Hmmm. Some issues do not have a simple, straightforward answer. Consider this controversy being debated in Central Ohio.
As reported in The Columbus Dispatch, “The graduation ceremony for Centerburg High School students has been canceled after school officials say many seniors cheated by obtaining copies of tests hacked from the school’s computer system.”
The district estimated “that 50 of the 97 seniors scheduled to graduate either cheated by using copies of the pilfered tests or knew of the cheating and did not report it.” Instead of an official graduation ceremony, “[t]he diplomas for all the seniors, except the one student behind the cheating scandal, will be released to parents so they can be presented to seniors at an unofficial ceremony [to be held] in a Centerburg park.”
Now, a week later, folks are still debating the canceled ceremony and the ethics of cheating. I have to ask: Is it unethical to cheat on a test that is mandated by the state? Must students report cheaters? And who was cheated?
Ohio forces young adults to attend school. However, they are not forced to attend a government school. Students can attend a public school, a state chartered or nonchartered school, or a home school.
Therefore, no one can honestly claim that the students at Centerburg were forced to attend their local government school. And that makes this a difficult call.
If the state coerced and compelled students to attend a government school and take the tests, then cheating would be the same as “slacking” at a forced labor camp. Cheating would be an ethical nonissue. But that is not the situation in this instance.
Do state attendance laws create enough of a system of coercion to absolve the cheating? Or does the fact that other schooling options exist provide enough cover to make this claim: The students selected their government school and, therefore, had accepted an implicit contract whereby they agreed to follow its rules?
I have to admit that I am struggling here. I seem to be leaning toward accepting the idea that government schools are akin to forced labor camps. Why? Most people believe the lie that the state must educate their children — a lie created and perpetuated by the state, the social apparatus of coercion and compulsion.
Therefore, to the students, they were forced to attend their local government school. Nevertheless, I struggle with this conclusion.
Must students report cheaters? Only if I am to report every car I spot speeding. Of course, if a student freely signs a contract whereby he agrees to report cheating, he must.
This question remains: Who was cheated? The Centerburg school district? If so, how did the students cheat the district? Assuming coerced attendance, can students commit fraud? Can the slave cheat the slave master?
What about colleges, universities and future employers? Yes, these entities would have a claim that they were deceived — defrauded — if the offending students stated they achieved X, when X was the result of cheating. This would be true even if the state forced the students to take the tests.
However, these entities have not entered the debate thus far. I assume they are taking notice and the graduating students will soon learn their fate in the marketplace.
In the end, the ethical issue for students in government schools is not cheating or the reporting of cheating. The ethical issue is any fraudulent claim of achievement made to private individuals and entities afterwards.
note: Of course, the market may set a much higher standard and punish the students despite state coercion in education.
{ 37 comments }
I wonder how the system works i.e are there others who lose out? Kind of like FRB? Someone has a contract to frb, increase the money supply, but you lose out – you were not part of the contract, yet your savings were devalued.
I guess it would be best to keep in mind Rothbard in Ethics of Liberty – about contracts, must involve an exchange of a property title, otherwise they are not valid? http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/nineteen.asp
“Their error is a failure to realize that the right to contract is strictly derivable from the right of private property, and therefore that the only enforceable contracts (i.e., those backed by the sanction of legal coercion) should be those where the failure of one party to abide by the contract implies the theft of property from the other party.”
Theft of property from the other party? So was there theft? Who was the party?
Jim, this is simply indefensible. If these students are willing to cheat when small things at stake, I doubt they would have much compunction to flout the law (under whatever system), steal, cheat, trample over individual and property rights if it suits them.
Just human nature anyway.
@Conza’s question: The theft is implicit. You are stealing the competitive value of the diploma. Because people can cheat their way to a diploma, the diploma becomes nothing to the job markets, but it still becomes necessary for universities. Whether or not such theft is punishable, I cannot say.
What contracts are changing hands though? I don’t actually see any. Is the diploma more of a gift with a requirement.
Most high school tests, while designed to verify general proficiency in a given subject area, really only require certain specific answers to pass. Therefore, hacking into the school computers and retrieving the test-with-answers is just another way of acquiring the information that the school demands as a prerequisite for graduation, differing from learning the course material by reading books or notes primarily in specificity and a very strong assurance that those pieces of information will be the ones required when the test is officially administered (the teacher/administration could, of course, change the test).
