Is Cheating That Bad?

On the flipside, resisting the temptation of cheating when I knew precisely jack squad of a test's subject (and every single other student was cheating copiously) did show me an amount of sense of duty and honor I didn't know I had back then (yes, yes, it's just a random test, but as a child I took that shit seriously).

So I guess it works both ways?

I'd actually had a mock congress on this topic. Turns out I am the only person in the group of 20 against cheating.

The engineering code of ethics chide against cheating. Why? Because engineers put the public's life in hand, and they must have the skills necessary to ensure public's safety. Cheating also extend out to cheating in life such as using bribery. NASA got away with violating the code for a very long time. It didn't end well for it when the long overdue consequences stuck...

So don't cheat, lads.

Cheating is a symptom about the student caring more about the test than about actually learning something. If your students cheats you have a bad system in place.

Either that or your students are lazy good for nothings. I personally don't cheat much, probably because I don't feel like putting an effort into it and I probably know the contents of the class just from sitting down and pretending to listen.

However, when I cheat I try not to put much effort into it, cause it would destroy the purpose of cheating in the first place, which is not to put much effort into the subject.

Then again, one of my worst tendencies is to cease to care about a given subject when I find out that the professor in charge doesn't give a shit either. Which happens a lot.

edited 19th Apr '14 3:43:21 AM by ElRigo

Or stupid and untrustworthy students.

... Dude, when you say students one already assumes stupid and untrustworthy.

Well, there is that.

I'd like to add that, at primary and secondary schooling levels at least, one likely doesn't know what information or skills are likely going to be useful later in life; cheating by virtue of avoiding learning those things may deprive one of potential tools later in life, while cheating by virtue of avoiding the work associated with testing those things (such as by plagiarising essays) might cause one to not discover gaps in one's knowledge or skills.

(I'm excluding tertiary-level schooling because I feel that this point is more debatable there—although personally I think that it still holds.)

Even things that seem useless or trivial can be useful: I've found uses for the Pythagorean theorem and various bits of trigonometry, for example. It's true that I could have looked those up (and indeed I often do use external resources, such as looking up trigonometric graphs online), but having learned them at school may have been part of the reason that I recognised their applicability to whatever I was working on in the first place, and could simply use what I quickly took from Wikipedia without much (if any) additional study.

Finally, I'd like to add that cheating on essay questions specifically may have an impact outside of the topic of the essay: essays may help in developing one's skills in critical thinking, putting forward an argument and general written communication—all of which can, I feel, be very important indeed.

edited 19th Apr '14 6:42:09 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

I personally believe that cheating is bad in most contexts. In school, it's bad, and I personally strive to be the best student I can be rather than cheat to get good grades. Considering I graduated with straight As, I'd say it worked. Cheating in competitions is unfair unless everyone else is cheating, because otherwise you have an advantage that you shouldn't have. This applies to sports, multiplayer videogames, and other competitions equally. The one situation where it's okay to cheat is if you're playing a single-player game or solving a puzzle or something. In that situation you can cheat and it's okay because no one else is being affected by it.

It's not entirely that black and white in multiplayer video games, to be clear.

There are levels of it. Playing as a boss character, for instance, means almost nothing sometimes. In some series, the boss just isn't a big deal to play as. Often because they're underpowered in some way. Take Giga Bowser from Melee. He really is not that good. He's not terrible or anything, but is a walking meat shield who can't tank hits very much at all. He has some advantages, but not many. He can't be thrown and can rack up damage fairly fast with his Fire Breath, due to it being infinite. He can throw too. The problem is that almost everyone is faster and can juggle him around pretty fast. He actually takes regular knockback.

There are probably other examples. Inferno in the Soul Calibur series, for instance, when he's not normally playable. He's just slightly better than the rest due to being unpredictable and having a few unique moves. Meanwhile the actual boss, Night Terror, of Soul Calibur III is actually pretty borked.

Whole point being is, as I said, there's no clear cut case of "cheating in multiplayer is bad", just more specific kinds. Stuff that makes you invincible or whatever is a problem. Having an advantage over someone, but not to the point of being unbeatable is instead a fun challenge for people to go with. Can make for interesting fights in games that allows 3 on 1 as well. One key goal if these types of things is to help improve people's games by helping them think more strategically than anything else. Just like fighting other bosses in games. You can't just win because you have an advantage, you gotta win by using your head. ...Literally in some cases.

