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. Some people believe the rise in academic cheating is due to our society becoming more unethical, but I believe that this rise is due to the increasing pressure and competition in schools, teachers and parents putting more emphasis on high grades, and more distractions from schoolwork. …show more content…
When we as humans are faced with the choice of being rewarded or punished our brain will choose reward. If getting that reward means cheating, then our brain thinks we need to do it. As Rose Garrett puts it in her article, “Why Kids Cheat and How to Stop It”, she says, “Kids often cheat because they see it as the only way to measure up to high expectations.”(Garrett, 1) This means that because of these higher expectations, kids try to cut corners to lessen the amount of pressure from friends, teachers, and parents. This also means that it is the pressure, not ethics, leading students to cheating, because they feel they have to get the high grades to meet others’
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. Some people believe the rise in academic cheating is due to our society becoming more unethical, but I believe that this rise is due to the increasing pressure and competition in schools, teachers and parents putting more emphasis on high grades, and more distractions from schoolwork. …show more content…
When we as humans are faced with the choice of being rewarded or punished our brain will choose reward. If getting that reward means cheating, then our brain thinks we need to do it. As Rose Garrett puts it in her article, “Why Kids Cheat and How to Stop It”, she says, “Kids often cheat because they see it as the only way to measure up to high expectations.”(Garrett, 1) This means that because of these higher expectations, kids try to cut corners to lessen the amount of pressure from friends, teachers, and parents. This also means that it is the pressure, not ethics, leading students to cheating, because they feel they have to get the high grades to meet others’