick-and-mortar class is growing. Because of this, the teachers that do remain employed are expected to manage more students each year in the classroom, for the same pay grade. With faculty cuts, comes a decrease in course selection. Many public schools have a slim selection of courses for students to take, as is. When cuts are made for teachers, the selection slims even more. Online schoolings offers a wide variety of courses to take when compared to traditional schools. Cheryl Vedoe, the president and chief executive officer of Apex learning, claims that hiring a full-time teacher is highly unlikely in today’s economy, especially when it’s more financially feasible for a school to sign with online providers for certain subjects (Education Week, 2009). Online school may cheaper to run than traditional public schools, but they also do not rake in as much money. It is a common knowledge that public schools have what is called a “count” day. This is a day in which schools count how many students are in …show more content…
In schools systems it has always and will always be present. Cheating can be defined as misleading, deceiving, or acting dishonestly on purpose. It is not necessarily very difficult to get answers from a fellow classmate or from the internet. But, is it more difficult to cheat in a public school or a virtual one? Technology today has made it fairly easy to do in both. Online schools revolve solely around internet use. Clifford Stoll, an astronomer and computer systems administrator, claims “Computer-enabled students spend more time preening their reports than understanding the subject matter.”(Technology and Society, pg. 71). Students who are on a computer all day for classes will get side tracked and focus of things other than the school work. Their criteria will not be taken seriously at first, so when the work is finally due, the students will surf the web for answers rather than actually doing the work on their own. Tests and quizzes cannot be as closely monitored in a virtual school as they can be in a traditional school. Regardless of this fact, academic dishonestly in traditional schools is a much bigger problem than most people realize. Center for Academic Integrity did a study that reported more than seventy percent of high school students in the United States admitted to cheating in 2005 (Scholastic Choices, 2007). Cheating is so common now a days that students will justify the action by claiming everyone does it. Many students do not see a problem with the action. Whether or not a parent’s child will find fault in the act could be a determining factor in choosing the best form of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    The Southern Mindset: An Analysis of the Threat of a Race War, Racial Equality, and Abolitionist Sabotage in the Causation of the Civil War The primary causes for the Civil War will be defined through the perceived threat of a race war, the dissolution of the Southern plantation aristocracy, and abolitionist sabotage in the South. In the South, many commissioners that discussed the possibility of secession were concerned about the liberation of African slaves, which might result in the extermination of the slave owning aristocracy. This deeply rooted fear was actually fomented by Thomas Jefferson, and other members of the southern aristocracy, that felt that liberating the slaves would result in a race war in the south: “A sudden emancipation,…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Honor Code Dbq

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The internet is an " Inexhaustible source of information" which makes it easier for students to cheat and plagiarize. Students are more likely to cheat because it's easier to do and it's extremely beneficial to them. Students can simply just insert phrases and even whole paragraphs directly into their essays or reports. Schools that have established honor codes have fewer reports of cheating. Honor codes at schools- typically student-…

    • 491 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    More and more students are cheating because of several different reasons and tuition is not being as valuable for the price. Even after college, working in firms, cheating is still present with higher-ranking officials taking work from their peers and taking the credit for it. Colleges look away from all the wrong doings when it comes to cheating. Cheating is the main problem that colleges are suffering from and having students not getting the full value of what they need to know. The main goal is to eliminate the most of cheating that goes on but with honesty because the honor code only eliminates part of the soon to be crisis.…

    • 857 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Kumar Jagadesh explains in his article, “ Increased competition to get better grades and a skewed shift in our focus from the joy of learning.” (Jagadesh). Jagadesh points out students are cheating is for the sol purpose of trying to maintain a high grade, and having less stress of the “competition” amongst students. Also the focus of learning and enjoying learning has…

    • 1194 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cheating is a big problem in schools. Sometimes students forget to study for a test or just flat out don't want to. Their way of “passing” school is to cheat. Most of the time if students cheat they don't really care about their education or what they do to get an acceptable grade. The other times students forget they had a test or feel like they are not learning anything or not getting it.…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Primavera Research Paper

