Take Action! Against Cheating by sending Cheaters on Prison

Here is another writing task ^^

Cheating can be defined as an immoral way of achieving a goal. Nowadays, cheating on an examination seems to be common among Indonesian students. Most students cheat in order to get good grades because they are afraid of being failed. In fact, almost every year our country, Indonesia has been annoyed with this troublesome activity. Some schools were found conducting mass cheating with the aim of making all of their students pass the exam. Moreover, the teachers and the students were doing conspiracy to succeed their planning. The reality of this large scale cheating on an examination certainly makes nonsense of educational qualification and discredit institutions of learning and nation as a whole (Ugodulunwa, undated). Nevertheless, the government does not really put a concern throughout this action. As a result, they are unaware letting such a terrible habit controls the students which can break the students potentiality. Therefore, the government should take an action against cheating by facing them a jail term and sentencing them as criminals. This essay will discuss about some arguments related to cheating, and then it will provide an exact action to be done in solving this problem.    

Some argue that cheating is inclined more likely to be a moral problem rather than a crime. They assume that cheating will not bring harm to the public or social order. Nevertheless, students who cheat may build a habit of taking the easy way out which will affect their future life. Once they cheat, they tend to do it more and more because cheaters do not have feeling of guilt after cheating. This bad habit surely costs their precious life and future if they got caught cheating and being expelled from their school. Moreover, their academic integrity will be lost by cheating. As the old said that trust is difficult to rebuild once you have been caught cheating, cheaters will not be trusted anymore by their teachers and also their friends. Furthermore, it comes to an unfair condition when a cheater gets a good grade by breaking the rules while other students who did their best on examination are failed. As an example, one clever student certainly studied hard for his examination on night while another student did not. In the day of examination, the student who did not study asked the answers from the clever one. Regrettably, the one who cheated got a higher score than the clever one. This reality will truly hurt the clever student’s heart who tried his best he can do by studying hard all night long during examination days.

Many people consider that sending the cheaters in a prison is not the right way to stop their bad habits. They do not need to be jailed since giving zero grades or expelling them from class is enough to make them learn from their mistakes. For instance, students who got caught cheating should immediately expel from school so they are afraid of cheating, yet it does not work at all. They are inclined to repeat cheating because they know that the punishment for cheaters is not a big deal.  

Others claim that criminal punishment is too severe and cruel for cheater because it will not change anything. However, applying a strict punishment is really needed to make the cheaters be cured of the habit. They might not commit to do more heinous crime since they are able to differentiate the right and the wrong by experiencing being jailed. 

One thing to be underlined is cheating is still against the law. Cheating is same as lying because the cheaters claim others’ works as their own. Cheating which also means doing plagiarism, stealing and copying another student’s answer is another action of being thieves. Students who were eager to cheat may lead to do another kind of cheating when they are adults such as stealing, plagiarizing and corrupting money’s citizen. Allowing students to cheat indicates growing corruptors in our country. Cheaters and corruptors are the same, they both are desire to have a good things instantly without working hard.

Indonesian law has been stated that doing a kind of plagiarism should be sentenced 1 month to 7 years and they should pay a fine from 1 million rupiah till 5 billion rupiah. This kind of regulation has been implemented in Kenya where the court sentenced an examination cheater to two-year in jail (Oduor: 2012). However, Indonesia does not apply this law properly, many law deviations happened for no reasons. For example, the case of Grandma Minah who faced jail term for one month fifteen days plus three month of trying period is one of law deviations which attracted people attention to care about law. Some belief that that punishment is too cruel for a grandma who was only accused in stealing cocoa in PT Rumpun Sari Antan area while the big corruptors who certainly stole a bunch of citizens’ money are having a better treatment for their mistakes such as having a full-facilitated room and facing a weightless punishment. As what has already mentioned above that corrupting is another kind of cheating, thus either the corruptors or the cheaters should face a severe criminal sentence.

In conclusion, cheating on an examination should be considered as a criminal offense. This is because punishing cheaters by giving zero grade or expelling them from school is not an exact action to be done since it is not extremely awake them to not to do cheating anymore. If the government really wants to stop the habit of cheating on an examination, the cheaters must be sentenced as criminals.