Best Posts in Thread: I don't "cheat", I learn.

ok so I read all of this and related to all of it and then i realized it's because we go to the same school and you are my friend

 

Cheating in school. Chances are, we've all done it in the past. But I personally believe that what many consider "cheating" is not a bad thing, but a way to learn. I will not be talking about cheating on tests in this thread because that is something that I personally would never do or recommend.
Now before you assume that I don't care about my grades and that I constantly cheat, I don't. I have a 4.0 GPA and usually get nice test grades, because I use the homework of my peers and let them use my homework as a tool for learning. There is, in my opinion, a good and a bad way to cheat.

Bad cheating: Copying down someone's geometry answers onto your sheet without seeing what you did wrong and turning it in without any work shown. While I do not recommend doing this all the time, we've all had those panicky assignments where the teacher didn't explain anything and we end up having a 10-page homework assignment on it. If a situation like this happens, remember the 2 main rules of direct cheating:
-NEVER copy answers word-for-word, whether you get them off of the internet or from others.
-If it involves math, ALWAYS copy work down to show that you "know" how to do it.

If a time of direct cheating occurs, still try to find some time at home on youtube looking for tutorials and teaching yourself. Some teachers just aren't good at their jobs.

Good cheating: Looking at the work of multiple people, to see what answer most people got on the problem. seeing what you did wrong, and correcting yourself. Perhaps asking the person to briefly teach you, or copying down their answers and reworking the problem on your own time to see if you can get it right. Maybe asking a friend to send you a picture of their homework over text or skype to see how they worked it out. Googling exact tests and studying the information rather than remembering the letters of the answers also falls under good cheating.

Teachers are always threatening us like, "If you can google it, I can too!" or "If you cheat you will get bad test grades!" But honestly, if you cheat the right way, you will end up learning and understanding more than you did in the first place. And about the plagiarism thing, simply rearranging and rewording sentences or statements will wipe out the possibility of your teacher finding out you copied, along with maintaining your usual writing style. (Not saying you should direct copy, just saying it's silly how some teachers think we're dumb enough to copy a source directly.) So yeah, that's all.



wow i should write a pamphlet
anyway have fun with the poll

 

Unfortunately, this mindset, to me, is more dangerous than an anti-cheating mindset. Most careers will not require you to do your job without help or without working with other people. Sure, you certainly need a solid foundation of knowledge in each subject, and to know the core basics of whatever career you are pursuing, but never will an employer not allow you to get help from other resources or people. I think most tests should be open-book, personally.
However, I cannot stand kids who just copy other kids' work or cheat off of people on tests. I think that's low and is 'bad cheating' because most of those people will not actually understand it. I'm talking about good, resourceful cheating.

Overall, learning how to use resources and how you learn > memorizing or learning exact concepts etc