Where's the Honor in Honor's Kids?(Cheating Habits of Students)

Contrary to popular belief, honors students cheat just as much or more than students in regular classes do.   Honors students are assumed to be hardworking, responsible, and honest. Yet these “above average” students are frequently taking part in the same dishonest conduct of the ordinary students, performing the task better and getting away with it more than the regular students.


Explaining why honors students are better at cheating is difficult because every cheating student follows the same unwritten process to guide him to victory. The process is simple.   First a cheater decides how he is going to cheat. He has many options including inscribing answers on various body parts (hand, thigh, etc.), creating pocket-sized notes, asking an earlier class for the answers, and plagiarizing. He can also place his hand upon his face (next to his eyes) angled away from the teacher while turning his head slightly in the opposite direction of the teacher and look at his neighbor’s paper.   The following tactics are risky and are reserved for the more adventurous kids. They are snatching the teacher’s answer key, asking for assistance with a question while peeking at the answer key (at a teacher’s desk), hacking into a teacher’s computer for grade adjustments, and opening a textbook on the ground while taking a test. One of the most creative strategies I’ve heard of is peeling the wrapping from a clear water bottle off to write the answers on the blank side; then taping the wrapping back onto the bottle exposing the answers when one looks through the clear bottle. Of course some regular students have been known to try these conniving techniques, they have been mastered by the honors students.


The second step in the cheating process is when a student realistically imagines himself using the technique he chose in the first step.   This is a planning stage that requires a student to pretend and prepare his developing plan of cheating. The better the student can...