Early in the morning, a class of chemistry students file in to take their tests. Every student was taught the same curriculum, given the same amount of time to prepare and tested on the same day. Except after the first period test, each subsequent class would have a greater advantage than the class before them.
A teacher had asked his students to write his middle name; an obscure, yet trivial question, worth only one extra point. When it came time to grade the tests, the cheating was obvious. Nearly every test-taker following the first class had gotten the bonus correct – while correct responses were sparse in the first class.
One of the chemistry students, sophomore Holden Montgomery, commented on the situation.
“It was one point,” he said. “And once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.”
For other students, the act didn’t feel dishonest at all. In fact, many felt they were simply helped by their peers.
“It’s essentially hypocrisy. It’s like you have a different standard than you do for yourself than you do for others,” seventh grade humanities teacher Greg Crook said.
While the vast majority of Americans would consider themselves honest, a study from by the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggested that while 75 percent of people are generally honest, approximately 60 percent of adults lie at least once in a 10-minute conversation.
“When you’re younger, you don’t always see the bigger picture. You don’t always see the striving to be your best, but as you get older and you mature, you recognize the importance of trying to be your best,” Crook said. “You can apply a more consistent moral framework to who you are.”
J.J. Connolly Master Teaching Chair Nancy Marmion believes that a strong moral compass is indispensable to guiding students away from poor decisions, especially when those around them are making the wrong choice.
“Sometimes we have to stand up and do what’s right, even if we think everybody else is doing the wrong thing,” Marmion said.
Marmion feels that surrounding oneself with people who have good values can guide students toward making the right choices. Friends who can hold each other accountable are also more likely to steer themselves in the right direction.
“I think that’s where community can come into play,” Marmion said. “Whether it’s your friends or your family, if you are about to make an unwise decision, that’s when a true friend would say, ‘Hey, this isn’t you. Don’t do this.’”
Marmion thinks that in most cases, students make immoral decisions in the moment rather than planning them beforehand. In today’s world of advancing technology, it can be especially enticing to take shortcuts.
“I think it’s really easy when you’re sitting at your computer at 11 o’clock at night, and you’ve got a tool right in front of you that makes it a whole lot easier to cheat than it was when I was a kid,” Marmion said. “There’s an easy way out, and I think it can be very tempting.”
Crook believes that, for students, pressures can sometimesbecome so great that it becomes extremely difficult to resist the urges to take shortcuts. To Crook, maturity plays a huge role in controlling the impulses that come with so much pressure.
“You feel like you have to do everything and anything to succeed. You’re just feeling the pressure to keep up,” Crook said. “Whether it’s a big brother or sister, you’re supposed to follow in that person’s footsteps, which puts a lot of pressure on you because they have a lot of high expectations for your future.”
If someone has a leadership position, there is typically a higher expectation from their community for that person to be a role model for others, especially from teachers and fellow students. This makes it more of a suprise if that person does something morally wrong.
“All people have a public face and a private face. I think with their public face, they’re always going to try to say the right thing. We all want everyone to see us on that right path, and privately, we might be doing different things,” Crook said. “I do think behind the scenes when a teacher or an adult in general is not present, there are a number of boys who will have the will to stand up and say, ‘No, that’s not what we do. No, that’s not the standard we follow at St Mark’s.’”
Marmion tries to instill the values important to St. Mark’s such as self discipline, a strong work ethic and delayed gratification throughout all of her positions on campus.
“If your values are deeply rooted, it’s harder to cheat,” Marmion said. “I think you have to be willing to listen to that little voice in your head that’s telling you not to do it when there are other voices that are maybe louder that are telling you to do it.”
However, as important as teaching principles may be, Marmion believes that actually using the right principles over time, no matter the scale of the assignment, will help students become their most moral, best selves.
“It’s so important to practice making the right decisions,” Marmion said. “That integrity and character don’t just happen. It’s something you build through practice.”
