At least a dozen students at Chapel Hill High School have been implicated in a cheating ring. According to the principal, students obtained a master key and used it to gain access to teachers' test answer keys. It went on for several years, and students who knew about it kept quiet. Why do students -- and the principal says these were bright students -- cheat?
Are you serious? Cheating is cheating and the reasons behind it are about as basic as they come. What on earth is the purpose behind a forum to debate the reasons why students cheat? Come on. Maybe the News & Observer should stop outsourcing its classified employees and outsource staff writers who come up with this time wasting nonsense.
I'm waiting for the follow-up article about the parents who will, inevitably, believe that their cheating son (or daughter) has been treated so unfairly. It's just a matter of time.
I guarantee you that the parents will soon come forward and say that their kids' are being treated unfairly. For what ever reason, parents of these so called "high achievers" believe that their little darlings can do no wrong, so instead of punishing their kids, they will attempt to punish the school and teachers for creating a pressure filled environment that makes their kids cheat.
I sincerely hope that the kids who were caught doing this are not accepted to top colleges or have their acceptance rescinded. They should have to pay the consequences for their actions.
At least now we know the "key" to their success!
The culture of the society we live in is to achieve by any means necessary. This sometimes means bending the rules, and for some people, bending the rules is seen as okay as long as we achieve the final goal. The problems is when "bending" the rules have negative consequences such as reducing the value of a University, or in the corporate world, people being killed on the job because management didn't follow certain safety procedures. 55,000 people in the US are killed in unsafe workplaces and 64,000 people are killed in traffic accident annually. I mention the traffic statistic because "cheating" carries on in many aspects of our lives, if people stopped drinking and driving, speeding, and running red lights traffic then the media would have to find something else to cover. Unfortunately, people feel that they can get away with traffic violations, and usually do until someone gets killed (and then of coarse, they get charged with simply running a red light, as opposed to driving their vehicle in a negligent manner). The point is, maybe if school administrators punished cheaters more heavily they would understand that this behavior is unacceptable in the real world and as a result, our country would produce more ethical and globally responsible leaders.
Timur E.
Freshman NCSU
Some students cheat because they either want to make good grades without doing all the hard work or they are under so much pressure to do well that they and get into a good school that they do what they feel is necessary to obtain good grades. There are so many reasons why a student might cheat. There is so much competition getting into schools these days that you do things by any means necessary. You also have to think about how you are going to pay for school. If you think about it, it's to your advantage to maintain good grades. I mean after you are accepted, you have to think about how you are going to pay for school. Grades would play a big factor as far as getting scholarships and not having to take out so many loans.
The pressure to get into a
The pressure to get into a good school is so great nowadays. I also believe that in academic communities such as Chapel Hill it is the norm to "do well". To fail, or even earn B's is to be outside the norm.
It will be interesting to follow this case given the recent criminal convictions of 9 students in Hanover NH, for the same exact scenario. Again... a college town.