4. CHEATING IN EXAMINATIONS IS REAL!

This week (November 2019) the newspapers have been full of details of tens of thousands of young children, teenagers and undergraduates cheating in examinations. An increasing number of university undergraduates are apparently consulting ‘cheating websites’ to help them attain a good degree. Is it because their minds are so crammed full of modern-cyber that it draws them towards having to cheat, the X-box, the Smartphone or the vast array of computer games and sensational films available in today’s world? Are these gadgets far more desirable than sitting in the university or college library, studying from books?

Studying seems to be the latest ‘thing of the past’! We need to seek wisdom, not assume that what we see and read is real wisdom! University education is expensive yet does not honour the rights of the individual who has to live with personal debt, particularly individuals who choose not to cheat and who have self-esteem enough to know right from wrong. It is all well and good to catch a few thousand cheats, as with the Olympic athletes’ drug scandals in 2012 and 2016, but what about the hundreds of thousands who cheat, are not caught and have graduated? Does this indicate a very unfair system of higher education?

It worries me that the modern world is failing to inspire the young to wish to be upright, honest, intelligent and able, and want to work hard to achieve an end-result, yet will receive the same degree as the cheats? Will it be as good a degree? What of the future as cheating becomes more prevalent? Welcome to the world of virtual reality! Suppose a graduate leaves university as a cheat and is appointed to a job that they cannot do, have not earned, should not rightfully have and that may cause great problems by ineptitude in their job that will have been caused because our so-called, sophisticated modern ‘app-saturated’ world of ‘big brother’ missed their cheating!