Talk to Your Kids about Gray Area Cheating
Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in this video I'll discuss why you should talk to your kid about the fuzzy line between cheating and not.
First off -- I don't think your kid is cheating. I don't think my kid is cheating. That is -- I don't think they KNOW that they are cheating. The reason I think this deserves a conversation is because life is so different now than when we grew up. Technology makes everything faster and easier and there IS an impact on our kids' perception of some basic schoolwork dos and don'ts.
We assume our kids know not to lie, cheat or steal, right? But these are not the absolutes we would like them to be -- with each tere is a range that goes from okay in some circumstances to totally unacceptable. Let's take stealing for example. We can pretty much all agree that stealing is objectively bad. If there was a dollar bill laying on the counter in an office kitchen, most people would not take it. That would be stealing, right? But what about taking post-it notes from the office? Does this put us in a gray area? Researcher Dan Ariely conducted basically this very study. He visited a bunch of dorm refrigerators at MIT and placed inside each of them a 6-pack of Coke and a pile of 6 dollar bills -- they were roughly equivalent in terms of cost. Can you guess what happened? When he went back, the Cokes were all gone, but the stack of dollar bills remained. What that tells us is that people are able to rationalize taking a can of Coke as not stealing, but can't do that for cold, hard cash.
All that to say, cheating is on this same sliding ethical scale. Most of our kids would NEVER look off of someone's paper during a test or text answers to someone else for an exam. But they can rationalize littler stuff -- particularly now that technology makes things so easy.
How about this? Your kid didn't pay super close attention in math and is struggling to do his homework worksheet. He doesn't know if he is getting them right, so he texts a friend, "what did you get for #2" That seems okay in math since he still has to do and show his work to get to that answer, right? But what if this is a history worksheet? Then he is just writing down what his friend told him without having to show any work. Sketchier for sure. And it is so easy to text and ask for answers. In fact, he could text a bunch of friends simultaneously for different answers, and not have to do any work at all without raising any red flags.
Or how about this? This happens practically daily in my house. Your daughter leaves her homework at school. She Snapchats a friend "hey can you send me the hw for science" (notice my painful no punctuation for authenticity?) Her friend sends it, but it comes with all of the answers already filled out. Your daughter has to either ignore these or she might decide to use some of her friends answers on the questions she doesn't know. Or she copies all of her friends work -- it's just homework after all.
Or how about the massively cool kid in first period Biology, who took pictures of the blank final and sent it to all of his friends who have that class later in the day? That kid has rockstar status among his friends. This is obviously cheating in our minds, but I can almost guarantee you that it is not as clear for our kids.
I won't even get into Internet plagiarism here, but that is obviously ethically suspect.
And here's the thing, it's not that there wasn't this sort of gray area cheating when we were kids. It is just SO much easier now that every kid has a camera and a simple means to send it to the world. Plus, according to Ariely, we tend to lie, cheat, and steal more when we feel mistreated. Show me ONE student who doesn't feel mistreated by the demands of teachers and school. That combination of temptation, ease, and resentment creates lots of gray areas and lots of rationalization.
But the thing is, there is no gray area with teachers or the school administration. Cheating is cheating. And you can get in trouble if you are the person who gave the information or the person who copied the information. The consequences could be quite severe, even life changing.
I just think it's worth a conversation. I know most of our kids are really good kids. They are trying to do the right thing. They would never steal cash or blatantly copy answers during a test. But they need to understand that this other "little" stuff is cheating too. When they use someone else's work and pass it off as their own – that's cheating. Period.
So, what can you do?
Talk with your kids about not giving their friends direct answers -- as awkward as this may be. Suggest that they say, "What don't you understand? I don't want to give you my answer, but I can help you find it." Show your kids how to white out answers before sending photos of worksheets. On an iPhone, take a picture of the worksheet. Then go into photos, find the photo, hit the Edit button (looks like 3 sliders) and then choose the More button (3 dots) and select Mark Up. Now make sure the pen tool is selected, pick white and the thickest pen stroke and start whiting out. Once finished, hit Done, then Done again and share this version.
Make your kids promise not to cheat. Studies* have shown that signing an honor code or writing out the 10 Commandments before an exam reduces cheating. But perhaps more important is creating a culture where integrity is important. You can't help the culture at school, but having these direct conversations can set the tone at home.
And while you are at it -- tell them not to take some else's Coke from the refrigerator.
Leave your experiences and thoughts in the comments section. And thanks for watching!
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