Post #26: Cheating Is Wrong

The article "Cheating Upwards" begins with the story of Nayeem Ahsan and his incredible cheating scandal at Stuyvesant, an elite academy in lower Manhattan.  There are no thoughts, reflections, or even related facts stated by the author in the first one and a half pages; he just describes what happened this historic event, and so it reads like a short story.  However, at this point, the article shifts to listing and briefly describing related incidents of cheating, and as a result, the research that has been done to discover cheating statistics and why students cheat.  The author even throws in an experiment about what people think is acceptable to do without even realizing that it is cheating, and talks about the biological, psychological, and outside influences that make teenagers want to cheat.  In the last third of the article, the author shifts back to describing Nayeem Ahsan's cheating history up until this most recent scandal, and what will happen to him--and all the 140 others--now that he has been caught.

In "Cheating Upwards," Nayeem Ahsan is the main character, or the protagonist, and his cheating scandal is the rising action being caught by the principal and kicked out of school is the climax.  However, the passage about Nayeem's years of cheating leading up to the climax is also part of the rising action, and the discussion of what is to be done with him (in terms of where he will finish school), the other 140 students who were part of the cheating scandal, and the school itself is the resolution.  And everything in the middle--the related incidents of cheating, the research that has been done about why it happens, when cheating is acceptable vs. when it's not, biological/psychological/outside influences on students to cheat, etc.--is the falling action, the information we are learning that leads us up to the resolution.

I remembered a fair amount of the article before I read it--that Nayeem cheated, that he had cheated many times before, that he had been kicked out of school, etc.--but I had forgotten, or maybe had not even noticed, Nayeem's attitude toward all of this, even in the end.  I was shocked at how unwavering he was in his notion that his cheating has helped people, and he would do it all over again if he could, despite where it had gotten him.  I just don't understand that; I believe that, especially when it comes to academic work, people have to earn their own way.  They can be helped, and tutored, and tested endlessly, but when it comes to a test, or writing a paper, they can't have someone answering the questions and doing the work for them.  I understand that the teenagers who are more prone to cheating don't yet have fully developed brains like the adults who punish them do, that they prioritize the "thrill" of something over the morals it provides.  I understand that families, colleges, and other outside sources are pressuring their children to produce amazing pieces of work, and that said children are just trying to do what they can to live up to those expectations.  But, I stand by the decision I made back in May when I first read this article: cheating is still wrong.