If you came here looking for instructions on cheating, you won’t find them. I am a reformed cheater and think cheating is despicable, so please don’t do it. In my high school, virtually everybody cheated (I know of two students who didn’t), but in retrospect I would have been much better off if I’d not participated in it, mainly by doing what I perceived as low-level things like allowing my homework to be copied and copying other students’. After I graduated high school, I never once even considered cheating in college or in any work setting, though I’m sure I would have been able to get away with it. That might be changing, as the Times reports that there’s a new arms race between cheaters and colleges trying to catch them.
The article discusses technology that colleges are using to catch cheaters. But I don’t know what good it does to catch somebody in the act of cheating, and it doesn’t at all address ways that cheating can be prevented and, when it’s not prevented, used to convince other people not to cheat in the future and create an atmosphere that holds cheating in contempt.
Before investing in video cameras and before making life that less pleasant for students who like to chew bubble gum during a test, if I were tasked with ending cheating, I’d simply raise the punishment for it to expulsion: no zero on the paper, no F in the class, no probation, no suspension, no black mark on the diploma – just expulsion. Having a single sanction does imply a downside – students are much less likely to be found guilty of cheating if guilt means they’ll be expelled immediately – but I think it’s well worth it.
The next thing I’d do is institute an honor code. But I mean using a real honor code that imbues real honor. A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do, is a real honor code. An honor code does not need a preamble, and an honorable person does not need to have “lying” defined for him, as in this crap honor code. But, since honor doesn’t come entirely from within, a strong honor code needs to reflect that honorable people don’t accept or tolerate dishonorable people in their presence.
Finally, I’d bring back the notion of class rank. I’ve never been a student at an institution that had class rank, so I can’t imagine the sort of additional pressure it would put on me to get good grades, move higher up relative to my peers and, yes, to cheat. But I do know that ranking students would make them care about each other and about each other’s work. I don’t see them realistically being driven to turn each other in or to fabricate false allegations about each other, but I do see them being driven to stay focused and to realize that cheating actually does hurt one’s peers.
When I was in already finishing college, one of my brothers matriculated at a school with a single sanction honor code, and when he told me about it, I knew that it made perfect sense. The students sat on juries that called witnesses and effectively expelled fellow students by finding them guilty of cheating, and in some cases those juries were reluctant to convict because they didn’t necessarily think the crime rose to the level of expulsion. But by associating cheating with expulsion and then sticking to their guns, they both imposed honor and brought honor to themselves and to their school. I couldn’t have been more impressed.
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