why do people tell eachother the contents of assessed work in school?

[theduffman]

Person A sits test. Person A tells person B what was on the test. person B targets his studies at the contents of the test; perhaps he rehearses some answers to questions. Person B gets a higher mark than he would've otherwise. Next time, person B sits the test first, returns the favour by sharing information with person A. Both of their marks improve.

This occurs all the time, at my school at least. While plenty of people view it as cheating & unfair, few have the balls to dob these 'cheaters' in. To be honest, I'd estimate three quarters of the students take part in this activity. I'm very interested in how people justify this activity/rationalise their actions.

nb. I'm asking this question at a couple of other forums I frequent. I'm trying my best not to write my opinions into the thread to bias people just yet, but any contributions - (Do you do this or have you done this when you were in high school? Is it cheating, and is it wrong?) are very welcome and greatly appreciated.

 

[Pit 42]

I'd say it's a form of cheating, but it's not exactly directly cheating, if you get what I mean. Directly cheating would be letting someone copy off your test while you're taking it.

I do this a lot, partially because I'm overloaded with sh*t when I come home and the people in my classes help me and I help them because we all need a break. I guess, when you think about it, it is kind of wrong to do it.

 

[Rici]

I don't see the problem here actually. Person B still studies, but only the questions that are asked. You could even question if it's fair that you've got to learn alot more than what you are tested.

And you'll forget most of the things that you've learned anyways.

 

[Bazooka Lucca]

American school system's suck. You don't learn **** either way.

 

[Red Exodus]

I've done this once or twice. I do it because even if I tell them the questions they still have to know the answers, plus all answers aren't define, some of them require analyization [sp? can't spell today].

 

[Kirby King]

American school system's suck. You don't learn **** either way.

Dude, the original poster's from Australia. If you're going to criticize the education system, at least criticize all of them for a shared flaw.

And not to rain on anyone's parade, but telling people what's on a test in advance is most definitely cheating. Generally teachers are willing to divulge the format and subject matter of a test, but if you're reading off question 5 to someone who's yet to take it so they can learn whatever it is they didn't bother to study the first time, you're assisting that person to artificially inflate his grade, undeservedly. Any time someone does something to earn an artificially higher grade, they've cheated. Just because you can make it seem mutually beneficial and it doesn't happen during the test doesn't mean it's not cheating.

Riciardos -- the goal of education isn't (or at least shouldn't be) gaming a system to know the bare minimum that you need to demonstrate knowledge of on a test. Tests are generally crafted to be representative of the type of material you're expected to know, and usually this doesn't include every topic imaginable for reasons of time and length. It's ridiculous enough that standardized testing has created an environment where teaching to a test is the norm--it shouldn't be encouraged any further.

 

[notftomearth7]

I know it's a form of cheating but it takes some pressure off being as my Bio III teacher is so unpredictable she should be in a mental ward. Yeah, but easy **** like English tests, that pisses me off. It's only okay if the teacher's insane!

 

[cF=)]

I don't know for you guys, but my tests usually cover a lot of what I've learned. Telling me there'll be "this" and "that" question doesn't tell me much since I have to study everything anyway, and because every teachers makes multiple version of their own exams.

Math is terrible, you can't cheat at an advanced calculus exam ;__;

 

[Crimson King]

It's only okay if the teacher's insane!

A. You are rationalizing to make yourself feel better.
B. Define insane. What's insane to you could be extreme to others and they have much lower standards.

Cheating in school is the most pointless thing you can do because you aren't learning anything and you are assuming others know it better. In this case, though you are studying, you are only studying something specific and not retaining enough to use it in day-to-day life. I have cheated in College like this and have done worse on tests because either A. teachers change their tests per class, or B. the people tell me the questions wrong and I study it wrong. Just study and get a real education.


Currently, US is 50th in the WORLD for education and number one for spending on it. This is pretty much why.

