LAT: High school sports "teaching our kids to cheat"

[DBoon]

http://www.latimes.com/sports/highschool/la-sp-ethics18feb18,0,4210633.story?coll=la-home-headlines

"There is reason to worry that the sports fields of America are becoming the training grounds for the next generation of corporate and political villains and thieves," says Los Angeles ethicist Michael Josephson.

The latest two-year study of high school athletes by the Josephson Institute found a higher rate of cheating in school among student-athletes than among their classmates. It also found a growing acceptance of cheating to gain advantages in competition.

Or, corporate "ethics" is filtering down to other competitive activities.

[patrice]

1. Can we add programming them to "kill"? n/t

[hfojvt]

2. it is a combination

Sports is big business, with big money for star athletes and coaches. So "do whatever it takes" to stay on the team and to win the game. Winning is everything, and it's only 'cheating' if you get caught. Even if you get caught, you just have a small penalty. Take football. Suppose and offensive lineman gets called for holding. What happens? Ten yard penalty, repeat first down. It's now first and 20. Suppose he doesn't hold. Then the quarterback gets sacked, maybe loses the football. A sack means it is 2nd and 17 or so. 1st and 20 is better than 2nd and 17, so a smart coach is gonna tell his players to hold if they have to.

[Oeditpus Rex]

8. A smart coach

teaches them how to hold without getting caught.

[LostInAnomie]

12. Isn't that just using the rules to your advantage though?

Just like flopping on the ground to take a charge, or the foul spree that happens in the last in the last minute of a close basketball game. Sure it's playing a little hard and fast with the rules, but I wouldn't exactly call it cheating.

[malaise]

3. Thanks for this

I'd love to see the complete survey

[Solly Mack]

4. Back 25 years ago, a survey of my HS showed cheating was

widespread and considered acceptable to a slim majority of students. Reasons given ranged from everyone does it to too much is expected of students, so they cheat.

Where athletes were concerned, support of cheating was even higher. The most often stated reasons being that athletes are special, different, helped the school etc. This thinking was expressed by athletes and non-athletes alike.

Athletes cheated and got away with it 25 years ago. Rules were bent and "allowances" were made for them all the time.

The reason this stays with me is because the results were sent home to parents - and my mom asked me what I thought about cheating/the survey etc.

Also because I had tutored an 8th grade football "star" who had failed the grade but was promoted anyway - because they wanted him to play high school football. He even bragged to me how "they won't hold me back" ...and he was right. He continued to be a star...right up until he flunked out of college in the first year.

He still gets the hero treatment though - glory days and all that on the football field.

I can't think of him without thinking how badly he was cheated by the adults around him that wanted state titles more than they wanted to prepare him for the future.

There's nothing new on the sports fields of America - it's been the same shit for years. Winning no matter the price...

The exceptions to this are so exceptional movies are made about them :)

[Edweird]

5. it's true. but not new. jocks have always been given a free ride.

Hell, I believe that when my dad was in H.S., coaches would suggest (and provide?) steroids to their football players. It's terrible when our youth are corrupted by the "authorities", but it's as old as a coaches desire to win.

[Trillo]

6. "Our belief is to install more punitive measures,"

Staunton is reported to have said.

The whole sick paradigm of our society is that 'rewards trickle up, punishments flood down.'

I fail to understand how cheating at the top is stopped by increasing punishments for kids at the bottom. Kids aren't at the top, and this isn't leading by example.

Perhaps the problem is hierarchy itself. Perhaps the urge to cheat would be stopped if sports "taught" were non-competitive. Take out the competition, and you end up competing against yourself, so cheating would only shortchange oneself. Who else would care whether you shortchange yourself?

This begins to philosophize into other, non-sport areas.

If one punishes those who are caught cheating, do those who aren't caught but still are cheating go on to higher levels of society? Perhaps punishing some cheaters acts as a filter to insure that only the best cheaters rise to the top.

[sandnsea]

7. This baffles me

I was always mostly an A student. I didn't need to cheat to get good grades. People copied off my work, sometimes I copied off other peoples work. Once in a while I let friends copy off my tests. Nobody I knew cared. Cheating was how you got through high school. Are there seriously people who NEVER copied someone elses work, a math problem, one last answer to finish a paper, nothing??? I don't believe it.

[kiahzero]

9. Amazingly enough, some people have integrity.

I know that must be hard for you to understand.

[sandnsea]

10. Insulting me won't change reality

I do not know ANYBODY who didn't copy someone elses homework at some point or other. I also note that you didn't actually say YOU had NEVER cheated, or let someone else copy your homework, either.

[kiahzero]

13. I never cheated, nor did I let others copy my homework.

I don't know many people that did.

Like I said, some people have integrity. Just because you don't know any doesn't mean they don't exist.

[sandnsea]

14. I suppose it's possible

that you got such mediocre grades nobody wanted to copy your homework and you didn't care enough to improve to even bother to talk to a friend. Otherwise I just don't believe it. 16 years and you never divied up an assignment with a friend? Never got frustrated on a problem and had a friend answer it for you? Never were in a rush to go somewhere and a friend helped do the last 3 problems?? I've known people who have gone to all kinds of schools, from Catholic to military to private academies - NOBODY has gone through 16 years of school and never cheated, oh, I mean have a friend "help them out". :eyes: Unless, like I said, they just never cared about their grades or school work to begin with.

[kiahzero]

15. Right.

I can see why you had to cheat... your logical reasoning skills leave much to be desired.

Just because you can't cut it without cheating doesn't mean others can't.

For the record, I'm currently a student at the top public law school in the country, and that doesn't generally happen with "mediocre grades."

[LostInAnomie]

11. Is this really a new problem, or a problem that's new because it has been studied?

I, for one, am not convinced that today's kids are any less ethical than those in the past. Anyone who has played high school sports knows that you use the rules to your advantage, and do what you can get away with. It's nothing new.