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When I set out to write an article on cheating, I wondered where I’d find kids who cheat. Hoping for a hint, I visited a teen Sunday-school class in a nearby church.

"Do you know anyone who cheats?" I asked the kids.

"Are you gonna use our names?" a boy in the back asked uncomfortably.

Once I assured them that I would preserve their anonymity, the truth began to spill out. And I must admit, I was shocked by what I heard.

"Everyone cheats," one boy said. "Sometimes cheating is just easier than stressing yourself out. Anyway, only the really smart people survive by doing everything on their own."

Another student added, "We have a sweet system in one of my classes. When the teacher asks us to change papers to check each other’s quizzes, we change each other’s answers. You’re not cheating for yourself. You’re ‘loving your neighbor.’"

Sadly, these kids aren’t unique. In a recent survey conducted by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 80 percent of high-achieving students admitted to cheating at least once. And other studies show that 40 percent or more of students in grade school through graduate school cheat regularly.

Why is cheating so prevalant, even among students who should know better? "Cheating’s not such a big deal," one young girl told me. "The teachers have too much else to worry about."

She has a point. In today’s society, where educators are forced to worry about guns and drugs and violence on a daily basis, it’s not surprising that cheating might be relegated to the category of "minor offense."

Still, school leaders are concerned about the problem. Although cheating is nothing new, educators say the new facet is that students cheat without shame. "While I don’t see cheating as a problem for the majority of our students, cheaters are getting sneakier," says Debra Latta, assistant principal at Park Forest Middle School in State College, Pennsylvania. "The problem is that kids don’t see anything wrong with cheating."

It’s tough to help our kids practice academic honesty when they’ve got all kinds of rationalizations for cheating. But by recognizing why children cheat, we as parents can begin to break apart their skewed logic and build a sense of integrity in its place.

The pressures on today’s students are enormous. When faced with their parents’ demands for success, increasingly difficult subject matter and intense competition, students often feel they have no choice but to cheat.

Dr. Sally Morrison, assistant professor at Wheaton College in Illinois, says sometimes the problem is not so much the student’s, but his parent’s or teacher’s. "When students cheat, we need to ask why they feel so insecure about the subject matter," she says. You might find that your child feels he needs perfect grades to please you. That’s why we as parents need to make sure our expectations for our children are reasonable. It’s essential that we emphasize effort and attitude at least as much as we do grades.

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