 

[falco_4_life]

nall this aint cheatin. cause u still have to study for the test, this is like a review. it just tells u were to study to help.

now cheating is what i do. have a friend right down the answers then use it, or don't spend your time studying, but spend it makin cheat sheets.

i only cheat in every class when it comes to homework n stuff, then when it comes to test which i find it very hard to cheat on i usually study my *** off or just go to tutoring. this system as gotten me this far n i don't plan on doing anything otherwise.

o yeah n crimson king u always need to do research b4 cheating, believe it or not. either you learn your teacher well or you really know the person u cheatin off of. I am like an expert cheater so i know what i'm doing, but i also know when not to cheat. thats y i make good grades n certain classes were smart *** people fail.

 

[commonyoshi]

I dont approve of cheating in any way or form. Doesn't stop me from doing it, but we wont go thar.

The teacher never intended for anyone to know the questions beforehand so it is cheating. It doesn't matter if you have to "study for the answers to the question" because you have an unfair advantage over the rest of the class. How is it fair that they are forced to study three times as hard just to earn the same score?

I dont care if the whole class cheats either. This is the biggest problem I have with cheating, you dont learn anything and become a lazy dolt. You're basically wasting your time and your teacher's. "It wont affect the rest of our lives anyway." Pah! Humans as a race would still be undeveloped if everyone thought like this. What we learn affects what our future will become. Also, suffering in school develops character.~ Calvin's dad from Calvin and Hobbes.

So yeah, erm, dont cheat. Edit: But if you'd like to help ME cheat then look at my sig.>_>

 

[pikachun00b7]

i nly ch34t3 in teh 3nlgish cl455, 4nd l00k 47 m3 n0w!11 lawlz

 

[theduffman]

Thanks guys, there's a real variety of opinions out there, lots of very different ideas and angles ont he issue have emerged, which is very cool. So here are a bunch of interesting replies I've gathered for you:

[from bored of studies]

sprinkles said:
Of course it is cheating, I don't really see anyway anymore could rationalise it to be otherwise :S

So many people in my classes did it, but there really wasn't anything you could do about it because you couldn't prove it...

lucid scintilla said: Blame on: Human nature.

legham said:

Person A sits test. Person A tells person B what was on the test. person B targets his studies at the contents of the test; perhaps he rehearses some answers to questions. Person B gets a higher mark than he would've otherwise. Next time, person B sits the test first, returns the favour by sharing information with person A. Both of their marks improve.

You just answered your own god**** question!
Why else would they do it? For a cheap laugh? Cause i dont think they'd find that very humorous..

[from giventowail]

Ament said:Cheating? Yes.
But if I did it I'd view it as a way to save time because you'd have to understand it anyway so you would have to put study in but you can focus on specific areas.

November Hotel said:Are the tests that both Person A and Person B are sitting the same? If so then they are both cheating BUT I'd be more concerned that the school is allowing the same test to be conducted at different times because you will always get Person A telling Person B and so forth.

If your school believes that students from different classes are 100% honest to keep the exam/test content to themselves then your teachers have their heads in the clouds.

[from cubed3]

emma&michelle said:i dont think this is cheating unless the person that took the test first actually gives the answers but its alright if hes just saying what was on the test

mOojc said:<br/>I admit, I have done this a few times. I would usually have a good chat to a friend who had done the exam before me whether it was easy/hard and what am i expecting/ not expecting in the exam. Though my friends and I dont exactly give each other exact questions or answers, we just suggest helpful tips and such. I remember one incident at school where Class A did their exam first and got decent grades, while Class B and C who did the exams after Class A got top marks. This resulted in the teachers making the exams on the same day and time period as everyone else, to prevent the sharing of assessment information. According to my Maths teacher, this sort of behavior is merely collaborating, where you help each other out to a certain extent. I personally dont think its cheating. It depends on the extent of the information being given out. If Person A gives Person B the exact questions and possible answers, than this is certainly cheating, where Person B now knows most of the questions and can easily study and prepare answers beforehand. However if its more like, Person A just tells Person B if it was easy/hard and what to expect/not to expect without giving too much examples from the exam, i view this as a collaboration between the 2 people. This issue wasnt that serious at my school as it was only grade 8-10, where the assessments dont count towards anything. In grade 11-12 however, all assessment counts towards your OP (QLD system). To prevent this, all the exams from grade 11-12 are done in exam blocks where everyone does it at the same day and time to keep it fair for everyone.No doubt this sort of thing can be viewed as cheating and unfair, depending on the extent of information given. It is definitely an issue if this occurs during assessment that count towards your (insert state education system rank where no one should have an advantage over someone else.

