It's Cheating Time Again

It's National Testing Month, that time of year when students cram for the annual round of high stakes testing. Many students will burn the midnight oil cramming for Advanced Placement exams, finals, and NCLB assessments mandated by most states. Sadly many other students will stay up late devising ways to cheat in order to pass.

Cheating has developed into a national epidemic for which there is no known cure. According to the School Library Journal, 95% of all high school students admit to cheating in school (http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6539855.html). Houston, we have a problem!

Sadly, many educators today either fail to recognize this cheating epidemic or they are simply unwilling to confront the problem head on. Who can blame them? College education courses ignore the issue completely. In all of the courses I took to earn my teaching credential and a later M.Ed. degree, not one professor ever addressed the topic of cheating in the classroom. As a result new teachers especially are unprepared to deal with the problem in any meaningful way.

At the same time, parents are often in denial when it comes to their own kids cheating on homework and exams. When students are caught and disciplined, most parents accuse the teacher of picking on their child. "My kid son has never cheated on an exam," they will claim. More often than not, the administrator issues a meaningless reprimand and the student goes unpunished to cheat another day.

Our culture, too, does little to promote honesty and discourage cheating. Highly paid athletes admit to using steroids while pocketing millions of dollars. Business tycoons engage in unfair practices or insider trading and are seldom caught and punished. Even certain cabinet members in the current administration have admitted to cheating on their taxes, yet they hold the highest offices in the land.

Our students see all of this and wonder what all of the fuss is about. Cheating is not wrong, they conclude, because everyone is doing it. Besides, many students will argue, they have to cheat in order to get into a good college because the system has become so competitive. It's not a problem as long as they don't get caught.

And catching students cheating today has become harder and harder due to the wonders of technology. Cell phones, instant messaging, texting, and other electronic devices have replaced the old crib sheet for most kids. Students routinely send questions and answers to their friends in the next classroom or, in the case of standardized tests, across the country. In spite of strict measures adopted by most schools to try to catch such high tech cheaters, many more get away with cheating than ever before. Clearly, honesty is no longer the best policy.

In response to the cheating epidemic, some schools have begun to institute so-called character education programs. Relying on materials developed by such organizations as the Character Education Partnership, schools have put renewed emphasis on teaching ethics and personal responsibility to all students. Such efforts are laudable, and one can only hope they are adopted by more schools.

Nevertheless, such character education programs can only do so much to stem the rising tide of dishonesty in our schools. As long as the culture continues to reward and even glorify cheaters in business, sports, and entertainment, students will have little incentive to mend their ways.

Most of all, parents need to step up and take responsibility for developing good character traits in their children from an early age. All education, including character education, must begin in the home and at the kitchen table. By the time a student reaches high school, it is often too late to begin talking about the importance of personal honesty, integrity, and responsibility.

As teachers we see our students for only a few hours a week. Still, character education can and should be a large part of our job description. Preventing cheating and holding cheaters accountable from day one is only the beginning of this important task. As Theodore Roosevelt once observed, "To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."