If the test had an essay-type question, or consisted of such questions, then the “cheating” truly is cheating because the individual with the questions has access to what the teacher/administration wants (which is always what is most important) that the other students had now way of possessing. Of course, if the student distributed the questions to all other students, the advantage would be nullified for that particular test.
Obviously, if certain contracts were made by the students, the above does not apply.
I am not sure if this sheds any light or not but I think it would be helpful to note that the goal of education ought to be developing the cognitive skills of the students towards a useful productive end in whatever environment they find themselves. Assuming this is the case, in the event that a student had the mental resources to hack into a school database to find the answers to test questions as well as the temerity to then sell those answers for a profit I should gladly applaud his/her efforts and deem him/her fit for life in society with whatever endorsement I could give.
I like the FRB comparison. If I print a note that looks and feels like a dollar, have I defrauded the government? Yet the simple act of printing is punished severely.
Of course, if I pass it to someone under the pretense it is a federal reserve note, then I have defrauded that individual.
@Havvy. “The theft is implicit. You are stealing the competitive value of the diploma. Because people can cheat their way to a diploma, the diploma becomes nothing to the job markets, but it still becomes necessary for universities.”
You only steal the value of the diploma if and when you present yours (assuming you cheated) to an individual. The same as a fake note.
So I guess it would be fraud, only if the cheating individual decided to use it on their job application without stipulating, what actually happened?
i.e you can print that piece of counterfeited paper, but if you never present it as such, attempt to use it to purchase goods under false pretenses, then it’s ok?
The fact that government has a grading monopoly like in so many other fields is an incentive to cheat perhaps, yet the cheating is really directed against fellow students, not against the system.
I feel it’s important to distinguish between the evilness of the Fed and that of the reckless CFO market likewise.
It reminds me of the story of that school in 2007 in Germany, that was founded illegally by parents with their own study program and lasted over 13 years, successfully preparing kids for university … and handing out fake “official” diplomas for that matter.
This was a real threat to the monopoly system, and hurt nobody meanwhile. The popular approval in media coverage made it impossible to condemn the teacher to prisons like the law suggested it.
The obligation to take the test was totally spurious and non-binding. The students’ presence at the school was based entirely on force, all of which (including the enforcers’ salaries) paid for by the theft of money from local property owners.
Therefore, government-schools are a totally illegitimate organizations, and their dictates and demands may be properly disregarded, as Spooner said, as though they were “idle wind.”
Anything one needs to do to get free of such an institution is entirely justified. The schools have no more right to claim to be wronged by the “frauds” of its victims than would a state prison when a dissident escapes from a gulag.
The students were under no contract; nor do I think you could place most high schools students under such a contract without duress.
Seems like a simple matter to me.
Education and Ethics
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Cheating In Ohio High School Is A Relatively Small Offense!
Cheating is an issue of ethics which really makes it difficult for the public school system to address. What standard of ethics is to be applied?
Can cheating be determined to be unethical when offenses of much greater magnitude are accepted?
We are talking about young adults, not children, and these young adults can look around and see the counterfeiting by the government, the monopoly licensing of gambling, the violation of property rights, the killing of innocent people all around the world, and the propagation of lies by the politicians day in and day out. Now expect them to abide by duplicitous rules of ethics that are carved up and handled in a piecemeal and arbitrary manner!
To be fair let’s suspend their graduation ceremony and then let’s nullify all elections that yielded a politician who does not defend and uphold the Constitution!
Then let us begin to address the issue of the inseparability of ethics and economics!
Regardless of whether you are talking about the individual student or the class body as a whole, I suggest you use as your “measuring stick” in your questions your own Blog description: “Do not give into evil, but proceed every more boldly against it.” A loss of self-esteem at any level, personal or in a group context, is an acquiescence of the most important contract in society…the contract we make in using good ethics. In the context of a high-school setting, this issue of reporting the cheating even if you did not participate is, in the end, the same as stopping a bully at school even though personal harm may come to yourself. How will you feel 10 years after the fact? Thanks for the thought-provoking article.
I fail to see how coercion to labor deserves any more respect than coercion to routinization and training. Pretense to meaningful choice is deceptive at best.
Further, this specifically pertains to class discrimination as the children of the hegemonic elite regularly have their credentials purchased by their families preliminary to inheriting positions of power. Observing the obsequious sycophants (teachers and administrators) in the labor training (educational) institutions pander to the arbitrary desires of the ruling class is nauseating.
To single out a narrow area of activity for your ethical judgment appears disingenuous. To randomly choose to exercise your ethical pronouncements on children separate from the larger context of a corrupt system of enforced sameness and coerced labor is the source of your struggles.