TAG said:<br/>When me and friends talk about tests, we just say, It was hard. There were several questions about _________. Look over that. or It was pretty easy. Just make sure you know what a _______ is and the difference between ______ and ________. We dont say Number one is C, number 2 is mitochondria,.....Thats not cheating in my book. If the teacher really thinks its cheating, all they have to do is make a few different tests (from changing the order of questions or having different questions over the same thing). Our teachers do that sometime.

Tin Can Man said:<br/>Yeah, my friends and I pretty much say what you have to know for the tests, not the answers.

Balladeer said:<br/>They lose out when it comes to the exams which matter. And the rest of us can always grass the cheaters up if were feeling malicious.

I think Legham's post most desperately needs a reply.

Basically, yes, I realise people want to improve their marks, but I would have imagined people would also not want to improve their marks unfairly. I'd certainly hope that some kind of moral thought process goes through people's minds and guides their actions. So if you like, we can call the thread not "why do people do this", but "why don't people stop themselves...". So far, only Falco 4 Life has shown this sort of total lack of thinking or caring so far =D.

Just to throw another angle into the mix... my maths teacher about a week ago drew the analogy to putting first your friends or your country. Obviously people do put their friends above everyone else in the world, he said. He told us basically that it doesn't affect the school, so they don't make us sit SACs simultaniously that often. On a side note, he tried to convince us that the SACs shouldn't advantage people who know what the questions are about, but I don't think he really believed this.

 

[pdk]

at least they're studying and learning instead of either mindlessly copying answers or ******* around, especially if the test covers stuff they were weak with to start

 

[gnosis]

Alright, to clarify, I'm a senior in high school graduating this spring.

And here's my story. I have at least one person in every one of my classes who, like me, does not really pay attention at all. But, these people, also like me, are able to not pay attention and still pass with mildly impressive grades (I'm at a 3.6, or so, total gpa). If I happen to miss a test that one of these people didn't, I'll ask them if it was a test either of us should of worried about, and vice versa.

If they say it was, then I might consider studying a few areas they inform me about. If not, then I don't. That being said, I don't think I've ever really studied for a test in school.

Now, is it cheating? Yeah, probably. Is it wrong? Maybe. Wrong enough for me to care? No. High school's just so silly that I can hardly bring myself to feel outraged about it. I'm not putting anyone at a disadvantage, and I'm not exactly becoming a 'lazy dolt' because of my cheating/negligence either. The lazy part, maybe, but only when something's as silly as high school.

 

[JFox]

Hehe, this reminds me of my days in the debate hall. Except there are no quotes from biblical texts, lol.

Yes, its most certainly cheating. You might say that its not as bad as some cheating, and I guess I could agree with that, but its still a form none the less. Perhaps it won't artifically inflate your grade as highly, and you might have actually learned more this way than say copy off another's paper. But the problem is this:

If a teacher had meant for their students to know what to concentrate their studies on, they would have told them. Your telling them what to study means they will neglect other the other parts of the chapter, and focus more heavily on the material you have told them is on the test. By neglecting some of it, they are learning less, and you are tainting the effectiveness of the system. If you telling them gives them a higher grade, that means your information must have been the cause for a higher mark, and without the information they could not have done as well. This obviously means that the person does not deserve the grade because it has been inflated based on your information.

Oh and just for the closure- This is cheating because my pastor said so

 

[#HBC | FrozeηFlame]

This type of situation is undoubtedly cheating, however I wouldn't condemn it in its entirety.

