The Age of Cheating: To What End?

Donald McCabe has conducted massive surveys of college and high school students to determine the scope of cheating for almost two decades. A former businessman who now teaches business at Rutgers University, McCabe has surveyed 165,000 students at 160 colleges and universities, 18,000 faculty at 110 institutions, and 35,000 students at high schools.

The results are staggering. Almost all students admit some form of cheating. Even worse, most of them find easy rationalizations for cheating. _Cheating2.0

Where do children and youth learn to behave ethically in today's society? They don't. By the time a youth attends high school or college, they are assumed to have been taught basic rules of honesty and self-responsibility. But that assumption is wrong. Whatever ethical codes today's youth may learn, they learned from their peers and from a ghoulish popular culture and media.

The old ways of learning ethics -- classic fables, allegories, myths and archetypes -- have largely gone the way of the dinosaur. Modern ethical rules are learned from song lyrics, teen flicks, and social networking. No wonder everyone cheats. No wonder shoplifting has become so popular. No wonder dishonesty is becoming the basis for most political, academic, and journalistic careers.

Perhaps the growth of cheating suggests an even more intractable problem, mirroring a larger breakdown in social order. When the community does not make an active effort to maintain order, more people are emboldened to violate rules. (ibid)

The mirror reflects both ways. A positive feedback system of behaviour. No rules leads to disorder which leads to even less teaching of rules, etc. In a multi-traditional society, where the old order has collapsed and a new order has not taken its place, the lack of an "organising principal" opens the door to chaos and accelerating centripetal force.