ETHICS: CHEATING AND PLAGIARISM
TRANSCRIPT
Voice Over:
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In the Mix Host Eric: Hi, my name is Eric and welcome to the show. You know the question of cheating and plagiarism affects all of us across the country, especially the high school students. Some kids cheat because they say everyone else is or they just flat out don’t want to do the work. We all have questions about the definition of cheating: when it’s right or if it’s right at all. So today we’re going to try to find answers to why we cheat. Let’s hear from some students across the country.
Travis: I think there’s a lot of cheating everywhere. You can cheat on pretty much anything. There isn’t much honesty in this world anymore.
Rudy: When you’re cheating, there’s a point where you can do it where nobody’s looking and nobody will find out.
Peter: You can sit there and cheat during any test, long as you don’t get caught, but if you get caught, then you’re like “Oh, crap, I did something wrong.” But you don’t think anything of it while you’re doing it.
Travis: The main reason that you cheat in the first place is because you don’t care and…well you do care, but you care so little that you just want to pass. You just want to get through…you just want to get through this one class, get to the next class, get it done, get out of school for the day.
Doug: A lot of people cheat because of the competitiveness around them. Everyone wants to get into the best schools and have the highest SAT scores, so they feel that cheating is the only way to get ahead in life.
Sarah: In my social studies final the other year, some of the kids got a hold of the essay questions beforehand and like, we were really upset. And my one friend went to talk to the teacher and say, “Hey look they have the essay this isn’t fair!” And the teacher, he was like, “Well, I’m retiring tomorrow. It’s my last day, and I don’t care what goes on”. Like…so the teachers have a lot to do with it too and their attitude. If they just turn the other way and pretend it’s not happening, well then the kids…why are they going to do it.
Peter: And the teacher’s just usually sitting at a test grading the last test from the last period or just sitting there reading the newspaper or not even paying attention to what we’re doing. So, it wouldn’t be hard to like, even have a review sheet like, under your test where you can just sneak a peek or something written on your hand.
Rudy: I feel that a lot of teachers are like, “Ok, I’m here for a job, you do what you got to do or you don’t and that’s it, you know. I get a check whether you do anything or not”. And I think that, that attitude, it like, I don’t know if it decreases learning but it just makes people not want to learn anymore, not want to be there, you know? If the teacher doesn’t care, why should the student?
Peter: I think it starts at the home. If it isn’t established as cheating being bad or wrong or anything, then you start it before you even get in the school, if you think you can get away with it. And then you bring it in the public and then you just, it becomes part of your life.
Graphic
WHY STUDENTS CHEAT
1) LAZY
2) DON’T UNDERSTAND MATERIAL
3) PRESSURE FROM PARENTS
4) OTHERS CHEAT
5) UNFAIR TEST/ASSIGNMENT
Julia: For x equals one, you use function of x equals x minus one.
Laura: F of one is equal to zero?
Julia: Yeah, you get it?
Laura: Yeah, I get it.
Julia: At our school they do it too. Um…like one time I saw this kid and he…he just had a whole sheet full of notes and he put it in his notebook and he put his notebook on the floor and he just kind of like glanced over the desk every now and then. And like the teacher didn’t even notice and it made – it like made us all made us all mad because he was getting – he was gonna get a good grade because he cheated.
Chris: I would have a sheet that had the vocab words on it because I needed to study other things but I didn’t have time to memorize the vocab words that I didn’t even notice in the book.
Laura: Everyone’s worried that they won’t get the grade. Even the like – especially the smart kids, they’re like worried that they won’t get the highest grade in the class, so they cheat, so that they will get that grade.
Chris: I think that many people have pressure from their family to do well in school and it’s because their parents are like, “We’re so proud of you.” And that’s good that your parents tell you that they’re so proud of you, but it also makes you want to try harder to impress them even more.
Laura: Yeah, there’s definitely uh… pressure from my parents to be an exceptional student. I mean, when I got my first “B”, I got…my parents were kind of upset with me, I think.
