Tolerating students who cheat damages their future and ours

What on earth does Larry think a real problem is? Only kids who bring loaded weapons to school?

As for S.L., I admire that stance, but the problem in recent years has been lawsuits. Anytime a school or employer does something that damages a person's future employment chances, the person is likely to sue. Even if the grounds for such action were real and valid, the lawsuit is likely to be upheld, and even if the employer/school wins, the expense of the litigation is huge. That's why most employers won't even give information about previous employees other than to confirm dates of employment and job title. Schools are also in a similar pickle which is why more and more every student gets an A or at least a B even if they didn't show up. It's sad.

This is just a small side note, and it may sound silly, but sometimes the teacher's don't explain enough about their expectations and what is considered cheating up front. I had a statistics class where a group would gather after school in the library to work through the homework together. Is that cheating? The teacher really needs to set guidelines because that senario could be cheating depending on the expectations.
Also, when middle schoolers in my school are assigned papers or projects to complete, the teachers never preface the project with a lesson on how to properly footnote, annotate and create a source bibliography, never teach the fine points of weaving different ideas into a new piece of writing. Then they are all suprised when entire sentences and paragraphs are lifted from books.
Some kids purposley cheat in undisputable ways, and some kids aren't taught properly what the standards are for academic writing etc.

I've been a teacher for 24 years. I can tell you that it is my observation that students cheat for one of two reasons: either the work is ridiculously boring and unimportant, or there is incredible pressure to succeed and they don't want to "fail" in any way. BOth of these situations are not present when real learning is involved.

Learning (true, real, authentic learning) is fun. My comment pertains only to the school environment, as I do believe people who cheat and steal at work may have other motivations.

But if kids enjoy what they are doing, the last thing they want is for someone to give them the answers - it ruins it! Kids say things like, "Wait! Don't tell me! Lemme figure it out!" That's the sign of an engaged student.

It's primarily the teachers' jobs to create a classroom environment where learning - and all the attendant challenges - thrives. Cheating becomes far less of a problem and the kids are often the ones who self-police in such a situation. They give each other a hard time about cheating.

Cheating is wrong?

me2e wrote:

I've been a teacher for 24 years. I can tell you that it is my observation that students cheat for one of two reasons: either the work is ridiculously boring and unimportant, or there is incredible pressure to succeed and they don't want to "fail" in any way. BOth of these situations are not present when real learning is involved.
Learning (true, real, authentic learning) is fun. My comment pertains only to the school environment, as I do believe people who cheat and steal at work may have other motivations.
But if kids enjoy what they are doing, the last thing they want is for someone to give them the answers - it ruins it! Kids say things like, "Wait! Don't tell me! Lemme figure it out!" That's the sign of an engaged student.
It's primarily the teachers' jobs to create a classroom environment where learning - and all the attendant challenges - thrives. Cheating becomes far less of a problem and the kids are often the ones who self-police in such a situation. They give each other a hard time about cheating.

Ummm… You may be giving too much credit to kids.

The times I cheated in HS in the 90s (and the informal discussions of fellow students at the time ) were primarily
1. I didn’t study for the test for whatever reason (usually because I didn’t want to) and didn’t want to flunk it
2. the thrill of "getting away with it"

My father taught me the concept of "honor" that I supposed he had learned from his 20+ years in the U.S. Navy. Those lessons as a youth have stuck with me throughout my life. Simple truisms learned as a young child like "It's what you do when no one is looking that counts," or "It takes more courage to walk away from a fight that you can win." I cannot imagine living my life to any other standard. Like the poem posted yesterday by one reader, what matters truly is the opinion of the person who looks back at you each morning from the mirror.

Colorado Cowboy wrote:

My father taught me the concept of "honor" that I supposed he had learned from his 20+ years in the U.S. Navy. Those lessons as a youth have stuck with me throughout my life. Simple truisms learned as a young child like "It's what you do when no one is looking that counts," or "It takes more courage to walk away from a fight that you can win." I cannot imagine living my life to any other standard. Like the poem posted yesterday by one reader, what matters truly is the opinion of the person who looks back at you each morning from the mirror.

Ditto, you took the words out of my (and my fathers) mouth.

someone wrote:

<quoted text>
Ummm… You may be giving too much credit to kids.

