"Cheating is never really cheating unless you hurt someone else in the process. "

A long time ago in a classroom far, far away, it was wrong to cheat. Many students felt it was wrong to cheat and cheaters were labeled harshly as evil. Fingers were pointed and papers were ripped up. Teachers taught us morality. They also told us that cheating is a sin and it is wrong. But reality set in a long time ago. The reality of the issue is that everyone cheats and if you choose not to cheat, you make it harder on yourself and you will be left behind.

Cheating is a way of life because of the massive amounts of homework given at one time in high school and college. Students sometimes choose cheating as an easy way out of an assignment, but more often than not, it is because they have too much other work to do. A Hoching Content Poll showed that 100% of those interviewed had cheated in the past but only 10% thought that it was absolutely wrong. In many cases, people felt that cheating was necessary because of time constraints and that it was "justified" because the assignment wasn't that important. Cheating happens. No one can stop it.

The real problem is that teachers don't give assignments with thoughtful input. Many teachers give meaningless busy work, which they don't even bother to grade. The author feels that a way to reduce cheating would be to give meaningful and fun assignments that kids would jump on to do. Another problem with meaningless assignments is that they are usually repetitive and allow for cheating just by reading out a letter from a column, or asking your friend the order of true and false answers on the homework ditto. Because of the lax attitude that students show towards these assignments, it is easy to fall into the habit of cheating.

Another note about cheating: with technology today, it is VERY easy to cheat. Type up your homework and attach it to a friend, who then places it on a message board which is visited by 30 kids daily. The author commends these kids for ingenious organization and also feels that they should be commended for their efforts to keep 30 kids from talking about their cheating. Yes this is cheating, but who is really being cheated? Many students who cheat are straight A students. Administrators are quick to point out that if you cheat then you have learned nothing. The author admits to have cheated in the past. But the author also got an A+ on his history midterm. Unless the author somehow managed to cheat on the history midterm, cheating didn't really hurt him because he still learned what was necessary to learn. Yes, technology can be abused, but it is very helpful to those with better things to do.

Also, cheating is done by many Asian kids in particular because of the competitiveness of their race. Getting into college is much harder for Asians because they are considered advantaged over all other races. Cheating gives them an extra advantage to justify what the "white man" and his policies towards race have placed upon their race. If things were to change and the playing field leveled, we might see less cheating among this racial group.

Cheating to get ahead is not wrong. Cheating to help others is not wrong. Cheating on homework is not wrong. Many people would rather be volunteering to help clean up the park or at the local soup kitchen than to draw a diagram already found in the textbook. By getting rid of their assignments quickly, students have more time to do constructive things. If I never cheated, this web page would not be here. All the intellectual thoughts could not be here. And probably most of the world's inventions would not be here either.

Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, Stanford, Duke, and other large-business men were cheaters. But they also became huge philanthropists who later in life gave away all the money they had earned to better humanity. And what better thing is there to start now to the road of success? Cheating is not wrong. It is a way of life.

Cheating is the ultimate wrench thrown into the performance evaluation system. Tests, quizzes, and homework are perhaps the only tests of a person's prowess and dedication to a certain subject, and unfortunately, it depends on the honor system. Fine… If everyone was honest, then everything would be so damn simple; if I scored an 80, I DESERVED an 80. If I scored a 100, I DESERVED a 100. Cheating destroys the honor system and makes scores useless. Teachers have to depend on scores equal to what a student deserves. The bottom line: CHEATS DON'T DESERVE WHAT THEY GET! No one can dispute that.

Still, people cheat. WHY? Because over time, people train themselves to believe that the simple fact of CHEATS DON'T DESERVE WHAT THEY GET is not enough to stand in the way of what they want. I'm talking about greed, avarice, the GREEN-EYED MONSTER. To be more specific, people think success is life and the ends justify the means. What I'm saying is that the ends DON'T justify the means. And that greed, avarice, and Makavelli's ideas are closer to evil than anything else.

The arguments of my counterpart on this debate will probably be something along the lines of, "…but we're so BUSY. We need cheating to keep up with our work and be successful… BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!" If someone feels overwhelmed by his or her work and resorts to cheating, it means they don't belong where they are or they need to prioritize. I absolutely despise people who overload their entire day with sports, clubs, activities, and Honors courses and then complain when they run out of time and cheat in all classes and miss their activities. Few people can balance huge schedules like that, and if someone can, then they deserve recognition. If someone uses a tenth of the effort to do a better job through cheating, shame on them. They'd ruined the hard work of an aspiring individual. If you feel extremely busy and pressured, prioritize and do your best; don't cheat. You don't have to be the best of the best, especially if you really aren't.

Perhaps what bothers me the most about cheats is that they don't learn. This happens because the majority of us, including parents sadly, don't care that cheating is wrong and epitomizes corruption. Whatever happened to fair play, principle, and honor? Have they been completely overpowered by our dark sides that we can't possibly improve ourselves morally? I hope not, because I still have confidence in the human spirit and its ability to listen to conscience and morals.

I hate cheaters. They ought to be tortured by some sick, sadistic method, Cask-of-Amontillado-style, slowly sealed behind a brick wall before their very eyes. This category isn't exclusive to my sworn enemies; I feel the same wrench of gut when my friends surreptitiously transfer a column of multiple-choice answers from one worksheet to another identical one in five frenzied minutes of lunch.

Yet, I feel just a modicum of pity tugging gently but incessantly at my heartstrings. Because, after all is said and done, cheaters do what they do because they can't accomplish what they want on their own. Yup, I said it: those who haven't the talent to do it the honest way must resort to cheating.

You say that cheating saves you time. But if you were truly gifted, brilliant, and talented, as your grades make you out to be, you'd be able to whiz through homework, quizzes, and tests in five seconds flat. You wouldn't feel compelled to look over your neighbor's shoulder on the midterm, since you would be confident of your own answers.

The sordid truth is that society condones dishonesty and immorality--take, for example, the case of our exalted president, flagship of the world's only superpower. Your peers, parents, teachers--yes, I've seen it myself--don't really give two bags of dirt whether you cheat or not. And this is fitting, since cheating harms not your parents and teachers, but yourself. Copying someone else's homework today may save you fifteen minutes, but the assignment may have been an integral part of tomorrow's chapter test. (Then again, you could just derive some complex variant of Morse code to use in pooling answers with your partner in crime across the room.)

Consider what you're missing when you read Cliffs Notes, replete with grammar errors, in place of a Pillar of Literature. Gone are John Steinbeck's meticulously drawn images of Depression-era Route 66. Instead, you find that it "goes over mountains, then plains and more mountains and then comes to the treacherous desert. But on the other side of more mountains are the beautiful plush green valleys of California."

Forget it. It's not within my humble but honest powers to convert anyone after they've passed those signpost gates of freshman year. Cheater now, cheater forever; you'll never rid yourself of the scorn that you draw upon yourself. Oh well, it's not as if you care.