Julia: When parents hear about other kids doing so well, and they talk about it around you and it kind of makes you feel bad.
Graphic:
Is it Ever OK to Cheat?
Chris: I think that everyone does it to some extent. And as long as you don’t cheat on anything really big, something really small. I think it’s ok to cheat if you know that you’re not going to need the information again
Laura: I have cheated. I mean like uh…I usually just check my answers on other peoples sheet like, to make sure that I’m right.
Graphic:
What about Copying Homework?
Laura: I think copying is ok, I mean, you obviously, you know it. You just are too lazy to do it basically is what copying is. I mean with, uh, different kinds of classes where you have to do practice problems, we always just copy each other’s work because it’s just pointless to do all of them.
Chris: I think it’s ok if you know how to do the things and you’ve done some on your own, but I don’t think it’s all right to copy when you don’t know how to do anything and then the test comes and you don’t understand it.
Julie: There’s a difference between like, just doing it everyday, like an everyday cheating type of thing and difference between doing it like, maybe once in a while.
Graphic:
What about Cheating off the Internet?
Doug: Cheating off the internet is, uh, especially easy in courses that require a lot of essay work, such as English, um, because it’s almost impossible for the teacher to find if you take a paper from a web site. It’s almost impossible for the teacher to actually find out that you did that.
Rudy: A bunch of us would go on the Internet and write our whole paper in English and it’d translate back in Spanish every word that you put down there. But like, a couple teachers have caught up to it, so you can’t do it anymore, not like I do it, but I’m just saying.
Peter: The only effect it has on the person is, unless they actually learn something from getting their homework off the Internet, and they actually learn something. When it comes to a test, you might have “100” on every homework assignment, but then, if you get a “50” or “40” on the test, then the teacher’s gonna be like, “Why’d you do so well on this, but when you took it here in the class, you did so bad?”
Rudy: When it comes to the Internet, though, I think the Internet gets a bad rep, just like everything else. It’s a source, just like anything else, whether it be medicine, or whatever it is, you’re gonna have those people who abuse it, and then there’s gonna be those people who actually use it for it’s purpose
Doug: It’s also very important to define what cheating is. It’s obvious that when you copy, uh, test answers from a friend, that’s blatant cheating. But if you’re just taking an assignment from a friend that the teacher isn’t gonna look over, um…but rather just give a check to, then is that really cheating?
INTRO BERGEN COUNTY ACADEMIES
Host: We’re here at the Bergen county Academies where I’m a senior and as freshman, we’re all required to take an ethics course that covers women’s rights, human rights cheating and other various topics.
Pat Cosgrove: The ethics program at the Bergen County Academies evolved three years ago and it was really a ground swell from the faculty.
Richard Weems: The idea was to make them understand ethics. That idea of making choices, because it’s the right choice, not just because other kids have done it, not just because it’s been on TV, not because of the cool thing I saw in the movie last week. And to make them aware of the school policy and what that means. The project was also to bring kids into that process.
Pat Cosgrove: There is a very strong code of ethics, at the academies. It’s in our handbook. A very detailed account of it as well as in our parent handbook. In the creation of our plagiarism and cheating policy, we actually asked the students, the parents and the faculty to create it so they looked at other models.
Richard Weems: Most teachers I’ve ever talked to directly about cheating will definitely say, you know, it matters to them that kids aren’t cheating. I think it really sort of… cheats the whole system overall because, you know, any kid who is doing legitimately, his or her own work, is then going to feel like, why should I put in this kind of effort when a kid can just walk in, take something off the internet, get as good a grade as I did, you know, by writing this paper myself. You know, they feel like their efforts aren’t being rewarded.
Host Voice Over:
In their first activity, the students acted as members of the plagiarism board. They had to discuss each case they were given and consider whether it was a violation of the cheating and plagiarism policy at the school.
