TEACHERS WHO CHEAT FOR STUDENTS ARE ENEMIES OF OUR SOCIETY AND DEVELOPMENT

www.mknewslink.com
In Bushenyi

I have reasons to appreciate the good performance a number of our schools have registered this time round. Thank you so much for the effort our Lord has blessed!

On the other hand, my heart is heavy and sad due to those teachers that cheat for our children. They are enemies of our society, no doubt!

By definition, cheating is finding an easy way out of an unpleasant situation by dishonest means. It usually includes breaking rules so one can gain an unfair advantage in a competitive situation.

Friends, as we celebrate good performance of our schools and children, I pause to tell you this: it is evident that academic integrity continues to face serious challenges. It is even getting worse in this digital era. We should not be or remain silent over this dangerous vice!

Dear reader and teachers, take note of the following:

1. Those kids for whom some teachers cheat will not remain small. Once they have grown up and learnt more about life’s realities, they’ll discredit your worth as their former teacher.

2. Teachers who cheat exams for the children cause them to think that cheating is fine or necessary for anyone to make it in life. Such acts poison their minds and sear their conscience. In the process their God given moral rudder is bent off standards of morality.

3. Cheating teachers cause our children to be and remain guilty. The worst part is that one who cheats becomes and remains a thief for long.

For instance, when you cheat at Primary 7, every other qualification thereafter qualifies to be null and void. Let me remind you: God is just, and He will hold accountable anyone who causes one of the little ones to sin (Luk. 17:1-2).

4. Cheating kills quality and leads to ineffectiveness. It can also put much of life at a serious risk.

For instance, cheating produces fake graduates and pseudo professionals. Those can be dangerous to our society.

We continue to lose people at the hands of counterfeit medical personnel. Imagine boarding an aircraft whose pilot is a sham graduate in aviation. Which student will gain from a lecturer that is an academic dwarf, not because he or she is innately insane, but simply due to lack of proper training? If little knowledge can be dangerous, what about the absence of it?!

5. Cheating puts its recipients into a deeper psychological confusion. Some end up not knowing that they don’t know. Such people are also, for a fact, innocently dangerous!

6. With cheating, education loses its ultimate meaning and purpose. We become a society whose education leads it to its own destruction. Soon or later we become a society that is its own enemy. We commit an educational suicide!

7. Today, as a result of cheating and other forms of educational malpractices, there are many who have very good qualifications on paper, when, in reality, they lack the least of knowledge and skills in an area where they highly qualify, on paper!

8. Due to cheating, we see many kids chased from schools to which they get admitted for further studies. It is sad when first grade graduates are chased out of their next level schools at the end of the first term due to poor performance!

9. Cheating is unfair to both the bright and the not so bright pupils and students. Either way, there is unfairness. If you cheat for a bright student, you cause or actually force him or her to do wrong. If you cheat only for the academically weak ones, you cause them or force them to appear bright, and that too is equally unfair.

10. Cheating encourages academic laziness. As the habit/culture of cheating takes shape and root, some will not care to work hard. They know ‘someone’ will ‘enable’ them to pass, anyhow!

In a nutshell, to those who benefit from or survive on cheating and malpractices, I have this to tell you:

One day you will pay a high price for it! There are painful consequences which, in addition to what I’ve already mentioned above, you will surely and personally face.

You may enjoy a momentary relief at the time of cheating, like ‘passing’ that exam, but one time the world will demand more from you than what you have actually been equipped with.

Your fake first grade will take you to a place or put you in a position where a genuine one will strongly and firmly be required. That’s when you will pay the price!

Dear teachers, do what you are supposed to do as a professional. Teach genuinely and allow the tests to do their work. It’s better to get a C when you’ve truly worked for it than to get a fake A as a result of cheating.

Trust the Lord to bless your efforts!

Rt. Rev. Johnson Twinomujuni
Bishop of West Ankole Diocese

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