Uh... at least they answered honestly?

posted 05:34 PM 12/01
Permanent Link.

In case you missed it, the Associated Press reorted on a survey that found more students admit to stealing and plagiarism than in past years but that more than 90 percent are satisfied with their moral character.

Yikes. Pretty sobering. So, I looked up the Josephson Institute's actual data and it wasn't completely bleak. Here are some other excerpts:

- 90 percent of students disagreed with the statement "In sports, if you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough."

- 70 percent of students have never stolen from a store (at least, that's what they say!)

- 89 percent of students say it's more important to have a good character than to be rich

- 91 percent of students say it's important to play by the rules, even if it means that they lose.

(Of course, I think that many would like to see those totals closer to 100 percent, instead of "just" a vast majority.)

What I don't see in the Josephson Institute's report is whether students know that it's lying, cheating and stealing to copy another student's homework or to cut and paste something from the Internet and present it as his or her own work. I don't think that students just instinctively know that those actions count as cheating, and that's a question I wish the Josephson Institute had asked.

-Venice Buhain, Olympian education reporter

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