Cheating Should be Punished by Expulsion - Essay Example

Cheating Should be Punished by Expulsion Cheating is a concept not foreign to any In the United s, surveys have concluded that 56% of middle school students and 70% of high school students cheat. Also it was found that 75% of college students admitted cheating, and 90% of college students didn't believe cheaters would be caught. Almost 85% of college students said cheating was necessary to get ahead (Kerkvliet & Sigmund, 1999). And these horrifying statistics undermine the purpose of an educational institution.

For schools, universities and colleges only exist to nurture the future generation. So if a student cannot be trusted to pass examinations without cheating, how can they be trusted when they have their country’s fate in their unreliable hands? Cheating is a despicable act. For not only is it unfair to those students who work hard to get by their academic life honestly, it also makes them bitter. There is no justice in a cheater getting better grades than a student sacrificing an entire night’s sleep to study.

Wouldn’t it shatter his ideals to have something so unjust happen to him? Sophocles said ‘I would prefer even to fail by honor than win by cheating’ (Brainyquote, web). Everyone should learn to get by on their own hard work. Because when they win and lose on their own account, they realize that they are a product of their own work. Your own mistakes and triumphs make you whoever you are. At the end of a cheater’s educational journey, he will have absolutely nothing. No knowledge and most definitely no sense of genuine accomplishment.

Educational institutions exist to produce engineers, doctors, scientist and lawyers. They attempt to provide a healthy competitive environment for the students and with the motivation to work harder and harder for success. Contrary to the school spirit, cheating makes a student lazy and his mind is left quiescent. He may get a job, but how will he manage to carry out his duties? If a student is to become a doctor and because he didn’t study in school he cannot identify the infection, what will become of his patient?

So the question we need to ask ourselves is: Will the harm that comes to another at the hand of our carelessness justifiable? Studies have also uncovered the fact that student who indulge in cheating are likely to practice unethical and immoral behavior during their professional life. If they get away with cheating during school, they will believe that they can get away with anything in life. And this belief will lead them to inevitable disaster. This being in terms of indulging in dishonest means and practices in their later and professional lives.

This acquired behavior is for most of the part responsible for supposedly harmless actions coming together to contribute to white collar crimes (Trevino and McCabe, 1996). Teachers and professors obviously want the best for their students. They work hard to teach them and then make quizzes and tests to check all their students’ progress. In no way is it fair to them that a student cheats in these tests. Examinations test your knowledge and understanding. They help a teacher realize your weaknesses, and they then strive to help you work on them.

But such dishonesty will only annihilate the trust between a student and a teacher. When a student constantly cheats on tests and examinations, the whole class will sooner or later label him as a cheater. Even if he achieves good grades on an assessment through honesty, no one will believe him. His academic performance will no longer be accepted as his own and the other students will never believe him to be smart or trustworthy. The repercussions of cheating aren’t limited to just the person doing it.

They affect the people around him and gain the cheater an unjust title. Such is the power of social interactions and the environment that surrounds the young and impressionable. Therefore it is imperative for students to realize the fact that cheating is wrong. If their only punishment for committing such an act is detention, then they most definitely will begin to think of cheating as no big deal. Cheaters should most definitely be punished by expulsion. They need to be taught the consequences of their actions.

Furthermore, it will serve as an example for other students. References Brainyquote. Web. Retrieved from: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/cheating.html Kerkvliet, J., & Sigmund, C. L. (1999). Can we control cheating in the classroom? Journal of Economic Education, 30(4), 331-351. McCabe, D. L., & Trevino, L. K. (1996). "What we know about cheating in college: Longitudinal trends and recent developments." Change, 28(1), 28-33.