Has Technology Changed Kids' Sense of Right and Wrong?
Technology makes cheating tempting
We have to help kids create their own ethical world
Kids love cell phones
Kids admit they cheat with phones and the Internet
Cheating is as old as the sun. So the dispiriting results of Common Sense Media's June 2009 nationwide poll on cheating that surveyed middle and high school students didn’t really shock me. Among the juicier tidbits: A third of students admit they’ve used their cell phones for something other than phoning home (like taking pictures of answers or tests to share with their friends). And more than half said they’ve passed off something they found online as their own work. Kids admit to using high-tech ways to get around having to study (never mind that some of these strategies involve far more creativity and time investment than the tests they aim to outfox).
But what really alarmed me were kids’ attitudes toward cheating. Call me old fashioned, but isn’t cheating a bit like pregnancy? You’re either pregnant or you aren’t. You’re either cheating or you aren’t. Not much grey area that I can see. But that’s not what the survey showed. Kids actually thought there were a range of offenses, from serious to “just helping yourself and a friend.” And I think technology lies at the heart of this.
Technology makes cheating tempting
Personal technologies have created massive leaps forward in our kids’ abilities to communicate, create, and collaborate. But they have an unintended consequence: They diminish the connection between action and consequence. Much of what goes on in digital life happens anonymously, which can make people think they can escape being caught. Remote access also lessens the sense of face-to-face responsibility. So what if you take a stranger’s paper and pass it off as your own? Then there’s the ease with which information can be found, captured, and sent to friends -- lots of them. Add to this an ability to communicate completely under parents' and teachers' radar, and you have a formula for kids thinking they can get away with less-than-ethical behavior.
We have to help kids create their own ethical world
As our kids create the content and the rules of this brave new world they'll live in, don’t they want a responsible society where people are who they say they are, write what they said they’ve written, and respect others' creativity? Right now, our kids’ technological abilities outstrip their judgment. It’s up to parents and teachers to remind this generation that they have a choice: They can create an honest, open Internet and mobile world, or they can create one in which they'll always have to be suspicious of what they find and who they know.
The choice is literally in their hands, since they’re creating their own ethical world one click or keyboard stroke at a time.
Kids love cell phones
Kids are getting cell phones more and more often.
Kids are getting cell phones more and more often.How can we help kids avoid the temptation to cheat?
There are 10 community opinions on this topic
Kids have been cheating since the dawn of time.
Cell phones and such just make it easier.
Way to test multiple hypothesis, "Common Sense" Media.
id never cheat on tests with my cellphone its wrong and anyways my mom and dad would probaly take my phone away for a month they really care about how well i do in school anyways i think im mature enough to no thats not right
technology doesn't make cheating tempting, the provided material is what tempts children to cheat.
I don't understand the point of the article. Yes, there are some kids who will cheat on tests, and use phones to do it. What are you actually proposing? Maybe instead of removing the tools a few kids might use to cheat you should atempt to be parents and teach them not to cheat.
Kids cheat and they always will. If a kid knows that it is wrong to cheat hopefully they will just stay out of it trust me its possible cuz i've never cheated and i hope that less kids will
thats wierd. in my school there are only 5 in 300 that text during class.
lbesuf What is the world are you talking about I don't cheat, lie, steal. The consequences are just not worth it.
Seriously, in what pretented perfect world are we living? Have we forgotten that most of us did cheat at school at one or the other stage? Have we forgotten how many times our little notes were useless because we knew exactly what was written on them?
What really gets to me though, is that you link cheating with a lack of ethical values and that you pretend the latter will have consequences in the pupils life. What are you trying to tell us? That the repercussion of cheating might twist the kids to real hustlers or criminals? Oh, I know now why our prisons are crowded, thank you for making this clear!
In pragmatic terms I don’t think that the new technologies really alleviate cheating dramatically. Little saved notes in the cell phone just replace the notes on a little piece of paper or in the palm of the hand. Digital messages to an accomplice just replace the hand signs we used to make to our class mates as soon as the teacher turned his back.
I don’t even agree when the study stipulates that the accessibility to already written essays via the internet is much easier than in the past. Let’s face the truth, teachers are most of the time lazy. They repeat their lessons in exact the same way and structure as they did over and over again through the past years. They don’t change or adapt their documents and constantly distribute the same old papers. In terms of tests or exams the same applies; over and over again they ask the same questions throughout the generations.
I can’t remember how many times, I or one of my friends went to the one year older generation and asked them for their exams and essays of the previous year. And exactly like with the internet today, we paid 1-5 bucks for it depending on the degree of difficulty. So what’s the difference between yesterday and today?
The study reports that there is no grey zone in terms of cheating. Either the kids are open for swindle or they aren’t. Again, I can’t subscribe to this point of view, in general I think that the majority of the kids would cheat if they had the guts to do so, independently of their sense for ethics. By all means, kids constantly try to push their limits as far as possible, in each individual case, evaluating their odds to be caught against the potential profit. When adults do that they just and simply call it risk assessment & management.
At last you ask the parents to educate their kids how to use these new technologies and especially how NOT to use them. Wow, that’s a real great advice! Let me make a short and non exhaustive list of what I or my parents already told our children NOT to do, but they did howsoever:
- Not to smoke
- Not to swear
- Not to drink or take drugs
- Not to steal, cheat or lie
I can assure you that I do control all these points whilst being in the presence of my children and I’m sure that you do too, but how the hell do you think we should monitor these misbehaviours while they’re at school?! Isn’t it their (school) responsibility or did I misunderstand something?
Finally let me just say that instead of teaching only hard facts – i.e. when did Columbus discover America – and claim that our children suffer from a lack of ethical values, you should rather teach them real ethical values like “how to live in peace and acceptance with our fellow men”. The latter is astonishingly only taught in church, not so at school though!
As a university prof (1st year students are barely 18 and very fresh!) I don't think the line is always so clear to kids.
Sometimes it's obvious: The time I caught a student clicking through her cell phone on a multi choice test (I'd left the questions in the same order but she didn't seem to realize I'd mixed up the answers) the others all knew she shouldn't've been doing it, just as they agreed when I insisted a student ended a call she took DURING class. (She claimed it was her mother. I said her mother would want her to do well in class.)
But when to use quote marks, when to cite sources, how to work together on an assignment and not give identical answers--it all seems obvious to me, but is something I explain over and over. They could be tricking me, but I think this is lacking in their preparation.
Teach the brats not to cheat. That's as simple as that. How they cheat shouldn't matter, the fact is they should be taught better than cheating at all.
Not that it really matters, they'll learn quick enough that doing it right often won't get you anywhere in this world. But it's nice to know you taught them right.