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I can perfectly understand people saying 'this assignment/test is ridiculous. I'm not going to put any effort in it and rather copy/cheat and spend my time in a

by neilc 17y ago

I can perfectly understand people saying 'this assignment/test is ridiculous. I'm not going to put any effort in it and rather copy/cheat and spend my time in a more productive way'. I can understand why someone might say that, but it would still be immoral and dishonest of them to cheat. When you take a class, you enter into a contract (often an explicit academic honesty policy) to not cheat. If you find the assignment ridiculous, then don't take the class, register your objections with the professor, or don't hand in the assignment. You can't ethically disregard the terms of a contract just because you deem them "ridiculous."

Confusion 17y ago
We have different opinions on what is ethical. Disregarding the terms of a contract, or the law for what that matters, may be perfectly ethical in my book. There is always a difference between the letter of the contract and the intention of the contract. The letter is the same for everyone, but the intention isn't. For instance, the law must forbid jaywalking, to be able to punish those that jaywalk and endanger themselves or others. However, when I get a red light at four in the morning and I don't see a car for a mile in both directions, then I will jaywalk. If a cop sees me, he should understand that the law wasn't meant to cover that case, even though it does. It's intended to protect people, not to be applied by the letter. The same holds for the contract you have with a school. It must forbid cheating, to prevent people from harming themselves. That doesn't mean that every individual case of cheating is necessarily immoral. Circumstances and intentions are exactly why we need courts: to interpret the intention of the law in many different cases.
- neilc 17y ago
  So you're basically arguing that there are situations when cheating is ethical if it wasn't the intent of the academic honestly policy to disallow it. Let's suppose that is true: what is a case of cheating that academic honesty policies aren't intended to disallow? Certainly a student cheating because they find the assignment "ridiculous" is very much what an academic policy is explicitly designed to outlaw. The same holds for the contract you have with a school. It must forbid cheating, to prevent people from harming themselves. The primary goal of an academic honesty policy is clearly not "to prevent people from harming themselves."
  - Retric 17y ago
    From a Yale's perspective they don't mind that some rich student is cheating if they are not blatant, because it does not harm the school's reputation to let them relative to the benefit of having that type of student graduate. Having an football player cheat at Virginia Tech is inline with the schools larger goals relative to having that student fail. Now all schools are going to make a pretense of an academic honesty policy, but some schools actively use that as a screen to let students cheat their way to C's. Edit: I still think cheating harms fellow students, but plenty of schools let fairly rampant cheating go on for years.
- jerf 17y ago
  "The same holds for the contract you have with a school." You can not have a "contract" with the school. The student is being coerced, to a degree not dissimilar to a prisoner. (I am not saying that a student is exactly the same as a prisoner, because I can think of many relevant differences, I'm just saying the coercion level is similar; it is unilateral, the scope is huge, and there is no way out for most of it.) The concept of "contract" is not relevant. If you think cheating is bad only because it is a violation of contract, then cheating is not bad. (You may not agree with the word "only"; I am making a logical statement here. If you think it's bad for other reasons, as I do, then that does not falsify that logical statement.)
  - falien 17y ago
    As another commenter suggested, there is a stark difference between high school and universities. high schools in the US can be justifiably compared to prisons in this sense, but universities cannot.
    - neilc 17y ago
      I think the comparison with prisons is pretty bunk. Students and their parents get to choose which school they'd like to attend; for many people, that means an enormous amount of school choice. With home schooling in many states and the GED, students have still more choice. And of course, you're free to drop out -- you just have to be willing to accept the consequences.
- lutorm 17y ago
  The difference between a law and a contract is that you can choose to not sign the contract if you don't agree with the terms, so arguing after the fact that you will only obey the terms of the contract that you like makes me hope I never have to do business with you.
  - Confusion 17y ago
    My argument does not apply to the case were two parties have fully negotiated the terms of a contract. It applies to cases where the terms are not negotiable. If thousands of others have signed the same contract, then there is no room for individual variations in the terms, even if that would benefit both parties. Try to get a different contract with your local library or a university: impossible, even though it would be in you, their and societies best interest. The pragmatic choice is to sign the contract, but break it in a way advantageous to all parties involved.
lucumo 17y ago
> When you take a class, you enter into a contract (often an explicit academic honesty policy) to not cheat. There's quite a difference between a university where you're on your own volition and high school where you're obligated to stay. The morality of cheating in high school is a lot different from cheating in a university.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  Bullshit. You can't separate them like that when your admission to a given university is based largely on your academic performance in high school. Your presence there is not just by your own choice; you're competing with others for limited enrollment. By cheating to get enrolled in the first place you deprive honest students of academic opportunity.
  - Confusion 17y ago
    You're equating 'cheating' with 'lacking knowledge/skill', which is unfounded. In the preceding discussion we are talking about cases where cheating would be considered ethical by some, because the trade-off is acceptable. For instance, someone may be on their way to becoming a very good physicist and doesn't care for compulsory german. Who cares if a current physics professor ever cheated at german?
    - GHFigs 17y ago
      You're equating 'cheating' with 'lacking knowledge/skill' I said nothing of the kind. I am saying it is an unfair advantage in obtaining academic opportunity over equally or more capable students who are more honest. Even between two students of exactly equal ability, the dishonest student has the advantage. For instance, someone may be on their way to becoming a very good physicist and doesn't care for compulsory german. What part of this implies they deserve a high grade in German? Would a student doing equally well in German but poorly in Physics (because he doesn't care for it) deserve a high grade in Physics? Do either of them deserve higher grades than an honest student earning grades slightly below each of them? Does that student deserve to go to an inferior college?

