Stanton Cheating

OLIVIA CHRISTOVICH | APRIL 12, 2022 | OPINIONS

School isn’t like what it used to be. Parents constantly talk about how much fun they had in high school, not weighed down by an extreme amount of work or exams. They struggled to get out of bed in the morning because they had stayed up late partying, while today’s generation struggle to get up in the morning because they stay up late doing homework. This overwhelming workload drives students to do one thing: cheat. Cheating can range from something simple and innocent to something extreme, involving anything from asking a friend for homework answers to having their phone out during an exam. Many people don’t realize how often this cheating really occurs. Teachers can’t keep tabs on every single student or read the immense amount of text messages exchanged between students. They have no way of knowing what happens after the student leaves their class.

Students at Stanton College Preparatory School are especially guilty of this. It is an extremely rigorous school where the teachers and administration put a lot of emphasis on academics and extracurriculars, which causes parents to focus on those things as well. If students don’t have straight A’s, play a sport, and participate in an after school club, then they aren’t doing enough in these people’s eyes. Adults especially often do not realize how draining doing hours of homework and studying every night is. After a while, students aren’t even learning anymore, but are just completing assignments to get a good grade. Students will sometimes not see full value in the work they are assigned, which creates a pattern of cheating that continues during a  valuable exam. Students feel the need to cheat, especially at an academic-centered school like Stanton, because they want to please their teachers and parents. Students cheat on exams because their school system forces students to value grades more than learning. However, students do know that cheating is wrong. They don’t feel entirely like they are doing something bad because they think their reasons are rational and legitimate. 

They also want to prove to their friends that they are able to balance so many things in their life and maintain good grades. Walking down the hallways, one constantly hears students discussing how they cheated on some sort of exam or assignment. In certain scenarios, teenagers understand each other way better than adults could. Students know why other students cheat because they know the workload and how overwhelming it can get. Sometimes students will deny to their friends that they cheated to make themselves seem smarter and better than they actually are. Although, this can make the friend question whether they are trying their hardest especially when they don’t do half as what everyone else does. 

Despite these boasts, for a school that's all about integrity, they don’t do a great job at catching students who are cheating. Stanton has an integrity policy they heavily motivate all of their teachers and staff to follow. This policy requires the students to write the Stanton Honor Code on the exams they take. However, there are a countless number of teachers who do not enforce this rule, and those who do have students that often disregard the pledge they make. This makes it unfair to both teachers and students who follow the integrity policy and respect it.

There are people who stay up and study for hours yet score the same as someone who took the easy way out. Most times, though, students run the risk of cheating for a reason. It isn’t because the student is lazy, but rather because they might have something else going on where they lack the time and motivation to complete an assignment or study. There are very high expectations set by parents and the school that students are forced to live up to. Eventually the pressure gets to be too much and students surrender to it by cheating.

In the long run, students will create an illusion in their mind that they are good at a subject, when in reality they have been cheating the whole time. This won’t help them after high school and in college, where they will soon realize that the grades they make don’t matter but what they learn does. These students will create a habit of cheating and eventually fail when they can’t cheat in the real world. 

One could argue that some things students are taught are unnecessary and won’t help them later on. While this may be true, it's the habit and idea of cheating that students have to be careful not to become reliant on.  A better system must be established in which students are not forced to feel overwhelmed all the time so they are not driven to cheating. This is the best way to solve the large issue of cheating at Stanton, even if it is sometimes unnoticed by authority.