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Being a student here at Primavera requires meeting student expectations, time management, and communication. The expectations for a student at Primavera are personally not hard to meet at all, when putting in effort everything seems way more simple and comprehensible. Following the student handbook and following the rules required it is a necessity. Communication is also a need for online learning, without communication of course one will struggle especially if you need help with something and not speak up. Time management is also very helpful especially with a busy life.…

    • 603 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    However, the pressure to succeed in a classroom setting has become so intense that some students have begun cheating for a variety of reasons. Although I have never cheated myself, I can honestly see the appeal in taking shortcuts when deadlines pile up with no end in sight. Critics of those who cheat can easily point at a cheating student and discuss how poor of a student they are, but the critics never stop to consider the amount of pressure a student truly is under. Cheating has always been considered a terrible act that shows poor character, however, what acts are considered cheating and are not are often fuzzy to students.…

    • 938 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Cheating Epidemic Most kids today in school are more focused on getting good grades than getting a good education. This means that kids are cheating more and more to get these grades. In 1996, a survey of 20,000 middle and high schoolers was given, and 64% of them admitted to cheating on assignments or tests. Two years later when the survey was administered again, that number jumped by 6%. If this number continued to rise the three percent each year, than almost every student would be cheating.…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Technology has gotten so high tech in this past generation that it is affecting the ways students cheat. Students have started to lose their sense of morals and ethics that is causing them not to care that they are cheating. The fact is plagiarism is getting worse and worse because cell phones are an immediate access to find the information they need. Plagiarism is more than just academic, legal, political, and social debate. Saha states that people rely on “copy and paste” when it comes down to plagiarizing and being lazy in this society(2377).…

    • 1610 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Education has so many purpose some obvious and some are less. Education is used to teach both creative and analytical thinking, it is used to help spark curiosity and build a child imagination. Education is not a short time (k-12) experience but should be continuous…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Characteristics of a Successful Online Student” As students, young and old decide to go back to college the dilemma is their faced with is do we use a classroom setting or do we go online? Back in the day learning was convenient and comfortable, but that was over twenty years ago, when I was in school. Being a single mother and just trying to manage going to work every day was a struggle for me, I couldn’t imagine going to college just seemed like a dream. When considering to further your education, whether it be at a school or online can be challenging. I had to think to myself, do I want to be on a campus for school or can I reach my education goals online.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But, without their instructor face to face, students will have to come up with their own method of processing information. This academic freedom given to students can result in a lackadaisical learning technics. Figures indicate that the reduced effort results in a reduced commitment to the course. The distance learning division of Cornell University, less than a third of the respondents expected the quality of online course to be as good as the classroom course (Cornellius).…

    • 914 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Psychology of Academic Cheating. According to Anderman and Murdock (2007), Academic Cheating is extremely common in educational institutions. Cheating undermines the use of assessment data as both indicators of student learning and as sources of feedback to teachers for instructional planning. Although cheating appears to increase as students move through the K-12 school system, no age group is exempt from acts of academic dishonesty. Academic Cheating can be viewed from a number of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.…

    • 815 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Online Learning Technology

    • 1031 Words
    • 4 Pages

    With the advancement in technology, resources, and sheer online learning capabilities in today’s day in age, there is supporting evidence that can lead to a student’s success. I think that individuals will be surprised by their results. All it takes is organizational skills, focus, self-motivation, and the will to learn through digital content. Online learning is becoming more of a standard in the education and will help innovate more learning capabilities even more in the…

    • 1031 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Argument Essay Throughout history, education has had different methods in teaching. Today, there are two methods which are mostly being used: the traditional class and the online class. As explained in the research essay, schools and traditional classes have been present for hundreds of years while online classes were introduced only recently in 1995. Years later, after online classes became more used and credible, debates started to be held to discuss which method is more efficient and effective in the education system.…

    • 857 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays