Social Forces and Costs of Cheating
Causal-Analysis Essay
The rules of personal academic conduct generally require students to do the work necessary to complete class assignments on their own. Any effort to evade this rule in a manner that maintains the impression that the student is performing adequately, would be considered cheating.
Academic cheating can take many forms, from looking over the shoulder of a classmate during an exam, writing notes on inside of the palm or forearm, purchasing the answers from an online service, to paying someone to complete a take-home exam. The justifications a student might use for cheating can be just as varied, and can include being uninterested in the course material, struggling to keep up, a temporary personal crisis, scheduling conflicts, or arrogance. While all of us have experienced personal problems, scheduling conflicts, and boring class material, and some of us may have found instructional material too advanced, not everyone chooses to address these problems by cheating. So, what differentiates a cheater from a non-cheater?
A personality trait...
bad person, laziness, or criminal propensity were invoked. Contrary to the popular notion in western cultures that most people act as independent agents, social forces can often play a dominant role in determining human behavior. Parents sometimes place unrealistic and impersonal expectations for academic success on their children and in order to maintain the approval of their parents these students may engage in cheating. Some schools can foster institutional indifference towards cheating, in order to avoid conflict with students and parents. Other schools may impose draconian sanctions on cheaters, which inadvertently encourage the rebel in the class to cheat in protest. Western society could be the biggest factor of all, with advertisers selling the notion that the image of success can be purchased in the form of the right degree from the right college, the right clothes from the right stores, the right house in the right neighborhood, and the right job in the right company. The social pressure to be or appear successful…