Activity #1
Richard Weems:
Here’s a copy of the plagiarism policy. Your main job is: Is this plagiarism? How? What policy or principals does it violate, if it does, okay? And what your recommendation is on to the administration. Should we deal with this as being plagiarism, should we not deal with this as plagiarism?
Case #1
Took ideas from each paragraph of an online source and rewrote.
Group Discussion
Student 1: She did not copy an essay word for word, so she was kind of like, “Well I didn’t copy it word for word.” She took the ideas of each paragraph, it wasn’t like she was looking at it and rewrote it. It’s like, just each individual paragraph, she like has the same structure as the thing. It’s totally like…
Student 2: Well no not the structure, the ideas.
Student 3: If the first paragraph has a general idea, she took that idea and used it in hers, so really it’s pretty much the same thing as just copying it.
Student 1: Yeah, I think so.
Student 2: Yeah, it’s not coming up with her own ideas, she could have done that by herself. Yeah, so she doesn’t know what plagiarism is.
Student 4: Yeah, she doesn’t clearly…
Student 2: But she has a feeling she’s doing something wrong with it.
Student 3: I think she feels like she knows she’s doing something wrong, but she’s just….
Student 1: She didn’t’ think it was quite so serious as plagiarism, you know, so like..
Student 3: Okay so, it’s plagiarism because she stole ideas…
Student 1: Yeah.
.
Student 3: and she didn’t give credit to the…
Group Presentation
Student 1: Our situation was about a student who mentioned to her teacher that she had trouble finding a topic for her essay and that she mentioned that she would use an online source for her essay, and when she handed it in the teacher noticed that the essay was not word for word, but she used the ideas of each paragraph that she found on the online source and wrote them in her own words.
Student 2: Um, so we were saying that it was plagiarism because she used someone else’s ideas and on a much smaller scale she, it’s kind of implied that she did not site the source. We don’t really think that there is any particular amendments that are necessary for the policy, we think it’s like comprehensive. But we do have a recommendation, because the girl kind of claimed that she, her definition of um plagiarism was apparently misguided, because she did not think she had committed plagiarism. We think that the school should like publicize their policy more so that students might be more aware of what is an offence and what isn’t. And we think they should be fairly lenient, because she admitted it and she apparently did not know that she committed plagiarism.
Case # 2
Friend gave permission to copy homework problem
Student 1: Our case was about a BCA student named, Michael Workinhart, who when confronted about a certain math problem admitted to copying after receiving consent from that person to copy. Here’s referred to the plagiarism board of ethics and uh, but Michael claims that he didn’t do anything wrong since everybody else does this, does the same thing including the person who he copied off of.
Student 2: We do think this falls under plagiarism, but this particular case and cases that would be similar to this seems like, so minute and so unimportant that we don’t really think that there would be a need to bring it all the way to like, a board. Like the teacher could just say, “Alright, do the problem over,” or something because it’s just like one problem on a homework assignment, like, it’s not really a big deal. But it does fall under plagiarism, so…
Student 3: Um, we have a recommendation for punishment. It should be based on the severity of the case. Um, you know if you’re copying a math problem, that’s not as severe as it would be copying a whole essay and there, we would take it to the board. We do have a few recommendations though. A new assignment should be given to the person who copied and the person who let them copy. There will be a loss of credit for that assignemnt as a zero and an effort or a behavior grade should be adjusted accordingly.
Case #3
Copied certain sentences from website
Group Discussion
Student 1: …using ideas and texts without proper acknowledgement. She definitely…
Student 2: …and then she says she doesn’t know which sentence did she use, so she just skims the sites and put in one sentence. I, it’s obvious, she broke the plagiarism code, she used sentences and she—you can’t over analyze. She went to a site, she took sentences, copied and paste it and put it into her essay.
Group Presentation
Student 1: She was in a conference with her teacher and her teacher basically like, um, confronted her and said, “You know I read your English essay and like, I think that you copied some things from a website.” And she did in fact eventually give into it but she said that she didn’t know which specific sentences that she took from the website and um, she didn’t cite them whatsoever, so…
Student 2: Definitely considering it a direct violation of the plagiarism thing because she did just copy and use someone else ideas without any sort of credit.
Case #4
Student who already took test told friend what to study
Group Discussion
Student 1: He was told like, the questions on the test, so he could study basically all that…all the information that was going to be asked on the test.
Student 2: Right, so he still needs to study…
Student 3: but why was he in the…
Student 1: But it wasn’t specific answers it was more of just like, a broad overview…overview of
Student 2: yeah, I understand, I understand you still need to study, it’s loose information, it’s not like your cheating. It’s not cheating.
Student 1: It has nothing to do with the answers and he didn’t have the test with him…because maybe he didn’t get such good grades and like, one grade he got like an a hundred
Student 2: and so the teacher asked him and under the question…
Student 1: probably wanted a conference and saying “what’s going on if you got all 50’s on your last quizzes and what made you get a hundred on this one?” Just out of curiosity.
Student 2: And then under the pressure he said it. You know, he admitted to borrowing information or whatever.
Group Presentation
Student 1: This case, it was about a student name Morris Lottabucks and he had a classmate who had taken the test, a science test before him and told him about the questions on the test, not the exact questions though. And Morris was able to study only the information that he needed for the test.
Student 2: We said this wasn’t plagiarism because he—he didn’t have a copy of the test and the didn’t necessarily ask for the questions, he wasn’t using someone else’s work he studied from how own notes. He just happened to know what notes he could’ve studied. Um, we said the teachers should maybe, like, arrange their questions differently from class to class so that people can’t necessarily cheat like that.
Student 3: Like she said, we wouldn’t recommend the person to the board because, um, the person still had to study and if they still put a legitimate effort into the questions…they didn’t know exactly what was going to be on it. Maybe they had some idea and it’s not set in stone and…
Graphic
What do you Think
Is This Cheating?
Host Voice Over:
For the second activity, the kids had to discuss their ideas and concerns about the punishment section of our schools ethics handbook.
Student 1: If, and like you know, you’re struggling in a test and you’re my best friend, and I show you, like me, I intentionally show you the answer, then it’s not, I guess you could say it shouldn’t be as, you know, tough of a consequence as if I was taking it from somebody who didn’t even realize that I was doing it. Who I was like stealing the work.
Student 2: But then you’re both to blame, like, I might just be blamed for cheating you, you’re blamed for helping.
Student 1:Right right both should be blamed but, I’m trying to say it’s not as serious.
Student 3: And we said that it should be like, specified to each case, because different cases are different. And they’re also times when teachers do accuse students of cheating when they’re really not.
Ethics PRESENTATIONS on PUNISHMENTS
Graphic:
FIRST OFFENSE
Loss of Credit
Teacher calls parent
Teacher sends letter home
Student 1: The first offense is loss of credit for cheating or plagiarized work. Teacher calls parent and teacher sends a letter to the parent. And we thought this; this penalty was very lenient because if the child is able to cheat it obviously means that the parents must not be involved in their children’s lives. And if the parents get a phone call home or a letter sent home a child could easily hide a letter from their parents and it won’t really affect the kids so much.
Graphic:
RECOMMENDATION
Written Assignment Describing Mistake
Student 1:
So we thought that the first penalty should be a written assignment describing the persons mistake and what they thought was wrong.
Graphic:
SECOND OFFENSE
Loss of Credit
Parent Conference
Community Service Hours
Student 1:
The second offense would be loss of credit, a parent conference with administration and community service hours given and we though this was lenient also.
Graphic:
RECOMMENDATION
Saturday School
Community Service
Student 1:
We think that the second offense should include Saturday school and some community service hours because if a child cheated once and had the guts to cheat again, I think it should be a lot more harder.
