Among BCHS students, cheating is undoubtedly prevalent. While not ALL students partake in cheating off each other, many do and benefit from it. If not caught, it is an easy way to receive a good grade and move up the rankings in your class. According to the ETS, the bulk of cheating does not occur until middle school, stating that most pre-kindergarten and kindergarten children understand the wrongness in it. Unfortunately, as children grow older, they find ways around the rule they learned as a young child. Once someone begins cheating, I believe it becomes a habit that follows him or her throughout the rest of his or her life. When a student cheats and realizes he/she can get away with it, he/she continues to incorporate this strategy into their test taking skills. With 2/3 of American students admitting to cheating, they are not given an accurate depiction of their true grade, such as 16 year-old Sam. The Internet and plagiarism create an even greater issue and should be highly monitored among schools. In college, I can understand the need to cheat due to the high competition and difficulty, but at the end of the day it is wrong to cheat and something should be done to end this.
Unfortunately, this problem has not been dealt with properly. While children learn the dishonest nature of cheating in the first few years of schooling, teachers do not enforce this rule to the best of their ability. The ETS article even states that most teachers don’t believe cheating is a huge problem. But, in reality it is the teachers who are not catching the students and making sure they are taking their own test. It is ultimately up to the teachers to continuously enforce these rules against cheating so that students do not carry these habits with them throughout college, not to mention life in the real world. Due to the 50% increase in cheating, if teachers in middle schools do not put an end to this, I believe this rate will only escalate and create unfair competition within schools and colleges.
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