According to some teens, cheating is a game – a way to “beat the system.” They figure that school isn’t really teaching them anything they need, so why bother learning it when they can cheat? In fact, as Professor Donald McCabe pointed out after conducting the Rutgers University study on cheating, teens may be getting the wrong message about what skills are needed in “the real world.” Look at the latest corporate liars and cheaters, from Enron, World-Com, Tyco, etc. If these businesses can earn so much money from cheating, why not learn how to cheat early in life? Competition is fierce to get the best grades and get accepted into the best universities. So why not cheat a little to get ahead?

Although it might seem like cheating is the answer, it really isn’t. Besides being plain old dishonest and wrong, cheating is also unfair to yourself and other students. If you cheat and never learn the material taught at school, you’ll be lacking the skills you need to do well in a career later in life. You might be thinking “Well yeah, but I don’t want to be a molecular biologist after school, so why shouldn’t I cheat on my bio exam?” The answer: You’re right, in one sense – you may never need that material again. But school isn’t always about learning facts, it’s sometimes about learning HOW to learn. If you never study for tests, you won’t develop very good study habits. And if you’re planning on going to college or grad school, this will be a big problem! Sometimes you have assignments that are more about exercising your mind than about memorizing facts you may never need again. You’re also cheating your classmates when you cheat. It’s not fair to honest students who study hard to get a worse grade than a cheater. Remember that cheating is NOT a “victimless crime!”

If the ethical reasons don’t stop you from cheating, the punishments might. Students caught cheating on assignments in middle school and high school, generally receive at least an F on the exam or project. If your school is particularly strict, you might even get suspended. Having a school record that includes an incident of cheating might not look so great to colleges, either.

In a recent cheating scandal in Piper, Kansas, students learned the hard way about the consequences of cheating. A biology teacher spotted 28 cases of plagiarism in her class’s big leaf identification assignment, which counted for 50% of the final grade in the class. According to her class policy, Ms. Pelton awarded those 28 students with F’s. The school board forced her to pass the students, however, after parents complained. But the story didn’t stay quiet – soon radio shows, talk shows, and newspapers were covering the crisis at Piper. According to the New York Times, a business in Florida actually faxed the high school, asking for the names of all the students who had plagiarized the assignment – they wanted to know who NOT to hire! You can read the full story at The New York Times.