Cheating in school

CEBU, Philippines -  "I have bionic eyes. I can see you at all angles with eyes closed!" the words seem to float in the air right before me, just as my teacher had uttered them. I stared at the imaginary jumble of words, and cringed and trembled with fear - not because I had not studied for the exams but more because of the thought that I had a teacher with strange powers!

Superhuman? Clairvoyant? I tried to figure it out as I twiddled the pencil in my mouth, as I also struggled to appease myself in the face of such stern warning against cheating. This was way back in my grade school.

My own concept of cheating has become quite clear since. Cheating is to act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain advantage, like in a game or while taking exams at school. Doing eye-to-eye communication, glancing at a seatmate's test paper, and hieroglyphic-like scribbles on the palms are common cheating techniques among students.

To some students, however, cheating is taboo. I won't claim to have not cheated at all during my student days. As we know, many students find it quite an adventure to do, amid warnings of expulsion and other punishments.

What pushes students to cheat? It's not only among our local students that cheating is practiced. A study by Point Loma University in San Diego, CA, USA shows that students cheat because there is a need to excel at all cost, external (both academic and non-academic) pressures like work overload, pressure from parents, illnesses, too many exams in a day or simply lack of effort to study before an exam.

Back in my student days I had ready excuses for not being able to review for exams. Excuses like not having the right shade of Stabilo marker to highlight important words, or the usual brownout! I had also observed that students would cheat when there was an opportunity for doing it.

The usual good opportunities for cheating were when the teacher would leave the class or doses off during an exam, or when a classmate was unnecessarily displaying her filled-out test paper and you were having difficulty with your own. Sometimes the teacher himself would get the blame for not watching closely enough.

It seems to be a present-day reality that cheating is just part of the school experience. Cheating has become acceptable in the classrooms. When a cheater is caught the usual reason given to justify the infraction is that everybody is doing it.

I feel myself lucky to have survived the many temptations to cheat during my student days. Now, having had the experience of being a teacher, I know that there's really no valid reason to justify cheating in class. I tell students that cheating is still cheating no matter how petty the act.

Students that cheat in the classroom may grow up to become cheaters in life. As lawyers, they will cheat the judicial system; as doctors, they will cheat their patients; as public officials, they will cheat the people. There probably would not have been a PDAF scam if those involved did not learn to cheat while still in school.

Honesty is becoming a strange concept, yes, but only to those that have known massive cheating in life. There is cheating in government, cheating in marriage, cheating at work, cheating everywhere.

But there is hope. If teachers take the extra effort to make their students understand the dire consequences of this bad practice. And if parents show good examples of honesty at home and encourage it in the children.