Now there is a fine line here bewteen obtaining information prior to a test thus allowing you to focus your study, and just simply copying answers off of the guy next to you during the test. By finding out from someone else what was on a test, you are abusing a broken system in order to obtain a better grade, and as such appear to be as intelligent as your artificial grade represents when you most likely are not at that calibur. This information caravan type of cheating simply reduces the amount of effort one must put in to succeed in a course, but causes one to sacrifice a more thourough understanding of the topic.

The real question here isn't "is this cheating" or "how can we stop it" because the answers to those questions are quite clear; It is cheating and the system caters directly to it, thus it can't be prevented. Really, the only matter of importance here is knowing when it won't work any longer. Certainly applying this technique to classes one might not be interested in is respectable in that it is simply the smart thing to do. Why bother learning about something in depth and putting the required effort into it to do so, when you can simply use this form of cheating and reap the benefits of a high mark in the class for a lesser degree of effort? If anything, it will help free up your time and energy so that you can focus on what topics do interested you, and as such you can obtain a thourough understanding of those topics which is all that is important, as only topics that interest you will be important later in your education as you begin to focus on what you want to specialize in, and eventually apply in the working world.

So yeah, why do people cheat like that? Because they realize they can reap the benefits of having an artificially high grade with little to no consequence nor effort.

 

[Rici]

Riciardos -- the goal of education isn't (or at least shouldn't be) gaming a system to know the bare minimum that you need to demonstrate knowledge of on a test. Tests are generally crafted to be representative of the type of material you're expected to know, and usually this doesn't include every topic imaginable for reasons of time and length. It's ridiculous enough that standardized testing has created an environment where teaching to a test is the norm--it shouldn't be encouraged any further.

Now I've read my own post again, I see that I wasn't thinking very clearly at that point. I didn't really think of the possibility that students just study answer sheets from other students. I was thinking more of letting your fellow classmates know what to focus on a bit more. Btw, this is also done by the teachers in my school(I live in the Netherlands, fyi). Most of the time they'll tell you what questions you could expect on an exam. They're not really giving away the questions, but they give a little nudge in the right direction, so you know what to focus on. And honestly, I don't think that's very wrong. They actually are telling you what you basicly need later on in life and they make sure that you're not focusing on the wrong things of a subject.

Meh, it's getting late. Need alot of sleep.

 

[Wuss]

My school has an honor code that explicitly says that this is cheating. I happen to agree. I think that it gives other people an unfair advantage. Advantage over their own inability to study what they need to study. I will tell my friends whether I thought the test was easy or hard, or how I thought I did, and even this can be considered cheating at my school. (no I don't go to a strict military/rehab school) I had a student come up to me once, and ask me what the essay question was on the bio test. I told him to go f*** himself (well not really). The main reason I did this is because I hated the guy that asked me, which got me thinking whether or not I would have told a good friend if they had asked me. I figured my sense of loyalty to a friend would have kicked in, and shoved my loyalty to my school out, but I would have paraphrased and done what ever I could to make it vague.

Final point, I think that this is clearly cheating, and is up to the person to decide whether or not they want to cheat themselves. (man that was deep...)

 

[falco_4_life]

i bileave the question is who really thinks this is wrong since everyone pretty much considers it cheating. and who would actually tell on somebody for doing this. we got a code at my school to. help a brotha out if u can lol

 

[JFox]

This is silly, it is wrong cuz it is cheating. Cheating IS wrong...

The thing is, most people know its wrong, know its cheating, and yet they still do it. The reason: There's a lot of pressure put on kids to succeed. There is a struggle between this pressure and the need for pleasure/enjoyment. If people can have both fun and a grade that shows they have put in the hard work (even though they havent), the end result will be gratification. It won't be until far down the line, or perhaps not even at all that the reprocussions of such cheating will negatively affect them.

So basically people cheat because they feel it is the only ways to succeed academically while still having the social life they wish for.

