Student Essay - Causes of Cheating – Shelley Park Soo Bin, Year 5, Sri Utama International School

Causes of Cheating – Shelley Park Soo Bin, Year 5, Sri Utama International School

Some students like to cheat at school, academies and tuition. Cheating is bad because it means the students are not doing their work by themselves so they cannot learn. For example, in the exam, if one student copies another student’s paper, he or she is not really doing the exam on his or her own. They are probably copying someone else’s answer because they haven’t revised. There are many reasons why students cheat.

Firstly, some students are too lazy to study. They only want to play. So during exams, they have no choice but to cheat. There is a lazy boy in my class who always wants to copy his friends’ work. His name is Khal. In the exam, he wanted to copy his friend’s answer so he stood up to look at his friend’s paper. He couldn’t see the answer and when he looked up, the teacher was in front of him. So he was sent to the principal’s office. Many students, like Khal, do not like to work hard so they end up cheating.

Secondly, most children want their parents to be happy with their school results. They want to show their parents that they are good children. If their marks are good, their parents will be proud of them. If their marks aren’t good, their parents will scold them. In my school, there is boy called Hamza. In school, he is very naughty but when his mother comes, he always pretends to be good so his mother thinks that he is a good boy in school. All children are like this. They want approval and love from their parents so sometimes they cheat in order to get higher marks.

Thirdly, some students get teased by their classmates because of their poor results. These students are embarassed by their poor performance at school. They don’t want to get low marks, so they cheat. They want to show their classmates that they are not stupid. In particular, they want to show the bullies that they are better than the bullies. So they copy from others. Then the bullies will stop disturbing them.

In conclusion, students cheat because of many reasons. Many parents do not know that their children cheat at school because their children do not tell them. Children know that they will get scolded by their parents if they are caught cheating. However, some of them still do it. In my opinion, cheating is not good because you are being unfair to yourself and the person you copy from. It is better to learn properly and become a good person in the future.