Hi-Tech Cheatsheets

My wife is a 7th grade teacher and came home last week upset because it appeared a number of students were cheating. What's interesting is not that they were cheating, but how they were cheating. To get away with cheating in school today you need to have a good grasp of technology and you also need to play a good game of chicken.

To cheat in school today requires a good grasp of technology. The methods we used as kids just don't cut it. They're too transparent and other kids will rat you out. Last month my wife had caught a boy cheating, but he tried to cheat the old-fashioned way: he wrote the answers on the back of his schoolbag which lay in front of him during the exam. Another boy saw the crib sheets and informed the teacher. But when my wife made an example of the student, it sent a message to the other would-be-cheaters... stealth is the key. And so they turned high-tech. Instead of simply writing the answers on their backpack or the back of their hand, they recorded the answers in an MP3 audio file, loaded the file on their iPod, and listened to the recorded notes via a small wireless earpiece!

Pretty clever, huh? But since the earpiece was too small to be noticed easily, how did she discover it? That's where the game of chicken comes in. She noticed something fishy about a number of the papers, but didn't quite know how they had cheated, or exactly which of the suspects were involved. So she called ten boys in and told them, "I know many of you cheated on the last test. I have proof that shows you cheated, as well as informants that helped me figure it out." Mainly she was bluffing. She suspected foul play but didn't know exactly who or how. "So I'll give you a choice... I'll meet with each of you individually and give you the chance to fess up. If I feel you're being completely honest and telling the whole story, I'll treat you more leniently. If you continue to lie, the Principle and I have decided we will suspend you."

From there they fell like a house of cards. The cheaters confessed and ratted each other out, figuring they'd better fess up before their friends fingered them in the plot. The technical nature of the feat made it a collaborative effort. It helped that this is a wealthy school and the students could all afford iPods and wireless headphones.

Cheating has indeed become more Mission Impossible than when I was a kid. But in the end it was still the weakness of mind, rather than an error of the machine, that took these young miscreants down.