The Normalization Of Cheating In High School

Rates for cheating have reached an unparalleled high in the last fifty years. In 1940 only about twenty percent of students admitted to cheating during their high school career. Today however between seventy four to ninety eight percent of students in college reported having cheated in high school. A major problem here is that cheating is becoming more and more normalized in academic settings. The primary purpose of school is to provide students with an education, and cheating defeats this purpose almost entirely. It allows students to do well in school while not having to worry about putting in any real effort, and therefore is immoral.
The first issue is that the individual is cheating themselves out of an education. Learning is not simply memorizing facts and information, solving equations, or analyzing your position on complex problems. Education should be an enlightening experience not only about yourself but the world you live in. The education you receive builds your foundation for …show more content…
Especially for school that implement curves when grading, curves that could lead to the cheater/s lowering the scores of students who actually care enough to succeed on their own intellectual merits. Another problem created by cheating is that it contributes to further negative behavior due to the normalization of cheating and the idea that is okay to cheat since loads of other people happen to be cheating as well.There is the idea that if some of my peers are cheating to make better grades why should I not cheat to keep up with them if I would have otherwise done better than said cheater. It becomes less an argument of personal morals and more of a means to getting a good