You bring your conflicted view point to the situation and project it upon an external situation that is itself congruent with the struggles of the oppressed.
Michael Zuzolo:
Regardless of whether you are talking about the individual student or the class body as a whole…
I should hope no one would apply the fallacy of collective action to this case.
A loss of self-esteem at any level, personal or in a group context, is an acquiescence…
“Loss of self-esteem”? What a meaningless platitude.
…of the most important contract in society…the contract we make in using good ethics.
I don’t recall signing such a contract. In any case, you’re begging the question. What is under discussion here is whether it is ethical/moral/justified to cheat on a government test.
In the context of a high-school setting, this issue of reporting the cheating even if you did not participate is, in the end, the same as stopping a bully at school even though personal harm may come to yourself.
That’s a bold assertion, given that you haven’t offered any justification for the idea that it’s unethical to cheat. But even if it were unethical to cheat, this would not automatically obligate an observer to report it.
How will you feel 10 years after the fact? Thanks for the thought-provoking article.
I graduated high school “honestly” a little over 10 years ago, and to be frank, in retrospect I feel like a schmuck for bothering with any of it.
Jay Greathouse:
I’m somewhat afraid to ask, but what “coerced labor” are you referring to?
The presence or absence of an agreement or contract (code of conduct) is moot, since minors aren’t recognized by the state to be eligible to enter into enforceable contracts (hence permission slips, etc.).
The child is probably more accurately seen as an agent of the parent, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring the student meets the obligatory standards imposed — and agreed to (if tacitly) by the parent upon enrolling the child.
Parents of children not having cheated, it would seem, have a case against the school for devaluing the diploma ethically earned by their child (analogous to grade inflation).
Of course this line of reasoning is predicated on alternate non-state educational choices, and breaks down without such conditions as Jim Fedako states initially.
Jason G.,
What if some of those high school seniors are 18 years of age? Anywho, I agree with Magnus. The parents are forced to send their children to school. Whether or not the parents voluntarily wanted to send their children to school proceeds the fact that they were forced to send children to school.
I am sorry that I am so late to the party. I got here as quickly as I could.
Very simply, for those students who cheated on this exam, this is an ethics violation. It should be handled as such.
For those government school pupils who signed an ethics contract promising they would neither cheat nor tolerate those who did, they too have committed an ethics infraction.
This matter is small potatoes based on some of the ethical dilemmas that these citizens of realm are going to find themselves in later life. Let the record show they were entrusted with small matters and could not rise above the temptation to cheat. Everyone is human. Everyone fails. Cut them some slack. Let them retake the test …
“[t]he diplomas for all the seniors, except the one student behind the cheating scandal, will be released to parents so they can be presented to seniors at an unofficial ceremony [to be held] in a Centerburg park.”
If cheating really is bad, how is that you give cheaters their diplomas anyways, rather than making them re-take the exam or telling them to take a hike?
Smells like a Commons Tragedy to me.
Very simply, for those students who cheated on this exam, this is an ethics violation.
Please elaborate. What kind of ethics dictates that you must not try to evade a state-mandated test?
For those government school pupils who signed an ethics contract…
If this was done at all, it was most likely under duress.
Let the record show they were entrusted with small matters and could not rise above the temptation to cheat.
Right, because if you cheat once in self-defense, you’ll probably commit some act of dishonesty later that actually is unethical.
I understand the the uncertainty since school is required. There however is no requirement to graduate or pass any test.
It is not a school system that is being cheated, it is the other students. The other students worked for their grades. Class rank is a major concern in American schools, this student cheating on a test, and thus receiving a higher score than earned, denied another student.
There is also the fact grades are often adjusted after a test if a large section of the students taking the test did not do well. This is done so that the teacher can make sure that they are not making tests that are too difficult. When students are cheating, they are also likely depriving other students of this adjustment.
Despite the requirement of attendance, there was no requirement of that student to perform. That is where the wrong is in cheating
The school gave the diplomas anyway because the administrators do not want the INCONVENIENCE of dealing with this situation. Like all state-run operations, schools are concerned primarily with their own convenience and budgets.
When upwards of 50% of the “customers” (i.e., victims) of this massive fraud known as “school” are prepared to reveal the fraud, then the school administration has a real problem — to risk having the fraud to be revealed, or cover it up.
Naturally, they cover it up. It is much easier to simply move on to the next group of younger, more vulnerable victims.
