Cheating Themselves

TECHNOLOGY IS here to address two of the biggest issues that education in India is facing- leakage of question papers and forgery of mark sheets and certificates.
Institutions like Bangalore University and Visveswaraya Technological Institute are considering a technology that will enable them to print question papers at the examination venue just an hour before the test.
According to a private research, 68 per cent of middle class students and 75 per cent of high school students cheat in general during examination.

Why is cheating so high? The only way to get to the bottom of this problem is by analysing the problem from the students point of view.

What motivates him to cheat? The decision is guided by his emotions. Cheating cause a feeling of guilt, yet, securing good grades and marks gives one satisfaction.

If the feeling of guilt exceeds the feeling of satisfaction, the student does not cheat. Emotions rise on one’s values and ideas. The basic idea behind cheating is that morality is a dichotomy of self-interest versus self-sacrifice. Cheating is considered to be a “selfish” thing to do, which leads to an advantage of rising in life.

The ’rational’ thing to, either justified by godly rewards, effective considerations, or a gauche appeal to social harmony, requires an instantaneous personal sacrifice.

In this situation of moral clash, the choice is understandably difficult for students to justify. Without rational ideas to justify honesty and integrity, hard-working and ’practical’ students believe that morality only holds them back from success in life, and that they can “play by the rules” once they are out of school, and give lip-service to morality when it comes to more abstract and non-practical matters.

It is a dreadful fault created by bad and irrational philosophy. The concept which students need to understand is that the choice between the practical and the moral is a false dichotomy. Morality is the rational way for a successful life, not an impediment.

Teaching the practical ’selfish’ value of honesty is the best way to discourage cheating. Students must understand that it is selfish and hence beneficial for them to be honest, and to cheat is selfless, wrong and irrational.

The first and foremost purpose of education is to inculcate the practical knowledge and thinking abilities that allow success in life and career. Cheating aborts both goals. In a career, success or failure has materialistic consequences on one’s work and the people it affects. A percentage in biology exams is just a number, but a doctor like Munna Bhai M.B.B.S who takes shortcuts with patients, or a construction engineer who takes shortcuts with buildings, or a politician who takes shortcuts with the voters endangers both his career and other people’s lives.

The vital aim of education is not a mark sheet, but practical skills and knowledge, and cheating dispossess oneself of that knowledge. The short beneficial consequences of cheating are outweighed by the long-term harms. Teachers are required to stress on the rationality of the practical values of their lessons, and the harm the student do to themselves when they forfeit their education.

Student thinks, they deceive others by cheating and gains profit, but cheating is a form of self-deception, it is self-destruction. Cheating in future will cause oneself to lose a grip of what his skills actually are. Someone who cheats during the mid-term exams will find out that he is unprepared for the final exams.

Those who cheat at entrance level competitive exams will find themselves helpless during the higher class exams. The more a student cheats, the more of a moron and ignorant he becomes of his actual knowledge, though he feels like he is very smart! Its simple self-destruction and hence immoral, while ’selfishness’ is to be honest, and ’selfishness’ is a virtue, the morality of life.

The more forward a student gets by his falsehoods, the harder he has to work in order to maintain his unearned position. Even if his fraudulently earned degree or diploma may get him a dream-job, he will still be unqualified and undeserving for it, and forced to continue his deception and cheating at work. He will attempt to hide his inadequacies and worthlessness from his co-workers and bosses just as he hid it from classmates and professors.

Cheating is an addictive habit like alcoholism which turns out to be a sickness that will surely destroy a career even if it does not destroy the cheaters fraudulent and unearned marksheets.

Honest students compete on the basis of their skill and hard work.

Their mutual excellence inspires and motivates among themselves to success and brilliance. On the other hand, the dishonest classmates and co-workers who cheats. Compete by the standards of who is the better liar, better cheater.

They lose the ’selfish’ goal of education to gain practical and actual brilliance in the chosen subject and their career. Their peers do not inspire and motivate them, in stead it increases the peer-pressure as they create a constant threat of having their lies and cheats unmasked. As the cheaters lose the concentration of their goals, they slip behind.

The solution to the rise of cheating is not technological advance, nor is it to attempt to instill a vague sense of moral guilt, but to explain and prove that cheating is counter-productive and self-destructive. Honesty does not require guilt or the threat of punishment. Instead, selfishness, ambition, integrity, and pride should lead one to success. To be successful is selfish, and honesty is the key success. To be honest is to be selfish!