Many schools have a honor code which enforces no cheating and are meant to "cultivate integrity". However, anyone who has integrity don't cheat because they take pride in their work. People who don't care about honor cheat regardless of any set of rules because that's who they have become and most likely won't change. Therefore honor codes should be eliminated because cheaters are going to continue doing what they're doing because they already know it is wrong.
People may think punishing cheaters will give them discipline. They have done it before and most likely will do it again. They already know it is wrong to plagiarize and is why they try to keep it on the down low. Yes plagiarizing is wrong, but having an extremely strict honor code isn't going to be enough to change behavior. There shouldn't have to be rules to not cheat and especially when they know it is wrong to do so. Since cheaters don't care about learning something new and cheat to save time, they are only cheating themselves out of new information that they hadn't known before.
Honor codes effect non-cheaters in a negative way as well. Encouraging students to report cheating gives the student unwanted stress. It is not their job to be a patrol and their peers can have tension with them. Non-cheaters' personalities usually value honor since they do not cheat and know cheating is out of the question. When they see someone who is cheating they feel pressured because they feel they need to report it because of the honor code but they don't want to because it can cause problems with their peers. Non-cheaters don't need any stress because they are already doing what they are supposed to do. They shouldn't get punished with stress for something someone else is doing wrong.
Cheating is inevitable. There is so much information now with new technology that it is harder to catch plagiarizers. So how do you separate non-cheaters from the cheaters then? Now there are websites like EduBirdie were you can pay someone to write a paper for you. That's cheating but it is harder to catch since it is someone else's original work that they give to the student to pretend they did it themselves. There is so many loopholes created in honor codes because of this and is basically impossible to catch all the cheaters.
Overall, honor codes should be eliminated because they don't do a good job at stopping people from cheating. They just create more work for people who are trying to grade assignments and put pressure on students who see their peers cheating. It is now nearly impossible to catch cheaters and make their behavior change.
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