Cheating: A Cultural Construct Cheating

Cheating: A Cultural Construct

Cheating takes a wide array of forms. An act of dishonesty or habitual acts of dishonesty used to deceive others, to advance one's self, to gain the upper hand in a competitive circumstance or to engage in illicit behaviors while attempting to obscure these behaviors, cheating conjures a number of specific contextual implications. Cheating occurs in the academic context, where the pressure to achieve good grades may incline one to come about them dishonestly. Cheating occurs in sports, where athletes may attempt to gain unfair advantages by playing outside of clearly delineated rules. Cheating occurs in the domestic context, where failed relationships may be noted by marital infidelity. Cheating occurs in the business world, where corporate executives and accountants fudge figures for financial gain. The various contexts in which cheating may occur are illustrative of a cultural pattern suggesting that though not all are dishonest, this type of deception does permeate our every walk of life.

A context closest to our area of experience is that of academic dishonesty. This is an issue oft-considered and discussed as we proceed through our formal schooling. Indeed, participation in the academic system implies a certain disposition with respect to the learning process and the opportunities there present. Chief among the conditions of this disposition is the belief that one must represent himself, his work and his ideas honesty. Concerning integrity, this means that our participation in academics, profession and society commits each of us to respect the right of those around us to receive due credit for their work and ideas. But there is considerable evidence that certain transgressions of academic integrity are today rampant. Cheating remains a culturally commonplace reality in our schools, which such matters as plagiarism in particular bearing a negative impact on the orientation of the classroom.

Plagiarism is the representation of somebody else's work as your own, for any purpose, whether it is to receive personal recognition for the work or, in the professional realm, to reap financial rewards. Plagiarism is illegal and, for many people, immoral. This means that there may be a wide range of potential consequences for being discovered as a plagiarizer, including expulsion from public or private institutions, loss of professional standing, confrontation with legal charges or the responsibility to an aggrieved party in a civil dispute. This last consequence may result in a considerable expenditure of money in compensation to the individual whose original work had been co-opted.

With these rather serious consequences on the line, one might think that sufficient deterrents exist to prevent participation in acts which violate the clear principles of academic integrity. To this point, "cheating is a violation of rules and regulations, a phenomenon most people abhor yet profess to have committed at one time or another under adverse conditions. In the area of education, academic dishonesty is a perennial problem that successfully eludes solutions." (PeSymaco & Marcelo, 1) One of the major reasons for this is that schools inherently rely on the supposition that students have engaged for interest in learning or for the desire to advance intellectually and, thereafter, professionally.

However, a host of emergent technology opportunities have made it significantly easier for student's to attain desirable grades without the work demanded. Among these, our research points to the internet in particular as a venue within which individuals have found myriad ways to use the work of others for graded evaluations. This is true in the context on of the online class especially, which seems almost to tacitly accept the likelihood that the student who is determined to cheat will succeed at doing so. Accordingly, our research proceeds that "to make comparisons with prior studies, online academic dishonesty includes cheating on exams or assignments, including plagiarism. Currently, evidence on academic dishonesty in online courses is nonexistent, but some claim that because students and faculty do not interact directly in such classes, online classes will invite more cheating than traditional classes." (Grijalva et al., 1)

And the acceptance of this condition underscores the telling reality that expectations from professors toward students are rather low-fielded. We find that the habitual proclivity toward cheating by students en mass, increased exponentially by the availability of content, databases and services which can help students to simulate completion of their academic responsibilities, has contributed to a distinctly negative perspective on the part of those in academic instruction. In a recent study highlighted by one of our primary sources, it is resolved that "clearly, the professor's perceptions of student behavior were more negative than reported by the students. The researchers speculated that students answered questions according to their own belief system. Professors may have answered based on their experience of student behavior." (Smith et al., 3)

But this is exactly why plagiarism is such a serious problem. It is often impossible to prove in certainty, and it is even more difficult to find any way to compensate those whose intellectual property has been purloined.

And quite so, the internet has been a mixed bag with reference to academic integrity. It provides myriad informational resources, online libraries and discursive communities from which individuals can become more empowered and hopefully enthusiastic students. By promoting independent pursuit of knowledge, the internet is offering students with the potential and the enticement to learn and complete assignments on their own terms. This is naturally having a positive impact on the honesty with which student represent themselves.

In contrast, it does bear noting that the internet places students directly in contact with information and informational resources that can be easily misappropriated. Though many academic institutions are employing effective technologies to sweep the internet for evidence of students' infidelities, there remain a number of channels through which students may retain information found on the internet and use it as their own.

There may be no real way to track, curb or monitor this kind of cheating, but it is important to try to find ways to dissuade it. The implementation of a pronounced and meaningful honor code is a proven first step. "For example, while 33% of the students on the modified-code campuses admitted they had cheated on a test or exam in the past year, 45% did so on the nine campuses that did not have any code. (On nine other campuses with traditional academic honor codes in place, 23% of the students admitted to one or more instance of test/exam cheating in the previous year.)" (McCabe & Pavela, 2)

Here, we see two realities; the promising one which denotes an interest by many students in achieving positive academic results with honesty and the disheartening one which denotes that, regardless, some number of students will always cheat. This is, unfortunately, the resolution on the subject, with grading and the pressures there implied naturally inclining some to pursue opportunity which is counterintuitive to the very purposes of education.