Graphic:
THIRD OFFENSE
Loss of Credit
Up to 3 days suspension
Alternative placement
Student 1:
And the third offense was loss of credit, up to three days suspension and recommendation for alternate placement made by administration. We thought that this was lenient also.
Graphic:
RECOMMENDATION
Add to Permanent Record
Student 1:
We think that it should be on their permanent record because when colleges see peoples applications and they see that the person has been caught for plagiarizing more than two times, it should be taken seriously.
Richard Weems:
Teachers may have their own individual punishments but if there’s also a school wide policy on cheating in plagiarism it then becomes that it’s not just in each individual class that these concerns can get addressed. Make sure kids understand, if you are caught doing any of these particular actions, this is – these are the ramifications, and this is what will occur.
Host Voice Over: Students also looked at ways to prevent cheating by examining the educational principles that our school’s based on.
Graphic:
How Can You Prevent Cheating?
Student 1: Students are supposed to – supposed to do their own work so that their grades will reflect their knowledge of the material and not someone else’s knowledge.
ELEMENT #1
Students must be known well by teachers
Student 2: There should be a lower student teacher ratio and students should spend extended time with the teachers. This basically means I think that, if you have better student-teacher relationships, you’ll be less inclined to cheat because you’ll feel like you’re lying to a friend or being dishonest to them. And also in the in the appendix it kind of said, students should work together and trust each other. If there’s like a kind of camaraderie between the class, you don’t really want to, it’s kind of like being disloyal to your friend or unfair like you have a crutch over them so you’re hurting them by your cheating.
ELEMENT #2
Curriculum must be designed for all students
Student 3: Also in there, it said that courses in the curriculum must be designed so students do their own work and when they’re placed in a higher class than they can do, they’re more than likely to resort to cheating.
ELEMENT #3
Teachers must have authority over their work
Student 4: My section said teachers must have substantial authority, so if teachers do not seem to be an authority, students may steal tests because they don’t think the teacher’s serious. But if the teachers do enforce their non-cheating policy, students will know their boundaries and probably be less likely to cheat.
ELEMENT #4
Family involvement must be expected
Student 5:
My section talks about how parents influence their kids, so if the parents don’t pay enough attention to their kids, or how they are doing in school. The students could feel that, um they need to prove themselves. Or if they push too hard that they uh, it forces them into cheating on tests.
Richard Weems: If a student can give very hopeful input as to what maybe a policy is not addressing or vaguely addressing, that’s as vital as an administrator or teacher saying, “You know, this policy doesn’t make sense.” Because they are trying to understand those connections, and once they understand those connections rather than us telling them those connections, that I think really lets them remember it and stay with them a lot more.
Pat Cosgrove: I think it’s made a very positive impact and I have to know that it’s important not only here, but it really directly impacts them when they leave and go to college. They really need to be aware of how they can improve society, we can give them the tools to help them make the correct decisions.
Max: I’ve learned a lot of stuff about plagiarism uh that I never knew before. I never really thought of it as having different degrees of plagiarism, like I never thought of it as taking an idea could be plagiarism, like I thought if you take a paragraph of someone’s or you cheated on a test, that was plagiarism. Not really like taking someone else’s ideas or thoughts.
Molly: I think that that has to be kind of like an addition to just the handbook, people have to talk about. Because I think when you’re talking about, you won’t like actually give a thought-out answer of what you believe, but when it’s the spur of the moment you’re like “Oh I can do this” and be like “Oh great” so I think people just tend to do things…
Melissa: And also a lot of times it seems easier to like cheat on a test, because you automatically like get an A or something, but long-term it’s not gonna help you.
Laura: When you cheat on something major like that, you’re just missing out on the point of school. You’re missing out on learning.
Chris: Teachers assign things for a reason, and there obviously is a good reason why they assign it. And you may not understand now, but it will help you in the future.