Well, if you all want my sincere opinion on cheating, I am 100% against cheating. Part of the reason I'm avoiding cheating is because my profession to ultimately aim for does not condone cheating whatsoever (Accounting for the curious). Also part of my reasoning is for personal ethics. I'm avoiding cheating for personal honor (I'm all for a nice, clean game now).

Yes, cheating is bad.

In the real world, getting the right answer is all that matters. I'd rather have a bridge built by an engineer who "cheats" and asks someone more skilled to do his job from him than a bridge built by a B- student whose best effort isn't good enough. I suppose you could argue that it's unfair that he's overpaid, but I doubt it's that easy to get the better engineer to do all that work for free.

Quite frankly, very little of what's taught in school are skills anyway. There is not a class I've taken that has taught me any fact that I couldn't just look up on the internet. Writing is certainly a thing that plenty of professions require skill in, but if the "cheater" is good enough at plagiarizing to assemble a patchwork essay that actually addresses the needs of the assignment perfectly then they are in fact doing their job. Normally we call that "research". I don't believe that standard citation ethics are morally significant enough undermine the value of the output. When I wrote a research papers myself, I tended to be more scared of getting the citations wrong than I was of the quality of my writing, because a missed citation is an instant F while a badly written conclusion is an A-. These are not good lessons to be teaching students.

edited 19th Apr '14 1:58:49 PM by Clarste

Really? I just write my essay, and throw in a few random quotes to give me something to cite. A machine checks for plagiarism, my professors look for the quality of the writing.

And is it really cheating for one engineer to ask another for help? Is there a rule against consulting your colleagues? I would have thought getting a second opinion or advisor would be a perfectly sound course of action. Really, cheating on an engineering project sounds more like the person who cut corners or otherwise knowingly didn't do the job correctly.

In the real world, the B- students had already starved to death.

I don't follow.

Pretty much. You can't cheat(via cutting corners) and you can't go with the guy who doesn't do as good of a job. Both are bad. You need the one that does the proper job at the right speed. A bridge is something people drive/walk/bike/skateboard(and anything I forgot) on. It's important it's done right more than anything else.

it's a dig at the job market.

I disagree. If someone can plagiarize in the way you described, then they can properly cite the sources. The effort needed to do so wouldn't be much more than the work they've already put into their plagiarized paper.

Maybe it's because I'm being trained to write publishable quality papers, but missing a citation is a big problem. It makes the writer and editor look bad. No one wants to read a book or article with typos all over the place. Not to mention the potential legal ramifications of missing a citation. But that's why drafts and editing exists. Or should. Not many students actually do that (often myself included).

The place I went to was just a small community college, but a significant portion of the facility also taught classes for prospective medical students. For the normal student body improper citations and plagiarism mean you were given a zero if they were still present in the final draft, but for the medical students it was grounds for expulsion (medical students often were in internship positions while they were taking classes).

Is this thread based entirely on academic cheating or is the other sorts fair game.

edited 22nd Apr '14 7:07:12 PM by joeyjojo

A visible and practical downside to cheating (in both school and the job market) would be the simple fact that you are relying on someone else to do your job. If that person (or persons) is unwilling to share his work with you or incompetent, you are screwed.

I've been at two high schools, one a small IB charter school and the other a normal public high school. Both have rampant cheating. However, the way in which the cheating is done and how it affects the students' educations are very different. At the normal school, it's mostly texting/snapchatting answers or copies of tests with no concern for knowing the content of the tests. At the IB school it was on the homework, a lot of times being done at lunch (especially when it was due right after lunch) where instead of working individually like it's supposed to be done, they pool their knowledge and cooperatively complete the work. Basically a study group but procrastinating until you were racing the clock. That kind I have no issue with because by and large they got the knowledge.

I've never considered working with someone else on homework to be cheating, and I've never quite understood why anyone would consider it such. Actually having someone else do the homework for you? Yeah, I can see that as a bad thing. Actively collaborating to get the work done? This is something that should be encouraged.

I've had teachers in the past outright call it cheating.

I can see why they would do that.