Lessons for Teachers #5: Policing Cheating

When it comes to dealing with cheating, teachers fall into three categories. The first consists of those who refuse to do anything about the problem. Sometimes these teachers say that they are taking the high road, that to police cheating is to detract from teaching. Other times such teachers frankly admit the task is beneath them because it is unrelated to teaching. We should ask, then, whether it is necessary to police cheating.

I propose it is necessary for a number of reasons. First, you might not like giving grades, but you are responsible for making them accurately represent student competence. That's a tall order and you need to fill it a variety of ways, one of which is policing cheating. Second, students prospering by cheating is an injustice against good students. Additionally, if you make good students look like fools for trying hard, you'll tempt them either to cheat or to give up. Third, you don't want to deal with dishonest people in life in general. Can you really have a good conversation in class, or even look at a student, whom you permit to cheat with impunity?

Fourth, students prospering by cheating will check out of class and damage class discipline. Fifth, you may be contractually obligated to police cheating. Sixth, you'll develop a reputation for not caring that will spread and be hard to erase. Seventh, you skew the student's statistics such that parents, guidance counselors, administration, and other teachers wonder why a student is doing well in your class and failing others. The answer is, "Because you let him cheat!" Eighth, you poison the student's expectations because he becomes resentful of the other teachers on whose tests he cannot cheat.

Ninth, you consign yourself to permitting cheating into the future, not only because you'll lack the credibility to start policing, but also because if you start, then parents, administration, etc. will wonder why students suddenly started failing your class. Tenth, you damage the credibility of the whole school and its graduates when the school is known to send students out into the world with a diploma which you have made, in part, a lie.