A.M. Khan
Cheating is both a national dilemma and a matter of individual guile. One who has committed it is a past depravity and those who are still doing it in their daily lives and work spaces is regrettable.
Every year a sizable population is held while cheating during exams or tests followed by framing cases under ‘unfair means’ rules. What comes out is the penalties imposed on them and the cases are settled that year. It begins next year anew. In fact, we have not yet been able to develop the national disposition that shuns unfair means in either examination or daily life and avoid cheating.
Cheating as a malice continues from generations partly because of the tacit approval accorded to it in our society especially in nurseries of learning. Thus, this menace remains to nick the ability of a child in school and people in society. A national disposition rather thinking to reach out a destination or achieving a target without hard work ruins ability and resilience. Its huge national cost is lack of creativity and critical thinking, and trust deficit.
The holistic development of a child in both education and her social life comes from the trust in the system, its functionaries and society as a whole. The bedrock of every relationship, contracts, businesses and service primarily depends on it. Our global profile has also been dented by the trust deficit. How the people in a hamlet or a village deal with matters individually or a civil society sends a loud message all across about the way they do or manage things of public importance. Our role and responsibilities to act against cheating and avoid this malice in daily routine forms the basis of building trust in society. What we do is our followers act on it in both formal and informal settings. In fact, every individual is responsible for an act of cheating.
Educational institutions are the centers of learning and fostering good deeds where teachers are supposed to be the role models. What teacher instructs and practically does in classroom and examination hall during assessment creates an environment of learning whatsoever. For motivation, transparency is an effective tool to deliver.
Our education system still benchmarks literacy without focusing on understanding and application of what’s studied in class. Rote learning encourages cheating. Parroting in studies means there is no understanding of learning material let alone the application of it. Those who have no preparation for examination or have done parroting during an academic year or semester there is uncertainty to attempt papers. It leads to a survival mode during exams. The existing system still lacks the competence to acknowledge different learning styles. Grading children by their marks not by their level of understanding and application of it encourages doing things the other way round.
This’s one of the elements of smartness in new generation to use electronic gadgets and AI optimally but that mustn’t be at the cost of reading and understanding content beyond what’s highlighted by AI. Copying that stuff as it is and making it a homework, presentation or assignment is no learning at all unless a learner takes cue from books and online material and doing the assignment based on it. Our socio-political ecosystem necessitates to fight cheating. What we have been doing in classroom, during assessments in examination hall, and actions we commit in society, is rusting our social milieu.
We need a national will against cheating, a full grown social malice. Its complete cure needs a sustained treatment with the wisdom: that the corrupt society begins with one man. Saying that ‘everyone does it, don’t be that man or woman’. This is a ‘social test’. We must avoid cheating in nurseries and hold up the capital of trust in society inspired from those who have done it before and now doing so in our midst.