THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 3, 1994 TAG: 9406030061
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: B11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY VANEE STAUNTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940603 LENGTH: Medium
``Everyone knows that it's better to learn what you have to learn for yourself, because if you don't and you simply cheat all the time, it will definitely catch up with you in the end,'' said 16-year-old Shawn Epps, a Wilson sophomore. ``But at the same time, everyone knows that you can't just be average if you want to make it out here. Nobody wants that. You have to excel at everything to even be considered.''
{REST} Jason Smith, a 17-year-old junior, said: ``Nowadays, if you don't cheat, you're not human. Look at the Congress. That's one big `cheat!' ''
Experts say that in many American public schools, cheating has become as entrenched as cardboard pizza and the PTA. Even some of the country's top military academies - with strict college honor codes - have been touched by recent cheating scandals.
The Wilson students - all of whom admitted cheating at least once - said there's little hope for eliminating a problem that affects schools and society in general.
``The morality has declined a lot in our country,'' said Chevelle Howard, a 16-year-old sophomore. ``It's not just schools or students. It's a bigger problem than that.''
Said 15-year-old Clarissa Rosalin, a freshman: ``I think most people just turn their head when they see it going on in class. People are going to do it no matter what, so I think most people just worry about themselves and not what other people may be doing to get by.''
Several students said they would anonymously snitch on cheating classmates. They also said they favored policies that would give the offender a failing grade for a test, make the student take the test over or bar the student from extracurricular activities.
But they were reluctant to support harsher measures, such as expelling a student for good.
``I think that would really do more harm to the student,'' said Kelly Mitchem, an 18-year-old senior.
The paradoxical solution, researchers say, is to make students more responsible for promoting honesty. Howard said teachers also need to do a better job of promoting honesty.
``Some of the things they do just make it obvious that they don't really care, like not showing up on the day of the test and having a substitute who really doesn't know what's going on fill in instead,'' she said.
Teachers, Epps added, ``should also believe you more. Sometimes, it's like . . . they don't want to believe that the so-called smart kids would ever cheat.''
If teachers were more engaging, perhaps students wouldn't feel the need to cheat, Rosalin said.
``They should make things more interesting,'' she said. ``They should do things that make you want to learn more and feel as though you could really benefit from what they have to say. That way, you might not want to cheat, because you would be really interested in what you were doing.'' by CNB