Ask any successful person in the world today what the key to success is and there’s a high probability no one would answer cheating. Well, people in the future won’t either, but they might think it.

Kids in schools are cheating more and more and this problem is actually really serious. Someone who cheats in middle school, even on a simple chapter test, would have to cheat on the final because they never learned the material from that one chapter. Then, they might have to cheat the next year and the next year, because everything builds on itself. Pretty soon, that person is cheating on everything. This kind of cheating is the kind we see that’s typical. People write on their legs, write on their arms, or write on a piece of paper they keep in their pocket…it’s all the same type of stuff.

But not all people cheat like that. Some people cheat by hiring someone to do the work for them. In a recent Reader’s Digest magazine, someone wrote an article about their previous job they had just retired from. Any guesses what they were? All they had done in life was to help people cheat. College students would email this person the assignment and the deadline, and this person would do it for them. And I’m not talking about small little assignments. These are term papers and big writing assignments that can make or break a person’s grade! And someone’s job was to do it for them!

Now, we have to question all young people coming into the work force. Does this person who just graduated as a surgeon really know how to perform a surgery, or did they just cheat? Does this English teacher really know how to teach about English, or did someone have to help them get the paper done so they could graduate?

Is this the kind of world we want? I think not. Cheating needs to be stopped right now and kids need to be taught how to learn material and not become so desperate they need to cheat. Teachers, I’m actually sad to say this, might need to not trust kids anymore. Assume that people are going to cheat. I know that you are innocent until proven guilty and you need to give them a chance and all, but that system doesn’t seem to be working. Doctors are graduating who don’t know how to help make people better!

To save the American culture and once again become a society who actually works for what they want, we need to stop cheating—right now.