Teachers Are Using the Internet to Crack Down on Cheaters

I think that pretty much everyone has been tempted to cheat on tests when they were in school. Some were masters at it. Not only did they try to copy the person sitting next to them, but also went to elaborate means like writing answers on their arms in a foreign language, typing the answers into their cell phones and then concealing it on their lap, concealing the answers on their clothing, or even writing them on a rubber band by stretching it out over some books. (www.wikianswers.com)

Those who are elaborate cheats usually admit that they are just lazy, or may try to justify it by saying how unfair the tests can be or that they don't like the professor or subject, or that they have a learning disability. But most of us just occasionally glance over our shoulder if a particular question is giving us a hard time, or semi-cheat by guessing the answers to multiple-choice questions. (Heck, with a true or false test, you have a 50% chance right off the bat.) Another way to sort of cheat with essay questions is to fill them with information that is close to what you think the answer really is. Most teachers will give you some credit if they think that you are at least knowledgeable about the subject.

Another way to cheat is to pay someone to do your homework for you. You can make quite a bit of extra income by doing some dumb jock's homework so he can stay in school and play on the football team. Cheating has been widespread for a very long time. It almost part of human nature to succeed no matter what it takes. "The end justifies the means" so to speak. And some of our parents encourage their children to cheat by placing undue pressure on them to get good grades and inflicting punishment if they don't. "Learning by force" is not a very good environment in which to want to learn.

Then to make matters even worse, along came the Internet. Now students could just do a search on Google to get all of the answers instead of doing the studying. Everything was predigested and right there on the screen. And commercial services began to pop up all over the place offering to do research, homework, and term papers, for a fee, of course.