I just want to point out that those cheating are not always the people who don't know things. I mean, they are smart enough to cheat without being caught for one.

I myself (In England) am in year 13, the year AFTER compulsory education. I cheated in some of my exams sure... For science, I wrote down some elements on a rubber. And once I had used them in the test I simply rubbed the rubber on the test and all evidence was gone.

But hey, I got an A* in that test by well over the 2 marks that cheating could have got me in the end.

In history I wrote the date of an event on my pencil, then I simly put the pencil on the desk with the date facing down until I needed it. I got a C in that test, one mark below a B. Not having that date would still have left me at a C.

I'm pretty sure I cheated in one or two other exams also, but everytime, it made no difference to my overall grade.

Cheating isn't always for those who know nothing, it is also not always a big deal. If anything, if you can cheat just a tiny bit on most of your exams and not get caught, you have something more valuble than most of what you get taught in compulsory education anyweay.



[edit on 1-12-2008 by StevenDye]

Originally posted by redled
Politicians lie, cheat, steal, but say they're good. They set up the education system.

It was a collective effort from everyone that made children what they are today.

I have read enough garbage in this thread to determine one thing. There is no longer a fear of reprisal in society, especially among our youth. Fear nothing, question authority, disrespect your parents, demand everything, expect everything, blame everyone but yourself.

I didn't cheat in HS or college because I didn't want to get caught or expelled. I thought about it many times but the consequences far out weighed the rewards. I learned that going to class, reading and taking notes was the answer. My professors responded by taking an interest in those who were interested in their class. This was especially evident in the higher level classes.

Our current educational system is the end result of programs and initiatives that were funded in the early part of the 20th century by the elite of the country to further consolidate their power and influence:

“Reading through the papers of the Rockefeller Foundation’s General Education Board - an endowment rivaled in school policy influence in the first half of the twentieth century only by Andrew Carnegie’s various philanthropies - seven curious elements force themselves on the careful reader:

1. There appears a clear intention to mold people through schooling.
2. There is a clear intention to eliminate tradition and scholarship.
3. The net effect of various projects is to create a strong class system verging on caste.
4. There is a clear intention to reduce mass critical intelligence while supporting infinite specialization.
5. There is clear intention to weaken parental influence.
6. There is clear intention to overthrow accepted custom.
7. There is striking congruency between the cumulative purposes of GEB projects and the utopian precepts of the oddball religious sect, once known as Perfectionism, a secular religion aimed at making the perfection of human nature, not salvation or happiness, the purpose of existence. The agenda of philanthropy, which had so much to do with the schools we got, turns out to contain an intensely political component.”

-John Taylor Gatto, “The Underground History of American Education” (201)

“In our dreams, people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions of intellectual and character education fade from their minds, and, unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people, or any of their children, into philosophers, or men of science. We have not to raise up from them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen – of whom we have an ample supply. The task is simple. We will organize children and teach them in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.” -John D. Rockefeller, General Education Board (1906)

Prior to WWI, in a speech to American businessmen, President Woodrow Wilson admitted similar goals as the Rockefellers: “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” In 1931, Paul Mantoux, in his foreword to “International Understanding” wrote, “And the builder of this new world must be education.... Plainly, the first step in the case of each country is to train an elite to think, feel, and act internationally.”

The foundations for this system were put in place generations ago. .

[edit on 1-12-2008 by clay2 baraka]

lol of course they say "they're good" - remember "they're liars"
as soon as i read the title it made sense.
I honestly don't know what the main drive is for downspiral morality.
you can say it's MTV, you can say its the actual education system, you can say its the parents. none of those are wrong, in the end the norms are the norms, and as long as they keep changing so does everyones mindset. If I go to school, and I see that most of my friends cheat; its normal. if We send each other pirated movies, its normal (and cheap*). the lie of all of it is that they go around pretending its normal, when if you very well ask them if it is right or wrong, they know its wrong. (how do you think the survey found out?)