by neilc 17y ago

Confusion 17y ago

We have different opinions on what is ethical. Disregarding the terms of a contract, or the law for what that matters, may be perfectly ethical in my book. There is always a difference between the letter of the contract and the intention of the contract. The letter is the same for everyone, but the intention isn't. For instance, the law must forbid jaywalking, to be able to punish those that jaywalk and endanger themselves or others. However, when I get a red light at four in the morning and I don't see a car for a mile in both directions, then I will jaywalk. If a cop sees me, he should understand that the law wasn't meant to cover that case, even though it does. It's intended to protect people, not to be applied by the letter. The same holds for the contract you have with a school. It must forbid cheating, to prevent people from harming themselves. That doesn't mean that every individual case of cheating is necessarily immoral. Circumstances and intentions are exactly why we need courts: to interpret the intention of the law in many different cases.

neilc 17y ago
So you're basically arguing that there are situations when cheating is ethical if it wasn't the intent of the academic honestly policy to disallow it. Let's suppose that is true: what is a case of cheating that academic honesty policies aren't intended to disallow? Certainly a student cheating because they find the assignment "ridiculous" is very much what an academic policy is explicitly designed to outlaw. The same holds for the contract you have with a school. It must forbid cheating, to prevent people from harming themselves. The primary goal of an academic honesty policy is clearly not "to prevent people from harming themselves."
- Retric 17y ago
  From a Yale's perspective they don't mind that some rich student is cheating if they are not blatant, because it does not harm the school's reputation to let them relative to the benefit of having that type of student graduate. Having an football player cheat at Virginia Tech is inline with the schools larger goals relative to having that student fail. Now all schools are going to make a pretense of an academic honesty policy, but some schools actively use that as a screen to let students cheat their way to C's. Edit: I still think cheating harms fellow students, but plenty of schools let fairly rampant cheating go on for years.
jerf 17y ago
"The same holds for the contract you have with a school." You can not have a "contract" with the school. The student is being coerced, to a degree not dissimilar to a prisoner. (I am not saying that a student is exactly the same as a prisoner, because I can think of many relevant differences, I'm just saying the coercion level is similar; it is unilateral, the scope is huge, and there is no way out for most of it.) The concept of "contract" is not relevant. If you think cheating is bad only because it is a violation of contract, then cheating is not bad. (You may not agree with the word "only"; I am making a logical statement here. If you think it's bad for other reasons, as I do, then that does not falsify that logical statement.)
- falien 17y ago
  As another commenter suggested, there is a stark difference between high school and universities. high schools in the US can be justifiably compared to prisons in this sense, but universities cannot.
  - neilc 17y ago
    I think the comparison with prisons is pretty bunk. Students and their parents get to choose which school they'd like to attend; for many people, that means an enormous amount of school choice. With home schooling in many states and the GED, students have still more choice. And of course, you're free to drop out -- you just have to be willing to accept the consequences.
lutorm 17y ago
The difference between a law and a contract is that you can choose to not sign the contract if you don't agree with the terms, so arguing after the fact that you will only obey the terms of the contract that you like makes me hope I never have to do business with you.
- Confusion 17y ago
  My argument does not apply to the case were two parties have fully negotiated the terms of a contract. It applies to cases where the terms are not negotiable. If thousands of others have signed the same contract, then there is no room for individual variations in the terms, even if that would benefit both parties. Try to get a different contract with your local library or a university: impossible, even though it would be in you, their and societies best interest. The pragmatic choice is to sign the contract, but break it in a way advantageous to all parties involved.

lucumo 17y ago

> When you take a class, you enter into a contract (often an explicit academic honesty policy) to not cheat. There's quite a difference between a university where you're on your own volition and high school where you're obligated to stay. The morality of cheating in high school is a lot different from cheating in a university.

GHFigs 17y ago
Bullshit. You can't separate them like that when your admission to a given university is based largely on your academic performance in high school. Your presence there is not just by your own choice; you're competing with others for limited enrollment. By cheating to get enrolled in the first place you deprive honest students of academic opportunity.
- Confusion 17y ago
  You're equating 'cheating' with 'lacking knowledge/skill', which is unfounded. In the preceding discussion we are talking about cases where cheating would be considered ethical by some, because the trade-off is acceptable. For instance, someone may be on their way to becoming a very good physicist and doesn't care for compulsory german. Who cares if a current physics professor ever cheated at german?
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    You're equating 'cheating' with 'lacking knowledge/skill' I said nothing of the kind. I am saying it is an unfair advantage in obtaining academic opportunity over equally or more capable students who are more honest. Even between two students of exactly equal ability, the dishonest student has the advantage. For instance, someone may be on their way to becoming a very good physicist and doesn't care for compulsory german. What part of this implies they deserve a high grade in German? Would a student doing equally well in German but poorly in Physics (because he doesn't care for it) deserve a high grade in Physics? Do either of them deserve higher grades than an honest student earning grades slightly below each of them? Does that student deserve to go to an inferior college?