Why Do Some Students Cheat and Others Don't?

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According to various polls and studies carried out, young people and adults alike hold the conviction that cheating is erroneous. However, it has also been found out that these same young people have admitted to having cheated at least once in their high school vocations (Niels, 2013). This begs the question; what reasons make some young people to cheat contrary to their convictions? Why don’t some young people cheat on the other hand? I believe that the main reason for this erroneous behavior is to “save face”. In layman’s language it may refer to the act of avoiding the angry thrashing of parents due to bad results and in the process averting embarrassment of being labeled an academic flop. However, this is not the only reason why they cheat. Historically, this type of behavior has been traditionally studied by sociologists as either being abnormal or unusual behavior. Theories of aberrant or unusual behavior have been time and again used as possible explanations as to why they cheat (Lathrop & Foss, 2000). However, it has with time evolved from being an unusual way of behaving by students to something normal in modern day times. Consequently, this posses a major challenge to those who advocate for change among students to halt cheating in the school environ since it has become a part of the student code which is really tough to break. One of the most successful sociological theories in the explanation of cheating among students in institutions of learning is the conflict theory. Karl max developed the theory which has been further developed in modern times more prominently by C. Wright Mills (Davis, Drinan, & Gallant, 2009). In WHY DO SOME STUDENTS CHEAT AND OTHERS DO NOT?3 his own personal point of view, he postulates social structures are resultant from the conflict between people and resources as well as their interests. This can be further used to explain

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