discuss how you plan to use the terms ethos, pathos, or logos within your critical evaluation essay. Which of these three types of support does your chosen author employ? Choose one specific example of this support, and explain how effective it was in the essay’s argument.
Why is Cheating Wrong?
Mathieu Bouville
Published online: 11 August 2009
Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009
Abstract Since cheating is obviously wrong, arguments against it (it provides an unfair
advantage, it hinders learning) need only be mentioned in passing. But the argument of
unfair advantage absurdly takes education to be essentially a race of all against all;
moreover, it ignores that many cases of unfair (dis)advantages are widely accepted. On the
other hand, the fact that cheating can hamper learning does not mean that punishing
cheating will necessarily favour learning, so that this argument does not obviously justify
sanctioning cheaters.
Keywords Academic dishonesty Academic integrity Academic misconduct Education Ethics Grades Homework Plagiarism
Asking why cheating is wrong may seem silly or gratuitously provocative. Indeed, since
‘‘just about everyone agrees that cheating is bad and that we need to take steps to prevent
it’’ (Kohn 2007), no such question seems warranted and no argument seems needed
(Bouville 2008, 2009a). Talk about cheating is then a matter of outrage: ‘‘students STOLE
a password and then they used it to CHEAT’’ (Lingen 2006), ‘‘plagiarism is WRONG no
matter what the extent’’ (Parmley 2000). If asked why cheating is wrong, Lingen and
Parmley may reply by using a larger font or boldface—as if cheating were wrong just
because it is capitalized. Yet, if one does not know why cheating is wrong one cannot set
policies that would respond sensibly to it.
When seen as unconnected, problems are often easy to solve: increase retirement age to
reduce the deficit of public pension schemes, and decrease it to reduce unemployment.
Educational policy can be likewise flawed when questions are answered one by one
without paying attention to the inconsistencies in the answers. Cheating is generally treated
as if it were independent of the nature and purpose of exams, independent of grading, etc. I
will try to show that when one takes several questions together instead of answering one
without considering others, what used to be obvious no longer is.