 

[Wuss]

also, people are lazy... (I speak from first hand experience...)
The honor code at my school says that you are morally obligated to first talk to the offender if you know that they have cheated, and if they don't confess, tell a teacher for them. This is what we are supposed to do. They are trying to build upon the idea that a loyalty to truth, honor and honesty is a higher virtue than loyalty to friends. I'm not sure what I think about this...

 

[falco_4_life]

wtf wuss thats some punk **** to tell on someone for cheatin. you'll get yo *** jumped at my school for doin dat ****. we'll beat yo *** so bad u gonna b the one cheatin.

and are u sayin that you'll snitch on a friend for your on good. cause thats some hoe ****. that aint even what a friend would do. even if u don't agree with cheatin u shouldn't tell on them. u should just refuse to help but instead help them out with their work so they won't have to cheat to pass.

 

[commonyoshi]

I really dont find anything wrong with telling a teacher a classmate's been cheating. (Unless you do it just to get them in trouble. Then you're just a jerk.) You're helping that person by snitching on them. I sometimes wish I could have the guts to tell my friends not to cheat.

You're saying that a person is scum if they rat on their friends, but not telling a teacher isn't the most noble thing either. The cheater goes along cheating and even convinces others to do the same. Telling the teacher may not be fun, it may not be pleasant, it may not be the "friend" thing to do, but it is the right thing to do. Our schools and would be in better shape if we did what needed to be done. And you know what? Our friends who once relied on cheating would be in better shape as well.

By hurting your friend for a moment you help him in the long run, and that is the friend thing to do.

 

[Volrec]

As much as I would love to snitch on everyone in my class for snitching on tests(MASS cheating on the NYS test recently, one of the biggest freaking tests of the year), I cant bring myself to do it. That's against my code.

Not my problem, reality'll hit them when in high school, you gett different tests for each person.

 

[jigglyppuff8]

This happens in my school all the time except the circumstances are different. Instead of tests, it is mostly homework and lesson plans. It gets so annoying that they tell the person what to expect in class therefore taking the element of surprise out of a pop quiz or something. I am a weakling(why do you think I main jigglypuff jk ) so I couldn't bring myself to tell on them. Although I get about say 14-16 threats a day from people saying they want to beat me up(something about being so annoying) but they never do it! Yup, that is my crazy school.

 

[theduffman]

okay, most people agree in the first scenario there was cheating, and that this cheating was morally wrong.

Plenty have people have said its wrong because you're getting an "artificial" mark which belies your understanding, but is it always wrong to guide your study by guessing what will be on a test? You may guess the contents of a test by logic (3-way simultanious equations aren't likely to be tested in an hour-long examination) or by asking the teacher privately. A more extreme example of this guessing would be to research where the questions on your first test come from then study questions from this source to help you in further tests.

So is gearing your study towards assessment cheating? What do you have to do to make it morally wrong?

 

[falco_4_life]

I really dont find anything wrong with telling a teacher a classmate's been cheating. (Unless you do it just to get them in trouble. Then you're just a jerk.) You're helping that person by snitching on them. I sometimes wish I could have the guts to tell my friends not to cheat.

You're saying that a person is scum if they rat on their friends, but not telling a teacher isn't the most noble thing either. The cheater goes along cheating and even convinces others to do the same. Telling the teacher may not be fun, it may not be pleasant, it may not be the "friend" thing to do, but it is the right thing to do. Our schools and would be in better shape if we did what needed to be done. And you know what? Our friends who once relied on cheating would be in better shape as well.

By hurting your friend for a moment you help him in the long run, and that is the friend thing to do.

did u not read wtf i said. i understand snitchin is the right thing to do (even though i would never do it n my life) but is it so hard not to tell the teacher but to just help the person out yourself. This will also help him out in the long run. it'll show him how easy it really is n that he really doesn't hav to cheat to try n make good grades. i find that if cheaters actually learned the work they will feel more at ease, cause its mostly easy work that their cheatin on, they just don't wanna take the time to learn it.