I agree. I cheated several times when I was in school, and the primary reason was that it was easier. Perhaps there was a more complex motivation, but really I was (am?) kind of lazy!

someone wrote:

<quoted text>
Ummm… You may be giving too much credit to kids.
The times I cheated in HS in the 90s (and the informal discussions of fellow students at the time ) were primarily
1. I didn’t study for the test for whatever reason (usually because I didn’t want to) and didn’t want to flunk it
2. the thrill of "getting away with it"

Seems you kind of made my point! Why didn't you study? I'd guess because you didn't care about the material or found it to be useless - and you still didn't want to fail. As for the "thrill" - sure, if school is dull, cheating becomes the excitement.

I stand by my observations and thank you for providinig more support for them. As for giving students too much credit? I don't think kids get close to enough credit for being the savvy people they are. We need to get our schools out of the 1800s.

LadyJaye wrote:

<quoted text>
I agree. I cheated several times when I was in school, and the primary reason was that it was easier. Perhaps there was a more complex motivation, but really I was (am?) kind of lazy!

I grant you that real learning is hard work - but the rewards are fabulous. We let kids take the easy road far too often. I submit that if we allowed kids to follow a more authentic path to learning, there would be far less laziness.(And I don't limit my definition of learning to academics!) Look at all the effort some kids put into complex video games. Laziness depends far more on the task than some inherent "laziness" - for the most part.

As a school attorney, I have seen my share of 'helicopter' parents who feel the need to defend their children, right or wrong.

However, the schools I represent think nothing of taking the parents on in a legal fight as long as they can prove the student actually cheated.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

LadyJaye wrote:

<quoted text>
I agree. I cheated several times when I was in school, and the primary reason was that it was easier. Perhaps there was a more complex motivation, but really I was (am?) kind of lazy!

But then again, you proved her point. You were engaged in the class. How lazy are you about things you really like to do?

Crap. Let me try that again.

But then again, you proved her point. You weren't engaged or really interested in the class. How lazy are you about things you really like to do?

I always had classmates trying to cheat off my work. I didn't mind *helping* friends with homework, but I definitely wouldn't *do* anyone else's work. Even trying to cover my work, there were always a few who still tried to copy it. I found a great way to stop that: giving the cheaters a page full of wrong answers! I would write down wrong answers in plain sight, let the cheaters turn their papers in, then quickly erase those wrong answers and replace them with the correct ones before turning in my work. It worked like a charm! Of course they were pi$$ed - but what were they going to do? "Ms. Krabapple - Lisa gave me wrong answers when I tried to cheat!??" :-)

Terri at home wrote:

Crap. Let me try that again.
But then again, you proved her point. You weren't engaged or really interested in the class. How lazy are you about things you really like to do?

I didnt cheat at english or history because I liked them and found them interesting.

Trig, Chem, Physics and German though?

Yup.

And it was wrong and bad and I actually had good engaged teachers who cared.

it was the subject matter. I had no interest, I found it too hard to get quickly and I had little intention of studying my butt off only to get a D on a test when I could cheat and get a better grade.

It was wrong, I knew it at the time and I am very ashamed of it now and I would have been justifibly in trouble had I ever been caught.

But I wasnt that different from the other kids who cheated.

But I do think it's sweet and a credit to your job that you think the best of teenagers

In college I had a job grading computer programs. I found two exactly alike -- logic, spacing -- except that all the data names had been changed wholesale. I showed them to the instructor and let him handle the whole mess. I'd have given a general warning to the class, and given both programs a zero.

"Study groups" are an ambiguous issue. If their purpose is to help each other learn the material, that's OK. But if the kids are just pooling their resources to get the right answers on their homework, that's not OK.

I've always thought that learning math is a lot like practicing music or team sports. You have to actually do it, not just hear about it in class.

Too bad Ted Kennedy didn't take that advice from his older brother.

Joey wrote:

Too bad Ted Kennedy didn't take that advice from his older brother.

And too bad the older brother didn't realize it also applied to marriage vows.(Well, heck, guess we're talking about the lot of them, then.)

LW1 reports that school administrators do not view cheating on schoolwork or engaging in illegal activity on school grounds as a "real" problem, especially if the ones engaging in such activity are "not causing any trouble" at school.
It's clear that those administrators are the real problem in that school system.

I agree with Charlie Gies about LW1 (Larry). I'm also surprised that Abby didn't catch the ironic tone of Larry's letter. He's not condoning the attitude that this isn't a "real" problem, he's being sarcastic about it.