What surprised me most about a new study on cheating at MIT--which concludes that copying homework can lead to lower grades--was that students cheat at the prestigious school, which only admits brainy kids who don't need to.
But of course, students cheat everywhere, even at the best schools; witness the recent grade-changing scandal at high-achieving Churchill High School, and, for that matter, the computer hacking scandal at high-achieving Whitman High School last year. Both are in Montgomery County and both are among the best secondary schools in the country.
In fact, according to the book, "Cheating in School: What we Know and What We Can Do," by Stephen F. David, Patrick F. Drinan and Tricia Bertram Gallant, there are students cheating everywhere--from elementary to graduate school, rich and poor schools, public and private.
The authors define cheating as "acts committed by students that deceive, mislead or fool the teacher into thinking that the academic work submitted by the student was a student's own work."
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