Cheating May Destroy America

Cheating May Destroy America

When does a perfect paper get an F? When a student copies another student’s homework the teacher will give the student and their perfect paper an F. Cheating is a growing problem in today’s society. Taking someone else’s work and calling it your own, receiving the answers to a test before you take it. These problems have plagued teachers for many years. With papers on many subjects ready for download off the Internet and mobile devices being able to hold more information while getting more discrete, one might wonder how you stop students from cheating. The answer lies within the student. Most students feel pressured to cheat because they are expected to get nearly perfect grades. Society today has placed too high of academic standards resulting in students pressured to cheat.

One must admit that tests are a tool that measures the level of understanding, and they are a reasonable activity. If tests are done right they should help the teachers to understand what an individual needs help on. One must agree that if a student fails to do well on a particular test, the student should take the responsibility to contact the teacher and figure out what they are failing to understand and correct the problem. Truly, by cheating and passing the test the teacher would not be aware of the student’s lack of understanding. Teachers point out that when students cheats they waste the time a teacher took to teach them a lesson that will be important in the future. They say that even if the students do not see the practical application for the lesson now, it will be either a building block for another lesson or an application for the future.

However, society preaches several messages to teens, messages like, “In order to do well in life, you need to go to college.” Another message is, “In order to get into a college, you need near perfect grades, extra-curricular activities, volunteer work, and a part time job.” This standard set by society makes...