Kara Adkins
Staff Writer

A 4.0 GPA is no longer good enough, nor is being a great athlete, having hundreds of service hours, or being in all AP classes.

Today’s current high school student must be well rounded and just about spot on perfect to get in to the school of their choice and in this competitive, cut-throat atmosphere known as high school, students are now cutting corners to make it on top.

According to ABC, out of “12,000 high school students, 74 percent admitted to cheating on an examination at least once in the past year”. The worst part about this is the fact many high school students wouldn’t find this statistic shocking at all, they probably might even try to justify it.

It seems that cheating is now morally acceptable in the eyes of teenagers. It is just another way to boost your GPA and many justify it by saying “they no longer have time to study for tests because of the work load put on them” or that “if it’s just busy work it’s not really cheating anyways”.
Cheating has become a problem most teachers accept and almost expect out of their students. But if we stressed the competitive side of education less and the enjoyment side more it wouldn’t be nearly as big of an issue.

I’m the first to admit school isn’t exactly the way I would choose to spend 7 hours of my day, 5 days a week but in certain classes I would never even consider cheating because I enjoy them too much and I have too much respect for my teacher.

If teachers began to put higher demands on the quality of work students do and less focus on mindless busy work students would begin to appreciate the knowledge they’re gaining and they would begin to invest time in doing the work for themselves.