Julia: Sometimes, afterwards, I kind of feel bad though, but then I just forget about it. Once I get the grade, I’m like, “Oh, okay. It’s okay.”
Laura: If I cheated on like a whole test, then I’d feel pretty bad. But I never have like, just like, looked on someone else’s sheet, and just like, copied all of their answers or something like that.
Chris: I feel bad every time I do it, and I think that’s because of the ethics, things that your parents have taught you, that you know cheating is bad and you shouldn’t do that.
Julia: But, it’s your conscience telling you that, cause you know it’s wrong, but yet you still do it. It’ just like something that happens, you can’t really control.
Chris: You know that there’s something wrong, but everyone does it anyway and that’s what’s sad about our society today.
Graphic
Then What Can be Done?
Solutions:
Divia: You definitely shouldn’t help your friends, like, by giving them answers to tests or letting them copy your homework, because that encourages them to not do their own work. So, you should let them do their own work.
Danielle: Maybe teachers can like force the students to go for extra help courses, if they like are failing or something, so they can know the material, cause maybe they just don’t know the material.
Molly: And maybe I don’t know how much if it would help if I knew Divia was cheating and I was like. “Divia, don’t cheat!” It would pretty much make Divia dislike me rather than her stop cheating. I think basically cheating might be indicative of other problems, like either like emotionally or you’re just having trouble with you work. So, maybe if you could tell a teacher, a guidance counselor, so and so seems to be having trouble or something, that could be a good way to help kind of indirectly.
Peter: I think it should be more addressed more, larger punishment in school and stuff like that. I mean if you cheat on a test, you get a zero. Well, you know that’s just a zero. Now, if you cheat on a test and you get suspended or expelled or something, that’s different.
Rudy: Some of the stuff that we are learning in school, we are not gonna need. So, it’s just like we are getting a whole bunch of extra stress on top of being a teen, on top of being in the society, on top of all this.
Peter: I think if they gave you more choices earlier like, in high school you could have started directing your path towards to the occupation you’re gonna do for the rest of your life.
Doug: The reason they make you take a lot of those courses, is so that you can decide if you wanna um have a career in that subject. So, I think it’s important that you take a variety of courses even if you’ll never use them in real life.
Rudy: I feel like some of the subjects are like boring or could use a little “oomph,” I guess that’s what you would…enthusiasm, just put it like that. And it doesn’t depend on the teacher I guess, their attitude, it has you know, you have to have some motivation somewhere.
Travis: The school I go to you feel like a number, because I just have so many people in my school, that there’s no one-on-one attention. You feel like you’re just another kid, they are gonna forget about you once you graduate, and once you’re out of their class, they don’t’ care about you anymore. You’re not getting any attention.
Rudy: At my school, we have advisement and block scheduling, and when we go in for advisement periods, that’s the time you get your teacher’s help. But there be so many kids in there, or just the teachers doing so many things, that you’re not able to get the extra help that you need. So where do you go when you’re failing, you know? Where do you go when you need that help? Cheat?
Peter: And we need to squeeze everything we can out of school and get everything that we can, because school’s about us and not about the teachers. We need, it’s our future and the only way to prepare is through school.
Sarah: I just, when I got my report card, I’d like to say these are all grades I got, and I earned these honestly through hard work and studying.
Rudy: When you’re cheating, you’re never really learning enough. It’s a shortcut, and not all shortcuts get you to where you want to go.
Host: She’s exactly right, cheating gets you nowhere fast and it’s important for our schools to have a good cheating and plagiarism policy and to enforce it so the students understand it. Well, that’s all for today, thanks for watching.
Voice Over:
You can learn more about other In The Mix programs on our website at www.inthemix.org. There are transcripts, discussion guides, resources, video clips and more on other various teen issues. To order a copy of this program or other In The Mix programs, visit our website at www.castelworks.com. And as always we’d love to hear from you, so you can contact us at mail@inthemix.org or call the number on your screen 1-800-597-9448.