Academic cheating may be defined as an act by which someone represents the work that is done by the other person, as his own. Or it may include many different forms which includes the sharing of the works from another person, purchasing of the question paper in advance, or getting the answers to the questions to be answered during the teats even before the test already starts. Thus, academic cheating ( The Mennonitism of Leo Tolstoy, 1964) may be defined as any kind of cheating which occurs in any formal academic
Being in possession of something that didn't come to us naturally, instead by unfair means or by force or simply by doing what's not ethical. Nobody knows when and where it did first begin. Ask yourselves, is there a history? Like an exact date and time, noting the event of the first act of cheating? No, there isn't. Because, we all have been cheating from ages. Did that come as a shock because maybe you are a person who has never cheated? Well, maybe as you see it, and the world sees it, you haven't cheated in a real sense but practically, at some point of time in life everyone has cheated, be it minor or major. In an exam when you help your friend with a particular question which takes utmost measures to tell you the question number carefully without catching the attention of the invigilator, that's when you cheated. You might not accept it, since you weren't dishonest (A.Mohammadi) while writing your answer sheet, but you were very much dishonest in helping another student giving them the credit that they were quite unworthy.
Cheating may look harmless on the superficial (Eizen) level but it does significant harm. Taking the example from above, giving your friend the undeserved credit meant better grades for your friend better than what they deserve. Maybe it will be better than the grade that you earned after such a lot of hard work .Who knows how many people got cheated by your act of helping out a friend. Hence, your one act of help affected quite a lot of grades, made a lot of deserving candidates get less than what they should. As Swami Vivekananda had said "Education is not the amount of information that we put into your brain and runs riot there, undigested, all your life. We must have life building, man making, character making assimilation of ideas. If you have assimilated five ideas and made them your life and character, you have more education than any man who has got by heart a whole library."
Cheating exists rampantly in India, especially in education. (Johannes Harder, "Lev (Leo) Nikolajewitsch, 1967) CountPrivate school education is majorly prevalent in India. Competition now is more than ever, and it's cut-throat. Beg, borrow, steal- nobody cares, at the end what matters is that you have it and others don't. In 2012, the crime branch of Jammu and Kashmir Police indicated that the Education Minister Peerzada Mohammed Sayeed used unfair means to help his son clear his 10th board exams. Why did that happen? Maybe, because the system is too easy to cheat? The bridge of have and have-nots makes the desire for easy success even more. So when someone finds an easy escape, to their work, 99% will give up their ethics and go for it. A very small fraction abides by their principles and goes for the path, full of difficulties. But when they see cheats getting ahead, it's definitely unfair to them. For some people, cheating has now become a routine habit. How many of you did the last assignment that you got on your own? How many of you gave an exam where you didn't ask for help from a friend? How many of you didn't copy material straight from the net for your school project?
That's the problem. Cheating has become too easy. Nobody reports it, and hence students hardly have the fear of getting caught. Students report it quite rarely because at some point or the other they have either done the same thing or will be doing it. Worst case is when teachers avoid the issue. As said in the Bhagvad Gita - tolerating the crime is a bigger crime than the crime itself.
If they don't stop us who will? Question papers for board examinations are kept with tight security, such is a fear of leakage. They are properly sealed and yet almost every year an incident is reported. To stop cheating in such public examinations, CCTVs, mobile jammers and even armed security guards are being employed.
Cheating exists not only in education but also in other sectors, as well. The newspapers report some or the other fraud or scam every day athletes have used drugs that increase performance and coming to relationships, well need I really say about that? What's wrong with us? Have we forgotten the value of honesty? Are we confident enough to walk in the examination hall and have faith on ourselves to writing whatever we know and leave the rest of the questions? For those who love English, writing essays is a boon but for the rest it is a torture. They find it very difficult to express themselves on the topic and hence the birth of plagiarism. Copying an essay and submitting it and hence work done. Why can't we for once just be honest and come out with the truth? Even our mistakes, our grammatical errors, our wrong usage of English will all denote that it carries the stamp of our originality. Or maybe that's the answer right there, we are so lost in copying everyone else that we have lost our originality. I mean think about it we tend to copy people on a daily basis. Somebody's fashion style, somebody's lifestyle, somebody's thinking, somewhere or the other everything we do is adopted from someone so where is our take on the matter? Where are our ideas? Where's our individuality?
Now let's play the blame game. Who should be blamed (Anderson) for our corrupt state of morals? Our parents, teachers, friends or the system on the whole, Students these days have excessive pressure from parents to do extremely well and the competition plays a major role too. They have a bleak idea of the potential damage cheating could do to their career, and hence they don't mind taking a risk. After all once they secure good grades, the grades will matter and not the lengths to which they went to obtain it.
CONCLUSION
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