Classroom cheats

By Mary Kaye Ritz
Advertiser Religion & Ethics Writer

Moral and social issues come into play when dealing with test-taking sneaks. Jeff Widener • The Honolulu Advertiser Cheating on tests: old-school and new-school Old-school ways students used to cheat (and some still do) The old "bug-eyes": Copying answers from someone else's exam. Writing answers on clothes, personal items or even body parts. Asking teachers if they could go to the restroom, where they looked up answers. Putting cheat sheets on rulers that are hidden in their sleeves. New-school ways students are cheating today Pre-programming calculators with formulas. Using a camera cell phone to flash the test to someone outside, then get the answers via text messaging. A water bottle becomes a cheat sheet when students peel the label off, then write out answers on the back and replace the label with glue stick. What students say about cheating "Cheating is part of high school." — A New Jersey senior "If teachers taught better, we wouldn't have to cheat." — A Massachussetts senior "Do what it takes to succeed in life. We're afraid to fail." — An Ohio junior "Maybe teachers and parents should focus on learning instead of grades." — A Michigan junior Source: Don McCabe, Rutgers University professor who compiled information from the comment portion of a national student survey

"I see cheating once in awhile," said the Sacred Hearts Academy senior.

She wrestles with what to do to stop it, however, saying, "I don't want to be the bad person and tell on people who do it."

For a host of reasons, students cheat, using high- and low-tech ways to get the one-up on their SATs and GPAs (see sidebar). In the movie, "The Perfect Score," teens respond by stealing an advance look at the SAT test — and justify the theft by citing parental and societal pressure.

But today's teenagers may look to adults to ease the ethical dilemmas of high school by teaching honesty, establishing consequences and making it harder to cheat.

With rampant cheating, students want the problem fixed and look to adults to fix it, "but they don't want to be the ones who suffer while it's being fixed," said Rutgers University professor Don McCabe.

Teachers are responding by looking for new methods to counteract cheating. Some schools, such as Iolani, are establishing new policies to hold offenders accountable.

When compiling his survey of 4,500 public and private high school students in 2000-01,

McCabe had students approach him to confess past transgressions.

"I wish I were a psychologist," the founding president of the Center for Academic Integrity said. "They'd say, 'I did this in ninth grade, and I wish I could do something to rectify it.' You do hear that occasionally."

More often, however, McCabe heard teens who cheated rationalize their reasons for doing so.

"We do hear that, 'The system is flawed, so it doesn't matter what I do,' " he said.

Other excuses he heard: "The teacher didn't explain the work." And, "The teacher didn't make himself available for questions."

Some excuses sound more plausible than others, McCabe said, such as, "The world puts a high premium on working as a group, and the teacher is out of date." Or, "In the past, we were told to work together. If I collaborate now, why is this cheating and that is not?"

Still, other teens acknowledged guilt for their actions. "Some say, 'It's nuts to cheat, I'm just cheating myself.' From an ethical perspective, that's displaying maturity."

While technology may have made it easier for people to cheat, generally the ease of cheating only affects those inclined to do it in the first place, both McCabe and local students say.

"Where there's a will, there is usually a way," said Teal Takayama, a student at St. Andrew's Priory. "... It depends on the teacher and the school. Some are stricter and more aware than others."

Takayama interviewed a group of students who said cheating is commonplace at every school.

But some schools, such as Iolani, are taking a hard line against it.

Says Iolani registrar Debbie Hall: "Not only are we aware of the new ways kids can cheat, but we have a moral obligation to stop it. Copying other people's homework and turning it in as your own shows us nothing about what you've learned."

Iolani's character education committee creates themes which the school community focus on each quarter (trust, honesty, integrity among them), giving morals a place front and center of the classroom.

"We talk about it," she said. "Still, we've had a few cases where people cheat. We have had to put kids on academic probation. A couple have been caught more than once and asked to leave.

"The message is, we're here to help them understand, we're here to help them learn, and the shortcuts aren't going to work. There are consequences for actions. It's not a pleasant thing to do, but it's better to learn a lesson than think they've gotten away with it and it becomes a way of life," Hall said.

Local high school officials acknowledge that they wrestle with the issue, though Maryknoll principal Betsey Gunderson and Le Jardin Academy headmaster Adrian Allan say they haven't had to expel a student for cheating. Yet.

Gunderson remembers what she tried to instill when she taught social studies and religion: "The whole idea of cheating is the person you're cheating is yourself. Would you have wanted your doctor doing that surgery on you to have cheated his/her way through high school?"

The interesting thing is, she said, those who create elaborate ways to cheat end up learning the material.

"You don't need (to cheat)," Gunderson said. "It's like Dumbo's magic feather. You can fly without it."

Headmaster Allan said he recognizes the way increased pressures on teens to succeed may encourage cheating. "It's tough on a kid who sits next to a kid who cheats, then goes to Yale, while he trundles off to some lesser place, knowing if he'd had the 'guts' to cheat, it might be him," the headmaster hypothesized.

Allan, who is British, has a background in international schools that gives him a broad perspective on the issue.

"Americans, actually, are obsessed with cheating," he said. "Particularly with plagiarism, too. The electronic era has heightened this fear still further. There are certainly some countries where it's less culturally taboo to cheat."

He points to the "reality" TV show "Survivor," where cheating is considered part of a winning strategy, and to the pro football player who dropped the ball (and the audience will see it in slow-mo replay) but holds it up high to the ref, as if to say, "fair catch!"

"He's expected to do that," Allan said. "The coach would yell at him if he didn't: 'The guy might've given you the call.'

"It's the jewel standard. It's difficult for students to understand that. (They think,) 'You're supposed to catch me, I'm supposed to try.'

"But they also say, 'Take care of this, so I don't have to handle the social, ethical issue.' "

How to keep students from cheating? Start the conversation, said Rutgers professor McCabe, by getting students involved in creating an honor code.

Teachers and administrators say another way is to turn the focus away from multiple-choice and standardized tests, and instead gauge what a student has learned. Simply asking for a regurgitation of facts makes a cheater's job easier.

"'What's the symbolism of the scaffold in "The Scarlet Letter"?' I'm not going to ask that question," said Liane Voss, English Department chairwoman at Moanalua High. "'Choreograph an interpretative dance of Frankenstein to demonstrate your understanding of a theme from the book.' It's hard to cheat on that."

And to combat cheating, it's good to recognize, as Kristen Debo, a Sacred Hearts senior does, that it's a schoolwide, not a personal, problem.

"There's not a specific group of people that do it," she said. "You can't say, 'Oh yeah, all the smart people never cheat and the Goth kids cheat all the time.' ... It's becoming a social issue because now kids can see it on the TV and in the movies. Teens are just that, teens, and more times than not they will do what they see no matter if it's right or not. If others are doing it they will, too."

Aislinn Hernandez of Sacred Hearts contributed information from her classmates for this report. Reach Mary Kaye Ritz at 525-8035 or mritz@honoluluadvertiser.com.