Academic dishonesty, though widespread and problematic, occurs on a small stage. This type of cheating may not register with the same sensational public interest as cheating in the arena of professional sports. This would be quite well illustrated over the course of this last decade when America's National Past time and its greatest modern players were revealed to have engaged in a long-standing and epidemic level of cheating. For many years, professional baseball has avoided categorical association with steroid use. While physical enormity and the implementation of sheer force are traditionally correlated in the public consciousness with sports like basketball and football, baseball has been less perceived a sport of brute power. But, again, the rising economic value of professional athletes and the naturally blessed field of competition have demanded a higher level of performance even from baseballers. The field is quite a bit larger than it was in Babe Ruth's day, and most sports experts suggest that he would be hard pressed, especially given a physical condition that is rather untenable by today's medical and athletic standards, to compose a season of such dominance as the one that Barry Bonds crafted just a few years ago when, in 2001 when he set the single season homerun record at 73.

This comparison is hardly to impeach the greatness of the athletic heroes of yesteryear. However, it lends some credence to the adage that records are made to be broken. With the passage of generations, homeruns become longer and more plentiful, pitches are harder and more unpredictable, bat-speed is faster and more versatile, fielding is more spry and preventative. Foundationally, athletes are engaged in the business of pushing standards of physical excellence beyond what we perceive as limitations. This imperative, though, has been stoking the fires of a major crisis that has been implicated in some of the sports greatest recent achievements and in the germs of its future, with rampant cheating coming to define the game.

Major League Baseball was essentially outed from its immunity to drug speculation when Jose Canseco, one of the leagues former stars and an exemplar for the modern standard in muscle bulk, contended in a Sports Illustrated interview that he and 85% of the profession used performance enhancing drugs to compete on an even plane (Houshmandzadeh, 1) One of the very obvious likelihoods of that claim was that, among that 85%, there must certainly be a substantial share of the league's superstars. This presented the troubling consideration that many of the current standard-bearers for physical excellence were the product of performance enhancing drug use. Moreover, this cast a dark shadow on what have been regarded as some of the game's greatest recent accomplishments, which had been achieved through cheating.

In that vein, Canseco's claim was succeeded by an admission that seemed to justify this reproach. Mark McGwire, Canseco's former Oakland Athletic teammate, admitted that he had actively used steroids throughout the course of the fabled 1998 season in which he dethroned Roger Maris as the single-season homerun champion (Ferrell, 1). To many, it called into question the true nature of his accomplishments. In 2002, Ken Caminiti dealt a similar blow to professional athletic achievements' credibility when he admitted that his 1996 National League MVP season was one largely propelled by steroid use. Further, he marked the number of active players in the MLB using performance enhancing drugs at somewhere in the range of 50%.

In spite of this, baseball would be unregulated during this period, particularly when compared to the NFL and NBA where, it bears noting, covert abuses still occur, though on a much smaller scale. The power that collective bargaining grants baseball players had given them just enough influence over their own affairs to avoid random drug testing and strict consequences for failure therein. This, players such as Barry Bonds have argued, would be an unconscionable invasion of privacy and, further, that it is the right of the player and only the player to determine the treatment and maintenance of his own body, and as an extension, the career that rests in that body's vested abilities (Reuters, 2). This was, of course, a self-righteous screed intended only to cover up a massive conspiracy of cheating in baseball. And its consequences have not just been felt in the record books. The impact on those who have grown up and aspiring to the game is quite serious, demonstrating the cultural implications of cheating in baseball.

This is quite illustrated by the 2003 tragedy which befell the Baltimore Orioles, when twenty-three-year-old pitching prospect, Steve Bechler died of what the Palm Beach, Florida coroner's office reported be "multiple organ failure caused by complications of exertional heatstroke" (Nelson, 1). Subsequent autopsy reports revealed that there were above average traces of the dietary supplement ephedrine in his system that physicians believe may have contributed to his death. By United States law, most anabolic steroids are prohibited. This, of course, translates into Major League bylaw. However, the designation dietary supplement has long protected many substances from that same prohibition (Nelson, 2). Namely, both the androstenedione that helped McGwire through 1998 and the ephedrine that may have contributed to the demise Bechler, are both completely legal substances for which Major League Baseball had no punitive response. This points to the reverberating impact of this type of cheating, which not only impacted the game but also which has served as a negative cultural example to those who have admired the stars of the game.