Watching people get worked up or upset about cheating on a High School test is simply comical to me.

Ethical Standards? You say that as if High School is a place that fosters useful, accurate, or relevant knowledge or upholds any sort of ethical basis.

High School is, by design, a tool of socialization that simply programs people to fit into whatever sort of society or pattern of life that the government finds most useful.

However, Yeah, cheating on your Med School is test is messed up, as you're playing with people's lives there.

But the majority of American High Schools provide a violent, alienating environment for young minds that does more harm than good.

If my kid doesn't feel like reading useless propaganda in his english class, I will fully support his right to cheat to get through with it so that he can actually get out of that hellish environment and move on to some useful part of life.

But yeah, I agree that lying and stealing are, as general rules, pretty bad.


[edit on 1-12-2008 by RavagedSky]

Here is what I find, that blaming parents is just another scape goat situation to make us feel better. Sadly in today's society it takes both parents working full time jobs just to "make the bills" how can someone truly "parent" their child(ren) when they have to work so much?

They can't always, and the truth is parents are not the only ones who have influence on their children, the moment children start interacting with society (ie on the playground when they are one, at the grocery store when they are a month old), then society becomes involved.

I agree about a posters input about PTO's, I was involved for many years and finally decided it was just a bunch of crap and stopped being involved. I got tired of all the back stabbing, gossiping and who did what when instead of what I thought PTO should be about, the children. Now I teach art to the children and volunteer in the classroom where I am actually working with the children and not always other parents.

Personally I view it as a partial problem of corporatism, I mean just look at what is taking place now with our banking system and the bailout for example. My kids and I have talked about this, and they question why corporations are allowed to "cheat and steal" and then get tax payers money to go on vacation with.

So, what lesson did they learn from that situation? Cheat, lie and steal, and the government will give you some money.

I already have my complaints about the school system, and forcing kids to sit in classrooms and give "correct answers" instead of teaching them problem solving skills is an obvious impact we are seeing on society as a whole. Our children are not learning how to "think", they are not learning how to solve problems, they are learning to conform.

Originally posted by projectvxn
Finding reasons why it's ok to cheat is part of the problem. You can't justify this just because high schools have turned into prisons.

You can also tell your kids that the tests are irrelevant and of no consequence, so don't worry about failing them, but we all know it isn't that easy in school for a kid to simply bow out gracefully.

Passing tests is pretty easy if you learn some memory techniques, which are also fun and useful in other areas of life. However, if that's not your bag, and you can stay under the radar and silently vote 'no' whilst fulfilling their dumb 'schooling' requirements by writing the answers on the back of your hand, then more power to you.

We need to change our entire education system starting with early childhood education. We need a model that fosters academic achievement creativity.

It needs completely recreating, not just changing. It was broken from the very start.

And parents, god forbid you're one, should not be advocating cheating in highschool just because you believe it is of no consequence. Those who lie, cheat and steal to get ahead of the curve will continue to do so well into college.

Lying and stealing aside, cheating in tests isn't necessarily to 'get ahead of the curve'.

The problem with cheating is that it does affect lives in the immediate. Kids are cheating on Math tests, how is math propaganda? Do you not want your kid to understand math? How is basic language skills propaganda? How about the understanding of physics and other classes these kids are cheating in?

I've never used differentiation, integration, advanced trig, calculus or algebra in my day to day life. I can learn to conversationally speak a language in about 8 days without memorising or note taking, as can most anyone, but have forgotten all that German/French/Latin grammar they tried to instill into us in school. Bernoulli's equation is still languishing in my brain, but has never been of any practical use and I've never needed to know that a benzine ring contains 6 carbon atoms.

I can confidently say that much more than 90% of the garbage and lies I was required to learn in both school and university, was either not worth knowing or irrelevant to my current and future life choices.

We're raising a generation of instant gratification seekers with no moral center and it is helping no one.

Like many have said, we learn by example for the most part.

[edit on 1/12/08 by RogerT]