Counter Argument Essay for “Too Much Pressure” by Colleen Wenke

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“Too Much Pressure,” Colleen Wenke Counterargument Essay In her essay “Too Much Pressure,” Colleen Wenke discusses reasons why cheating has appeared to become more prevalent in American high schools along with reasons why she believes society has become more tolerant of it. She concludes that cheating is so much more widespread than it was in the past that it is now commonplace in most high schools and occurs on a daily basis, and that this represents a shift in values that society has undergone. Overall, her arguments are weak, and I will refute the logic she used to support these claims in three major areas. In the beginning of her essay, Wenke states that she saw cheating take place in her own high school quite frequently. It was a daily occurrence her for to see cheating going on in the school cafeteria, and that she often saw students passing around homework and exam answers. When I read these statements, I envision Wenke, walking down her high school hallways, seeing cheating wherever she goes. It’s so commonplace that there’s nowhere she can go to not see it! This drags out the question, was she really on the lookout for it that much? Were the students she thought she saw cheating actually cheating? It is very uncertain that any person who was as apathetic about cheating as she claims would truly recognize cheating from the cursory glances one gives while passing by. I would think that to accurately detect cheating, one would have to observe more closely. Did she have cheat-identifying x-ray vision? How could she seriously know? At the very least, this appears to be a bit of an exaggeration to say she saw it wherever she went, and thus ought not to be used as the foundation for observation on which her essay is based. To back up her line of reasoning, she found support for observation from an article by Robin Stansbury, who reports that

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