Cheating

I take a very difficult exam. I have to study for about one week. But I do not. I read a bit every day and I feel calm, because I know I will be able to cheat. Everybody knows that, but some of my group mates study a lot. They study for themselves, for the future or because they are really interested in that subject. I am not interested at all. After the exam we find out that all students ggot good marks. But somebody is not satisfied or jealous, so he goes and tells the lecturer the names of those people who cheated. He tells my name too. I am very upset- not because I have cheated, but because I can trust nobody in my group. How could I be so stupid and tell that man such a simple thing. Cheating is a very popular phenomenon in our country. In other countries the prevalence of cheating differs. And it iis a problem of educational system, not of students. When the disciplines are interesting and useful, students are fond of learning, not of cheating. But the worst thing is that nobody can change this system rapidly: it requires much time, mmoney and hard work. Firstly, honors code like Groveton’s ruins the relationships between students. A student can not trust anybody and tell that he is going to cheat. That is, he has to lie to his mates that he knows a lot, that he has studied for weeks. And it is very difficult (I would say impossible) to find real friends from the university environment. For example, I would not call a friend such a man, to whom I have to lie, who can lodge a complaint against me after every test or exam. The most important thing in friendship is trust and freedom to talk, share impressions. Sometimes it is so great to tell a real friend: “That was tthe best cheating in my life.” In our society lots of students’ best friends are from their course. If students would have to sign an honor code, the relationships between them changed a lot. There could be no talk about marriages between group mates, because what is a marriage without trust and supporting a spouse? Or there could be another way out of such situation: to break an oath and to lodge complaints only against some students. But on the oother hand, if one breaks an oath, there is no need to report about cheating at all. So what should a poor student do? Another difficulty is that the information can be not reliable. If one student hates somebody, it is natural that he tries to do harm to the object of hate. And ...