The simple fact of the matter is that the students were under no obligation to take the test. The school had no right to give it.
The idea that signing some kind of “ethics” contract was somehow binding on the students is laughable. What did the school give in exchange for its part in this supposed “contract”? Nothing.
“It is not a school system that is being cheated, it is the other students.”
The students don’t owe any duty to one another.
Cheating is as old as compulsion. My term of indentured servitude in public school was relatively easy and pleasant for me, but not for some of my fellow school serfs.
I cheated in high school by giving answers to teammates so they too could play football with me. I only wanted to go to school to play football, meet girls, dance and read books. I was what was called ‘gifted’ mentally and athletically, but the only place I could use my ‘gifts’ was school. If it had not been for football, I might well have dropped out and just read books. It would have been difficult to score touchdowns playing for the homeschool team. If school attendance is compulsory, then tests should be optional and academic eligibility for athletics abolished. Or, just have private athletic clubs totally separate from schools and that extends to colleges too. I suspect that some of this cheating was known and winked at by the school authorities. They were the more corrupt and should feel remorse for the system. I have no guilt for gaming a perverse system at all.
Yes, my first reaction was: did government apologize to the kids for cheating them out of their future?
With regard to high school exit exam:
These kids are forced to go to school for 12 years, and the exist exam is there ticket out the institution that eslaves them. But we have people here that complain when these kids “cheat” there way out of this enslavement on the grounds that it it cheats other kids that also trying to escape their enslavement?
With regard to the value of a high school diploma:
The high school diploma is the new middle school diploma. The state if handing out high school diplomas and college degrees to everyone which, in effects, severely devalues those degrees. Notice that the school gave the kids the diplomas anyway.
The college education is so worthless nowadays that, for many students, there is no point in attending.
Personally, I think it was an ethical violation. While it is true that many people do buy the lie that (only) the State must educate their children, it is most definitely the case that the State does NOT buy that lie – after all, homeschooling and private schools are perfectly legal.
So, I don’t think it flies to say that they were forced to go to that school and accept the rules of it.
Actually, I think that “cheating” is one of those areas that our schools really need to rethink. If the purpose of the test is to find out whether the students know particular facts, then the fact that students got the test beforehand – through questionable means – doesn’t take away from the fact that they do, in fact, know those particular facts.
Of course, now I’m getting to educator-y, so I’ll just leave it at that.
Lucas,
In California, you can homeschool or send your kids to private school as long as you have permission from the government. The private school has to okay’d by the government,. The homeschool program has to okay’d by the government.
Lucas,
I don’t know about you, but even if my parents legitimately had the choice of homeschooling me or sending me to a private school, *I* had no choice in the matter. Why should children be forced into slavery simply because they’re children?
Personally, I think it was an ethical violation. While it is true that many people do buy the lie that (only) the State must educate their children, it is most definitely the case that the State does NOT buy that lie – after all, homeschooling and private schools are perfectly legal.
So, I don’t think it flies to say that they were forced to go to that school and accept the rules of it.
As Daniel S. mentioned, the “homeschool” and “private school” options are still under the supervision of the State, still regulated by the State, and must conform to the general methods and curricula dictated by the State.
Also, when it comes to schooling, you either send your child to the local state-run school, or you pay twice — once for the school you use, and once for the school you don’t. That forces a lot of families to use the State’s schools, as a matter of financial necessity.
Daniel S. and Magnus,
The only question I was trying to answer was whether there is a choice involved. Now, it may be true that, in some sense, private and homeschool options are “supervised” by the State (I’m not sure how invasive this supervision is in practice). But, that doesn’t make them any less “options”. If they are actually options, then it is not unreasonable to say that the rules were accepted voluntarily.
Naturally, the State has stacked the deck in its favor – and I agree that it shouldn’t. (For goodness sakes, I don’t even think it should have a deck to stack!) But, at least as far as I can tell, that is not enough, in itself, to remove the fact that there were different options available, and that the rules for the school were accepted voluntarily in some meaningful sense. (Though it is obviously not a “black and white” issue. I think this is a matter where we’re just disagreeing about shades of gray.)
Mike B,
I’m not entirely sure how that relates to what I said. I’ll just say that, implicitly, I’m assuming that there aren’t any violations on the family side. This obviously may or may not be true in any particular case. (For example, when I was a kid, my parents actually asked me whether I’d rather go to the public school or the school at my church – and I said that I preferred the public school. Hey, I was a very serious Statist when I was little. Unlike some, I grew out of it.) I agree that education should not be compulsory. But, that’s not really the point I was getting at here.
