Cheat sheet on a water bottle? Now that's cheating.

With a day of thanks tomorrow and the NY Times, I've been reminded of high school. Okay, only because of the NY Times, I started to think about high school. In Westport, CT, at Staples High School ("Yeah, we got that") there was a big hubbub about cheating after an editorial in the school paper about cheating and after two students were caught cheating. One of the two students started a test early, while the other looked at someone else's test book. Oooh. What boring ways to cheat! Others print cheat sheets inside water bottles label (above), text message answers, or use their fancy calculators, which are all much better cheating methods in my opinion.

The reason for cheating Staples High? High expectations of the community and increased pressure for good grades. They believe that the majority of people aren't cheating to beat the system, but cheating to keep up with the system. If only a few people cheat, everyone else cheats to keep up with those people so they don't be the bad grades. I'll buy into everything stated in this article. Not that I ever cheated (it was the system, dammit!), but I would say that at a certain high school that I went to here in the city, there was some definite cheating. Despite being a public high school, pressure there was similar to that at Staples High. A lot of people were out to get those A's. I, on the other hand, was happy with my B's and above.

- NY Times article: Exposing the Cheat Sheet, With the Students' Aid

Posted by tien mao in Education at 5:29 PM