Academic dishonesty is arguably as old as school itself. In pursuit of the highest marks, many students in the past and some of their counterparts today do their utmost to conceive ingenious ways to cheat in homework assignments or at exams. Even though the number of students reporting cheating seems to have been down year by year, cheating is still as much of a problem as it has always been.
To counter cheating, some argue that the most effective way is for school authorities to create homework assignments or exam situations in which students can hardly cheat, reasoning that if it is almost impossible for students to cheat, they would definitely give up the intention. Detractors of this argument presents an opposite opinion that a better way to prevent cheating from happening is to increase punishment for cheating since it can stir up the fear from the bottom of students' heart. With all aspects considered carefully, I honestly believe asking parents to monitor and guide their children is most effective.
As we all know, cheating behaviors are well-established in elementary school, high school, and universities and colleges. It seems that as long as they think others are cheating, students feel they have no choice but to cheat as well. Why on earth do they cheat? Well, student cheating is primarily fueled by pressure to earn good grades, good grades not to satisfy their own vanity but to please their parents. Indeed, today's parents have increasingly high expectations on their children, either on high achieving ones or on others. Moreover, parents, especially helicopter parents, are apt to pour out a cascade of scolding whenever their children fail to attain a decent academic performance. Under these circumstances, if parents switch from whatever they are doing before to provide proper guidance to their children and take the responsibility to monitor their study, these youngsters might sooner or later learn what their parents are concerned most is whether they have obtained real knowledge but not fake scores. They would eventually know what the right thing is and never would they cheat in homework assignments or exams.
Modern students, who are extremely inventive, use various mobile devices, invisible earphones and different types of electronics to help them prosper in exams, not to mention in the homework assignments where no teacher is supervising. Faced with these new cheating techniques, teachers are bound to feel powerless to combat mischievous students one after another. As was mentioned up front, asking parents to intervene to guide and monitor their own children is imperative and would produce the most desired effects.