As a side note: I think it is very possible to move the decision to the parents of a child pretty logically. If we buy that parents and children are autonomous individuals, then parents are under no ethical obligation to feed and care for their children. At that point, the parents can tell their kids “I will continue to feed and house you if you go to school.” Given a little time, I imagine that few kids would refuse that deal – after all, most runaways do come home for dinner. If we prefer the argument that parents are ethically responsible for their children’s well-being, then it’s not really an issue at all. I’m not going to get into this too much, as that discussion would go pretty far afield.
The basic purpose of public education systems is to create compliant work slaves to create more capital to be siphoned off by the parasites that control the majority of the world’s wealth.
Almost every school child comprehends at some point that they are incarcerated against their will when they are in school. Being allowed to go home, for them, can be likened to work release for prison inmates at ‘correctional’ facilities.
Preparation for this school incarceration begins years before they enter kindergarten, because it became clear from the beginning to parents and the government that the children would revolt when given forced training during a significant part of their waking day. Behavior modification is used from an early age by parents and the media to create a more acceptable psychological state in the child so they aren’t as resistant when the time comes to be ‘educated’ in a secured facility.
Public Educational facilities act deliberately when they don’t emphasize the ability to critically think. School is all about indoctrination and regurgitation of authorized information. The whole coercive educational system would collapse immediately if the students/inmates were allowed to critically evaluate it. Very few students go through the educational system and still retain this ability to critically think. The more years of ‘education’ a child has, the less the chance they will retain this ability.
A critical thinker would view the whole affair as forced incarceration and game it in any way possible.
A far more important question here than the cheating on a test is why so many people have been conned into believing the public education is ultimately beneficial to their children. This notion has been masterfully propagandized and indoctrinated into generation after generation.
Perhaps a solution is for employers to simply ignore government certification of schooling and administer their own tests for employment and promotion. Of course employers might subscribe to a standardized set of tests provided by a consortium of individual educators. It might be like Mises.org selling a test on economic literacy to ten thousand small business owners. Just one possibility among thousands of Bastiat’s things not seen.
Daniel S. and Magnus-
Your point is well taken that the “compulsory” aspect of education as it now stands is non-negotiable.
To extend my prior remark, the state through threat of force against the parent — up to, and including “taking” guardianship of the child — doesn’t force the parent to ensure their child passes tests, just that the child be available to have the test administered (the responsibility for passing falls upon the “accountable” teachers).
So I don’t think there is an ethical problem with the cheating per se, just the (largely dubious to begin with) fraudulent awarding of diplomas that ostensibly denote a certain level of knowledge.
Perhaps a solution is for employers to simply ignore government certification of schooling and administer their own tests for employment and promotion.
That would be great, except I guarantee you that the government would come down like a hammer on anyone who came up with an efficient test for that purpose. For example, last I heard, it’s illegal to use an IQ test as a main criterion for hiring, even though it’s perhaps the single greatest predictor of success on the job, for most positions.
If they are actually options, then it is not unreasonable to say that the rules were accepted voluntarily.
Absolutely wrong.
Let’s say there’s a prisoner who is unjustly confined in a prison camp, and the prison guards give him the “option” to either work in the fields (Job A) or work in the laundry (Job B), and if he doesn’t work at all, then he’ll be punished in some way.
His choice to work in Job A or Job B is not a genuine option. The fact that he gets to choose his job in prison doesn’t make him any less of a prisoner.
In fact, prison administrators use that technique to create the APPEARANCE of freedom of choice. They don’t care whether he chooses Job A or Job B, or even care if Jobs A or B even get done at all. The point of that exercise is to psychologically condition him to willfully follow their rules. This is well-established prison psychology.
Schools are less drastic than prison camps, of course, and so the penalties for non-compliance with commands are not life-and-death, but schools use the same psychological methods as prisons do. (They were dreamed up by the same statist mentality, after all.)
That’s why schools are filled with pointless busy-work. They don’t particularly care that the work gets done, or care that you genuinely learn anything in the process. The point of meaningless tasks is to TRAIN you to instinctively do as you are told. The military uses the same technique to train new recruits to follow orders.
The State imposes an illegitimate obligation to submit to the schooling system. It doesn’t matter that they allow some tiny (inconsequential) latitude about how you may choose to go about satisfying that imposed burden. The point is that the burden is totally illegitimate and unjustified in the first place. The fact that they give you trivial options about how you fulfill that command means nothing.
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