A great deal more close to home than the grand stage of professional sporting, cheating is an extremely common phenomenon in family life. Marital infidelity and divorce are two common and often related realities of modern marriage. With rates in both categories suggesting these to be genuine and consistent threats to the sanctity of marriage and the stability of family, a great deal of consideration is justifiably paid to the impact of these on families, children and society. Clear concerns over family circumstance, living situation and formative familial context all will bear an immediate effect on the way that children of cheating experience the world. However, often overlooked is the set of long-term implications for adult children of dysfunctional marriages. Especially where infidelity is concerned in the dysfunction of a parental marriage, issues such as the way in which the child pursues and maintains relationships may be directly threatened, pointing again to the recurrent theme in our research relating to the cyclical and repetitive nature of cheating.

Such is to say that research denotes that amongst the potential dysfunctions correlated to parental infidelity, the propensity toward infidelity in the adult child is likely to be higher. According to Amato & Booth (2001), there is evidence that specific types of marital dysfunction will tend to emerge in the adult children of such marriages. This theoretical assumption underscores our hypothesis that parental infidelity will lead to the higher possibility of infidelity in adult children.

The article by Hertlein (2006) serves this purpose, delving into "therapeutic issues that should be considered in infidelity cases, such as the role of society in infidelity, multiple dimensions of infidelity, forgiveness, and self-of-the-therapist." (Hertlein, 96) This article demonstrates the complexity to the discourse of the issues surrounding cheating amongst romantic partners.

In the case of parental infidelity, Koski finds, this complexity is even greater. This is because the experience of witnessing this infidelity in a trusted figure such as a parent can manifest as a devastating and irreversible relational violation for the child. As Koski notes, "loss of trust through betrayal, particularly betrayal produced by sexual infidelity can be a particularly poignant loss" (Koski, 2) For the child, recovery may be hard-won and may nonetheless hold unforeseen challenges in the emotional disposition and relationship skills of the adult child. This is to say that cheating in the family context does not just impact the partners in a relationship. Where there are children present, this type of cheating may have lasting effects on the child's psychological makeup and his or her proclivity toward cheating.

This is a demonstration of the impact of cultural contextualization. This denotes that where one is ensconced in a culture of dishonesty and deception, one is more prone to such behaviors. Perhaps most indicative of this would be the collapses in American corporate culture of recent years, when cheating became an epidemic problem with massive financial fallout. The decade which came before the turn of the millennium was a period of great economic expansion for North America and the global community. Advances in communication and web technologies, changes in the nature of the global economy and a period of generally robust corporate growth would suggest limitless opportunities for Americans at every level of the economy. However, this period would also be characterized by widespread deregulation of corporate behaviors and entitlement. This would create an environment of corporate lawlessness. Companies and CEOs would commit many dishonest acts in terms of the presentation of financial outlooks, accounting realities and performance reports for major upstarts and long-standing, reputable financial firms alike. The turn to the 2000s would bring with it new circumstances such as those that would accompany the events of September 11th and a bevy of devastating revelations concerning the behaviors or America's leading corporations. Across the next decade, Enron, Adelphia, Tyco, Nortel, Worlcom, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, AIG and Bernie L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, just to name some of the most noted examples, would either fall into financial ruin after the revelation of massive corruption or would declare bankruptcy due to gross mismanagement. These occurrences would share a direct relationship with the floundering American economy, which today delivers us to the worst financial and economic crises since the Great Depression. At the heart of these failures is an absence of corporate ethical codes, a void of corporate citizenship and a total lack of regulatory oversight protecting Americans from the exploitation of modern corporate robber barons. These would lead to a vacuum in accounting regulation and financial reporting oversight that would help to hide the perpetration of corporate fraud on a widespread and epidemic scale.

Scott (2006) leads the discussion by noting that "during the collapse, share prices of many firms, especially those in the 'hi-tech' industry, fell precipitously. For example, while share prices of General Electric Corp. fell from a high of about $55U.S. In August 2000 to a low of about $21 in October 2002, that of telecommunications firm Nortel Networks fell from a high of about $82 U.S. To a low of 44 cents over the same period. A contributing factor to the market collapse was the revelation of numerous financial reporting irregularities." (Scott, 5) Scott would identify this as a problem of ingrained accounting theory deficiencies, with research from throughout the field demonstrating these deficiencies to be both in the areas of ethical and rational practice of accounting and financial reporting. Ultimately, these deficiencies would pave the way for cheating on a wide scale by members of the corporate community.

As is revealed by the Scott text, it is most particularly the atmosphere of deregulation which contributed to the events of the last decade, with acts of embezzlement (Merrill Lynch), accounting fraud (Enron), insider trading (Marth Stewart) and Ponzi schemes (Madoff) essentially passing under a federal radar which had intentionally overlooked the outrageous claims of profitability that these scandals manufactured. Today, banks, American auto firms, housing development companies and securities groups continue to report contraction and collapse. We can trace these events to the shared ethical abuses perpetrated by a generation of political and corporate leaders. Perhaps above all other examples, this type of cheating demonstrates the outright carelessness and criminality which can be implied. Perhaps in no other area would the outcome of cheating be felt in such a negative way by so many different parties.