Cheating: The sham of shortcuts

Is there really a price to pay if I cheat and get away with it? Isn’t everyone doing it anyway?

A teacher rushed into my room late one morning, high colour in her cheeks and breathing heavily. “Sir, I’ve just found three students cheating in the examination. One was using his mobile phone and they were passing slips of paper between them.” She placed some slips filled with tiny writing in front of me. “Where are they now?” “They’re here, outside. Two boys and a girl. Them I can believe it of, sir, but she’s always been such a good girl.”

The students were shown into the room, hanging their heads, full of self-pity and fear. “Please don’t tell my dad. He’ll beat me,” pleaded one as a tear rolled down his cheek. “Sir, let us off this one time, Sir. We’ll never do it again, Sir,” pleaded the other boy.

The girl was inclined to take a more combative approach – “Sir, don’t you know, everyone’s doing it all the time. We only did it a bit. I cheated, but I’m not a cheat.” 

Question 1: Is cheating pandemic to all sections of society?

The question educators are faced with today is whether there really is anything that can be done to stem the tide. Do those of us working with young people have to accept that tomorrow will be a less moral world than today? Not for nothing did the Chairman of UK Headmasters and Headmistresses Association say to their national conference a few years ago that educators might well be the last bastion of morality in society.

These days, growing up, it can be very easy to see the wider world from the perspective of a dog-eat-dog fight where you have to win, by any means, fair or foul. Competition is at the core of existence today.

We see many situations in professional sport where highly paid players cynically take any means to get an advantage. Whether it is cricketers engaged in spot fixing, cyclists who take performance enhancing drugs or footballers who dive to persuade referees to give them penalties.

The news in many parts of the world is frequently peppered with stories of scams, bribery, corruption and people who appear to be living happy and free lives on the basis of ill-gotten gains.

In the education world, just three cases suggest that elements of excessive competition are leading people down the wrong paths and require considerable introspection;

a) Stuyvesant High School is one of the most prestigious in New York. Students clamour to get admission there. So, when a mass exam cheating case in 2012 revealed a broad culture of plagiarism and cheating, legitimised by students as a necessary requirement to make sure of a top Ivy League University admission it became apparent just what students were prepared to do to weather the intense academic pressure of the school’s environment.

b) Also, in 2012, half of a batch of 250 students on a course at Harvard University were investigated for their part in a mass exam cheating scandal that rocked one of the world’s great seats of learning.

c) Jonah Lehrer was a publishing sensation – a young man (just 31) who made neuroscience new, original and funky – until his world came crashing down when he had to confess that he had made up quotes in his bestselling book “Imagine: How Creativity Works”.

(Incidentally, I really felt this one as I’d recently read the book and confess I had loved it). 

Question 2: Are gradiose ambitions the culprits?

What was going on in these high-profile situations and what can we learn from them about integrity and academic honesty?

Stuyvesant students told journalists that ‘the end justified the means’ and that they figured that it had become such a norm that those who didn’t cheat at all might well be the exceptions. On the Harvard case, a prominent and long-term Harvard Professor of Education, Dr Howard Gardner (perhaps best known for his work on Multiple Intelligences), highlighted research that he and some colleagues had carried out as part of the ‘Good Work’ project.

Good work was defined as work that was excellent, engaging and ethical. As part of their research they had interviewed many promising and talented students. Time after time the students indicated that they admired good work and really wanted to be good workers... one day.

The problem came with the fact that they were highly ambitious and didn’t really see the two as compatible. They feared that so many others were cheating that if they acted ethically this would involve losing out in their ambitions. Therefore, they figured that they needed to be just unethical enough to achieve their aims and aspirations, and then would set out to be good later and set an example to others.

To me, the issue appears to be largely one related to time. In the short term, I hold unrealistic and grandiose ambitions for the future that I’m not prepared to pay the full price for in terms of effort, strain and sacrifice in the short term. So, the decision gets made to cut corners now and to ignore whether there might be a price to pay ‘one day’. 

Fact No. 1: Confronting the guilt of cheating

When it comes to human nature I’m on the side of the optimists. I want to believe that man is inherently good and can motivate him or herself to do right in both the short- and long term. Pessimists fear that man is essentially always tempted to take the wrong path, and therefore, must be coerced by stringent and extreme penalties.

I believe that any student who really and genuinely thinks about ‘the price to be paid’ at some time in the future would find cheating or cutting corners an unpalatable option. I once found myself in the situation of addressing a whole class of students where it was believed that cheating and plagiarism had been rampant.

I asked them all to project way into the future in their minds, to a time when they are elderly – in a time of life when, traditionally, we get to bask in the rewards of our lives. They take their small grandchild on to their knee. The child looks up to their face adoringly and says; Grandpa (or Grandma), we’re so proud of you, of everything that you’ve achieved. One day, I want to be just like you.”

If, on that day, they look back and remember that they had cheated to get ahead, they just need to imagine the churning guilt and shame they would feel inside as they thought; “Oh child, if only you knew, everything I’ve ever achieved, everything I’ve ever done was built on a lie, a falsehood, because I cheated. I’m not worthy of your admiration.”

This was a powerful experience for many of the young people present. Some were so moved they had tears in their eyes as they vowed that when they reach that stage in life they want their grandchildren to look up to them with good reason. They wanted to be able to live every day knowing that whatever they achieved in life, it was genuine, built on the solid ground of their own honest effort. When they looked into their futures, they decided that the price of shame wasn’t one they were prepared to pay. They realised that even if that one cheat or lie was followed by honest endeavour, all the pride would be washed out by that false foundation. 

Fact No 2: Make a commitment

We should also not underestimate the fact that as citizens, every time one of us makes a choice to act unethically, to cheat or to cut corners we put another dent in the trust that glues and bonds our society together. Do I really have that right? Ultimately, the price of low trust in society is something that we all pay.

I wrote last week about the powerful force in our lives of setting goals. Today, I sound a note of caution. When we set high and challenging goals for ourselves, we have to be willing to pay the price for having that goal become a reality. Goals achieved by cutting corners or putting integrity to one side leave a hollow core that undermines us long in to the future.

If you are a young person of character you don’t hold back from setting big goals for your life. However, the difference is that you figure out what you are going to need to do, how much effort will be required from you, what short term pleasures you might need to forego and if the goal means enough to you – you commit to do whatever it takes, ethically and fairly. Then, cheating is no longer an option.

Mark Parkinson is the Executive Director & Head of Schools,G. D. Goenka Private School, Sharjah