“Cheating Gets You Nowhere”

T.J. Dougherty a former student and athlete at Cabrini College talked about teacher's and coaches favoritism of athletes. He talked about some of his friends being illegally recruited to go to big school such as Pin State, Stanford, and Harvard. T.J. was an active team member in soccer at his school and he noticed that many teachers let them slack off and gave them grades. As far as coaches go he said “they tried to bribe him into performing well on the team.” His coaches would give their players soccer equipment, free meals, clothes and even took them out to eat just to butter them up. As the rest of them took up the offers so did he. It was not until he noticed he would not study for test and would make a bad grade but the teacher would give him a good grade. He could not bear to see the students that had to study so hard all night just to make a B. It was then that he knew what he was doing was wrong. Unlike the others he chose to take school more seriously and began to get more into the books instead of soccer. He now knew that soccer was not more important then your education. This is when he came up with the theory of his paper for his English class “cheating gets you nowhere”. (Click on the Student's Papers link and then scroll down to click on T.J. Dougherty's paper)

This article touched me because I am one of those students that must study hard all night just to make a B. In my opinion athletes are treated differently and are unaware of what not having an education can lead you. Many athletes get big headed because they tend to be the talk of the school and many admire them. In my opinion if you don't have someone to lead you to the right path of not cheating and trying to always take the easy way out that will become a life long habit that will become harder to get rid of. I think as well as teaching the students about education and team sports they should also teach them that challenging your self will help you to succeed. Many have low self-esteem and tend to take the easy way out only because they don't challenge themselves and they fell that what they are doing is all they can be good at. Here is a question to all athletes, if you break a leg, or get injured in any kind of way what will you have to fall back on, and if teachers and coaches have the power to give you all those things don't they have the power to take it all away in just a split second?

Comments

[Lani]

Hi Tavon,

I really enjoyed reading your posting, especially when you said:

“In my opinion if you don't have someone to lead you to the right path of not cheating and trying to always take the easy way out that will become a life long habit that will become harder to get rid of. I think as well as teaching the students about education and team sports they should also teach them that challenging your self will help you to succeed. Many have low self-esteem and tend to take the easy way out only because they don't challenge themselves and they fell that what they are doing is all they can be good at.”

Whew, teaching is really a complex activity isn’t it? There is teaching content (English, Math or History), and being a role model, and pushing students to always take on a challenge, yet making sure you’ve helped them with the skills they’ll need to be successful in the end.

I got to thinking about cheating and guiding students on the right path. When I was in college, we were on the honor system. There were no professors in the room when we took exams. If someone was cheating, another student stood up and asked the “cheater” to stop. Surprisingly enough, this was very successful. Do you think this could be a strategy now? (Why do I think I hear you laughing at me?) I wonder why times have changed?? I’m wondering now, if you were with a group of elementary students, let’s say first grade, do you think there are activities you could plan for them so they would come to realize that “cheating gets you nowhere”? Do you think that might make a difference?

Best wishes from someone else who had to and still does have to study really hard,
Lani

"Opposition is a natural part of life. Just as we develop our physical muscles through overcoming opposition - such as lifting weights - we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and adversity."
Steven Covey

[tincher]

I have never really understood the benefits of cheating. You are in the class to learn and it is a stepping stone to the next class or grade or diploma. I agree that athletes should not be given grades. The answer is to make sure that all persons involved to agree that academics are important and we do a disservice to students when we give them grades. Have you ever witnessed students getting special privileges because they were athletes?

[Tavon]

To commit I also feel the same way but I also feel that if a child has to cheat all the time than maybe the teacher needs to do a better job at teaching. However I don’t agree with the athletes getting more privileges. Most of the time when you let students get the easy way out they tend to pay for it in the long run. To answer your question I don’t feel that students at our school get special treatment. I am an athlete myself and classes seem to be even harder when you are in a sport a lot of times you have to study and go to practice but if that’s what your really want to do than it will motivate you do get good grades so that you can play sports in school. All and all cheating gets you no where and that’s a fact.

Sincerely,
Tavon