Exam Cheating As An Ethical Breach - Essay Example

Exam Cheating As An Ethical Breach INTRODUCTION Many cases have been reported about students who engage in exam irregularities for a long time. Cheating in exams is a serious concern especially in the higher education as many students in colleges and universities seek for short routes of achieving their education goals. Hard work in the education world seems like a thing of the past and most students have obviously buried it. People want to achieve better but with little efforts. Despite the many attempts by the universities and colleges to eradicate exam cheating through putting strict penalties for those caught, this vice has progressively risen (Anderman and Tamera, 131). Is it a situation where the hunted raising their game than the hunter? One thing for sure is that exam cheating is real although the extent to which it cuts through human morality or ethical standards is what can be argued. Some people consider exam cheating as a way of survival in college and ignore any ethical breach that could be associated with it. However, a keen perception of this matter reveals otherwise. Thesis statement: Exam cheating is an indication of decay in societal morals. The manner in which the society responds to exam cheating is a manifesto that indeed there is a problem. It is possible to find someone ignoring and deeming it normal when the see a close friend or family member cheating in an exam. As long as the ‘cheater’ is away from the instructor or lecturer, they have nothing to worry about. This is because everywhere else is ‘safe’ except the surroundings of the lecturer. No one cares in the society if you cheat or not. Integrity and honesty are key principles in any society’s moral provisions. At work or business, employees are expected to show high integrity level as well as honesty (Anderman and Tamera, 133). At school the same principles apply, one is supposed to honest in every endeavor they engage in. How they are you honest when you sneak in with unwanted materials into the examination room to copy and lie to the examiner it is your own work? In the society, exam cheating is well distinguished to be a wrong action that is ethically unaccepted. Children have been socialized into knowing what is good and what is bad. It therefore means that the people who engage in cheating understand pretty well that they are taking unethical steps. All they do is to make what is wrong to look right. They understand that their ego would ‘eat’ them up if they never deploy a strong defense mechanism. They therefore have devised excuses and untrue opinions about cheating. Some call it a normal college action while others claim it is not an ethical issue or if it is then it must be very mild. How mild can it be mild when one gets a degree that is not theirs? Doesn’t it feel bad to be employed in an organization with someone’s ‘knowledge’? Well, to people who subscribe to a contrary idea feel it is just okay. Probably, the end justifies the means. In a clear moral system, if the end starts to justify the means then that is the genesis of moral decay. People would do anything, be it ethically right or wrong, to achieve a good end. Cheating digs deep into the teachings children get as they grow up. It has been observed that exam cheating is not just a malpractice seen in the universities and colleges. Much of this ‘expertize’ in cheating is founded and well developed during the pre-university levels. Most people were taught that engaging in the correct behavior is much easier than those that are wrong. Students were made to understand through the religious and social teachings that defiance is expensive. However, the truth of the matter is that it is easy to make a mistake or do a wrong thing than the right ones. Cheating has been seen to be an easy way out and most students would want to exploit this easy way to breakthrough into the land of their career dream. To them it doesn’t really matter whether it is right or wrong. But of course it is not right to cheat. There is a great shift of responsibility that the universities are charged with as seen in the recent past. There seem to be a fast-growing culture where higher educations are overly orienting students to examination at the expense of ethical ‘grooming’. The education system where one is under pressure is to score highly makes students seek for other unethical ways. Cheating in such cases is inevitable. Pressure back at home to score good grades sometimes can make a student go out of their moral ways and find alternatives of living up to the expectation of the society. The universities’ failure to nurture ethical leaders and recognize them is a big fail ((Davis, Drinan, and Gallant, 124-125) To reverse this situation and curb cheating, universities and colleges need to offer more than just exam-result system of education. The pressure that students are given to perform academically overwhelms them. The institution need to nurture morality and inculcate the mentality of ethical sensitivity. This can be done by arranging seminars and meetings where students are taken through programs that are meant to streamline them into moral paths. Also, a more parent-inclusive education where the institution engages parents and guardians more often on academic issues that a student is facing would be better in maintaining a balance and reducing tension of academic success (Davis, Drinan, and Gallant, 126). Finally, the universities should deploy more sophisticated technological tools that can help monitor and detect exam cheating, lest it goes unnoticed. CONCLUSION The society’s efforts to uphold moral standards have been recently threatened by the ever rising cases of exam cheating. It is getting engrained into the society such that its badness can hardly be seen. There are misconceptions that have so far facilitated this and unless a clear demystification is given about those non-true views in regard to this matter, exam cheating is here to stay. As demonstrated, it is factual to claim that exam cheating is a moral decay that is slowly eating up the society. Everyone should stand up against this so that a more pure-in-morals society can be restored. Work Cited Anderman, Eric M, & Tamera B. Murdock. Psychology of Academic Cheating. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press, 2007. Davis, Stephen F, Patrick F. Drinan, & Tricia B. Gallant. Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Read More