Why do students cheat at tests? This may seem like a simple question – because it is. But simple questions do not always have simple answers.
While there are many reasons to cheat, perhaps as many reasons as there are cheaters, the main reason is obviously that someone wants to pass a test. But why do we want to pass rather than to learn?
Studying, education, schools and universities exist for learning. That is their purpose. Or so one would think. But clearly, cheating at a test will not give any knowledge. (Except perhaps at cheating – which may actually be a very useful skill). But why bother to study in the first place only to cheat? Cheating, one might think, would be robbing oneself of the opportunity to learn.
This could be explained by a mix of laziness and stupidity. But are cheaters really so stupid as to act against their own self-interest? I suspect not. While people certainly make mistakes, as a general rule they know what is good for them. People are not as stupid as other people tend to think they are. It is all too human to dismiss humanity as stupid.
Let’s give the cheaters the benefit of the doubt and at least temporarily assume that they know what they are doing. That they prefer cheating to learning suggests that they believe at least one of the following two things: Either that it will be more convenient to acquire the knowledge in the future than now, or that they do not need to acquire it at all. Neither belief speaks well of the value of education, even if they should turn out to be wrong.
Will cheating come back to bite the students later? Sometimes, but clearly not frequently enough to discourage the cheating. Most useful knowledge is highly specific, while most schooling is highly general. While there are certainly many useful things taught in school, there are certainly also many useless things.
But why study at all? Because we have to. Children study because adults make them, and adults study because society makes them. Schools stop being the way past the obstacle, and instead become the obstacle.
This doesn’t mean that knowledge is useless. But it does mean that we have failed to convince cheating students that it is useful. Or perhaps more likely, because we have failed to convince them that schools are the way to acquire it.
Perhaps because they aren’t.
Jakob Sjölander