It's a student's dream: Your teacher catches you cheating1, and your parents take your side. That's exactly what happened last December to a group of high school students in Kansas. Teacher Christine Pelton had given her students a biology homework. When the kids turned in their papers, Pelton found that almost a quarter of them had been cheated, not only cheated, but cheated poorly. According to Pelton, entire parts of the papers were the same, copied from the same Internet websites. Guess what Pelton did: She gave each of the cheaters a “zero” and a failing grade.
Guess too what followed: parents of the cheaters complained2 to the school board, refusing to believe their children had cheated. All the parents said, the punishment was too hard. Then the school board3 agreed, ordered Pelton to give the cheaters some mark for their work. The cheaters were very happy. The next day, Pelton told a local newspaper Star, “I went to my class and tried to teach the kids, but they were laughing and shouting, ‘We don't have to listen to you anymore.’”
Pelton's case is surely not the only one—At many high schools and universities, cheating is common, teachers are usually helpless. A study on students found that in most schools, more than 75 percent of students cheat. And why not? Another study on teachers found that “one-third of those who knew student cheating did nothing to stop it.” That means, there are far more cheaters than there are Christine Peltons.
Why do we have more cheaters nowadays? The Internet has made cheating very easy. Dozens of websites with names like XX.com offer ready papers for sale. It's only a mouse click away.
On the other hand, several websites offer software that automatically4 compares the text of homework against a database5 of thousands of published written materials. If there's a match, there's likely cheating. That's what Christine Pelton did to track down those cheaters in her class. But when institutions like Columbia University6 considered buying anti-cheating software, some were against it and argued that doing so might hurt a cheater's self-pride. Catching cheaters shouldn't be “a 'hang 'em out to dry' act, but rather an educational one,” said Kathleen McDermott, the associate7 dean8 of teaching affairs, in an interview with the Columbia student newspaper.
Now who on the earth is the suspect9 who drives America's students to cheat? You guess it: teachers! Rebecca Moore Howard, teacher of writing at Syracuse University, wrote in her Chronicle of Higher Education, “we (teachers) risk becoming the enemies rather than the mentors10 of our students; we are replacing the student-teacher relationship with the prisoner-police relationship. ” In her telling, students cheat not because they are dishonest and lazy, but because they're tired (“many of them are working long hours at outside jobs”) and henpecked11 by perfectionist12 teachers.
Students like Darcy Jones summed up her opposition to anti-cheating this way: “It totally hurts a person's right to choose whether or not they want to” cheat.
A person's right to choose cheating. Laugh if you want, but cheating just may be the next civil right.
作弊时被教师当场逮住，可父母却帮你说话——这可以学生梦寐以求的事。而这种怪事的的确确发生在堪萨斯州一群中学生身上，时间是去年十二月。当时克里斯汀·帕尔顿老师给学生布置了生物作业。当小家伙们交上作业时，帕尔顿老师发现差不多四分之一的作业是抄来的。是抄袭，而且抄得很笨拙。据帕尔顿老师说，作业整段整段的一模一样，都是从同一些网站上拷贝下来的。你猜帕尔顿老师怎么做——她给每个作弊者打了零分，没一个及格。
再猜猜，接着发生了什么——那些作弊者的父母对学校董事会表示不满，不相信他们的孩子有作弊行为。那些做父母的都说老师的处罚太严厉。校董事会竟接受了他们的观点，责令帕尔顿老师给那些作弊者加分。作弊者闻之欣喜若狂。第二天帕尔顿老师对当地报纸《星报》说道：“我去上课，试着教育那些孩子，可那些孩子却嘲笑我，还大喊大叫，说‘我们不必再听你的了！’”
这种情况决不是个别的——在许多中学和大学,作弊非常普遍，教师常常无能为力。一项针对学生的研究发现，大多数学校园超过75%的学生都作弊。为什么不呢？另一项针对教师的研究发现，“三分之一的教师发现学生作弊后并没有加以制止。”也就是说，从人数上讲，舞弊者要比帕尔顿这样的反舞弊者多得多。
为什么现在作弊者比过去多了呢？互联网使作弊者轻易得手。数十个像XX.com这样的网站有写好的论文待售，轻点鼠标就可找到。
另一方面，一些网站提供软件，能自动把学生的作业文本与数据库中数千篇发表过的作品进行比较。如果匹配的话，很可能就是作弊。克里斯汀·帕尔顿就是用这个办法查出作弊者的。但当哥伦比亚大学（简称“哥大”）这样的机构考虑购买反作弊软件时，一些人却出来反对，声称这样做可能损害作弊者的自尊。大学教务处副处长凯瑟琳·麦克德莫特在接受哥大学生报纸采访时说，反作弊运动不应该发展成“把作弊者拉出来示众的行为，而应该是一种教育行为。”
那么，到底是谁涉嫌驱使美国学生作弊呢？你猜对了——是教师。丽贝卡·摩尔·霍华德，赛勒库斯大学的作文教师，在她的《高等教育编年史》中写道，“我们教师有可能成为学生的敌人，而不是他们的良师益友；师生关系正演变为囚犯与警察似的（对抗）关系。”用她的话讲，学生抄袭往往不是因为他们不诚实和懒惰，而是因为他们累了（“他们很多人要在校外打很长时间的工”），因为追求完美的教师把他们管得太死。
对于反舞弊运动，诸如达西·琼斯这样的学生是这样总结其反感的：“打击舞弊运动完全剥夺了个人选择的权利。”
一个人选择舞弊的权利。想笑你就笑吧，或许作弊真能成为一项公民权呢。
1. cheat v． 欺骗, 骗取
2． complain v． 抱怨
3． school board 学校董事会
4． automatically adv． 自动地, 机械地
5． database n． 数据库, 资料库
6． Columbia University 哥伦比亚大学
7． associate adj． 副的
8． dean n． 系主任
9． suspect n． 嫌疑犯
10． mentor n． 贤明的顾问, 导师
11． henpeck v． 管治
12． perfectionist n． 十全十美主义者, 至善论者