Students fall into the slippery slope/justification predicament all the time.
It’s very competitive out there, and I need to keep up. If I cheat just a little, I’ll make better grades. Better grades will result in a higher GPA. A higher GPA means I can get into a top college. If I attend a primo school, I’ll get a better job and the better the job, the higher the salary. And so on and so forth. In other words, the object of the game is to win, not necessarily do the right thing. This new and rising social group has been referred to as The Winning Class.
Cheating, Like Cancer, Makes a Home
Monetary reasons aside, do students have a moral problem with cheating? Not enough, according to David Callahan, the author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead. He writes, “Something strange is going on here. Americans seem to be using two moral compasses. One directs our behavior when it comes to things like sex, family, drugs, and traditional forms of crime. A second provides us ethical guidance in the realm of career, money, and success.”6 In other words, some folks out there consider themselves to be fine, upstanding citizens. They’d never dream of committing burglary, assault, arson, rape or murder. Would they, however, consider a little insurance fraud? How about over-inflating charitable contributions for tax purposes? Maybe they’d be tempted to purchase a term paper or whip up a lie that could help save them thousands in child support. Well… At least they’re not really hurting anybody, right? I can still remember the bumper sticker that read, WHEN CLINTON LIED, NO ONE DIED—left-over campaign jargon from the ’04 election and an obvious reference to George W. Bush and America’s involvement in Iraq. I had to keep reminding myself that this is what we get during election years, and we’ll be seeing more of this Leave me alone because there’s always someone out there who has done worse than I nonsense. Using this wayward logic, we’d all be off the hook in light of what Hitler did in the 1930s and 1940s.
Just Do What it Takes
Callahan traces America’s get-ahead-at-all-cost mentality back to the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s, culminating with the greed and excesses of the 80s and 90s. With the dawn of deregulation, he says, government agencies were stripped of much of their oversight power. Cheaters moved in where the checks and balances faded, and a new class of Americans emerged: the winning class.7 Regardless of the reasons, I see more cerebral hijackings with high school students that end up in moral Siberia— all in the name of grades, GPA’s, and increased social stature. Charles Gibson, of ABC News, interviewed several college students on the network’s 2004 special on cheating. When he asked the group why they went to college not one of them said, “To get an education.”
The Winning Class. Just keep your eye on the prize. Everything else is merely conversation.
If I may, I’d like to propose a new slippery slope to students: If I work hard and study, I’ll make higher grades. Higher grades will get me into a better school. That work ethic will serve me well in college, and I’ll make higher marks there, too. Higher marks will look better to prospective employers when I finish my undergrad or post grad work. When my employer sees my work ethic, he/she will be impressed, and I’ll advance in my career, thus attaining the satisfaction of a job well done. I’ll be able to pass these valuable lessons along to my own children when they are old enough to understand the meaning of honest work. And, yes, I might just make more money while I’m at it.
Perhaps more of us should read Daniel Goleman’s ground-breaking work, Emotional Intelligence. In a longitudinal study of valedictorians and salutatorians, most had attained only moderate success several years after graduating high school.8 Furthermore, the SAT, he says, has proven to be a rather poor predictor of future success, along with grade point averages. And by “success” Goleman is not necessarily talking about college. Let’s look beyond college, and carefully consider what really matters to employers: honesty, a good work ethic, ability to get along with peers, ability to take criticism well, being a team player, having a can-do attitude, punctuality, living a drug-free life and many more.
Honor in Our Schools: Chemo at Work
One of the greatest achievements at our high school in the past dozen or so years—even beyond all of our state titles in athletics—has been the formation of our honor council. Eleven students, two faculty members and I sit on the council. We only hear cases involving lying, cheating and stealing. We don’t hear many cases, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have any. In my twelve years serving the honor council, I’d say that 99% of the students who come before us admit to what they’ve done upfront. I’ve often joked that our council can draw the truth from a student quicker than sodium pentothal, and I don’t believe that’s an exaggeration. For the most part, our cases involve instances of academic dishonesty, and we hear the same justifications in case after case: I had too much homework last night. Teachers expect too much of students. I don’t even like this class. I had four tests today and could only study for three. Everyone in the class cheats. (Aside from hyperbole, this is the bandwagon fallacy in all its glory.) I’m under a lot of pressure to get into a good school. I forgot to study for this test so I made a cheat sheet. Our honor council members cringe when they hear these excuses.
High Achievers
A well-publicized survey discovered that 80% of the students listed in Who’s Who Among American High School Students have cheated.8 Kate Kessler, in her essay Helping High School Students Understand Academic Integrity, calls it “academic misconduct.” I think that’s a very appropriate term and one I wish more schools would use.
The pressure to stay on top is as real as the pressure to avoid the sewer. Ivy League-bound students cheat just the same as those who are headed for other schools, and many of us in education find that disturbing. Again, let’s listen to the undercurrents from those on top: Of course I cheat. Do you have any idea how much pressure we’re under to get to the top and stay there? I can’t mess up on one test or I’m dead meat. There are plenty of other students chomping at my heels. I do poorly on a test and I might ruin my class ranking. I CAN’T lose my class ranking.
Deal-Making Feeds Justifications
After the bell rang ending 4th period one day, a girl edged up to the front of the room and informed me that she had to make a 3.0 or her parents would not take her car shopping. I smiled, gathered up my belongings, and told her I thought she was more-than-capable of achieving a 3.0 if she put her mind to it. “You don’t understand,” she said, “I need an ‘A’ in this class.” I paused, and then told her, rather firmly, not to concern me with any private deals struck at her family dinner table. Talk about your motivation to cheat. What’s a plagiarized paper when you can be shopping for a Mustang by term’s end?
In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman socks it to American parents, while he praises Asians for the work ethic they instill in their children. If an Asian child comes home with a 70 on a math test, for example, the parents might ask the child how much time he/she spent studying. If the answer is thirty minutes, the parents inform the child he/she will now study one hour for all math tests. If the next grade is an 85, the parents up the ante to an hour-and-a-half.9 The lesson is a powerful one, and makes it clear that time and effort will solve most problems. Excuses, on the other hand, will solve nothing. We’ve all heard the expression If at first you don’t succeed… Unfortunately, American children too often follow the words of W.C. Fields: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no sense in being a damn fool about it.
Giving Our Kids Built-In Excuses
As American parents, some of us (and I do emphasize some) have a bit of soul-searching to do.