COVID-19 Hasn't Stopped People from Cheating

 Every week, I get at least one invitation to a project asking for help with schoolwork. 

Now, let me say up front that being a scribe is a real, modern job that has merely changed titles to "Ghostwriter." Schools and colleges push for superior writing skills when not everyone (even very intelligent people) can obtain them. Writing is part education and part talent. Everyone should have basic writing skills, but not everyone needs superior writing skills. It would be better to just admit scribes still exist then going to all the trouble of maintaining secrecy about it. 

For this reason, I fully understand the masters or doctorate student hiring an editor to help polish his/her thesis or dissertation. At the same time, basic writing skills (and other basic skills) need to be practiced and learned by undergraduates and those in lower education. At any level, it is always unacceptable to have someone do your work entirely. 

Unfortunately, most of the "help" asked for is at the undergraduate or high school level, and it is not "help" but cheating. The job posts want you to do the work for them. Thankfully, Guru does not condone cheating and these are reportable projects that are quickly removed. Unfortunately, since Guru has taken away the $25 site-wide minimum transaction, more of these jobs appeared.

This leads me to the latest where the poster needed "a human who is familiar with.." certain chapters of a particular textbook. Perhaps they didn't think many cats, dogs, horses, or aliens would be familiar with the book. Poor English skills do not always signal some sort of cheating or scam, but all posts for cheating always seem to say things like this to make it seem like this is an official job while concealing the true nature of what is wanted. Cheaters know they are doing something wrong.

Even worse than the fact that these kinds of jobs have increased on Guru is the fact their are websites where you can hire people to do your homework for you. This mass of cheating on scales unheard of is harming our education in more ways than one. Not only are certain people who have the money getting no education, but also these same people are cheating others. You see, people develop higher level critical thinking skills at different times during their lives. You cannot rush this, but when a teenager is having an adult do their schoolwork, it looks like the teenager has already developed these skills. This makes educators mistakenly believe children can do advanced level thinking when they cannot. It puts those children who do not or can not cheat at a greater disadvantage because they are then expected to pursue higher order thinking when they are not developmentally capable of it.

To make matters worse, there have been numerous studies about online teaching and increases in cheating and plagiarism--especially in lower education. Plagiarism websites do not check to see if it was a commissioned work. COVID-19 has increased the chances for children to cheat by keeping them home from school. Without in-class writing samples, teachers have no comparison to determine if the homework was written by the student or someone else. Having seen parents assemble entire projects for students before turning them in during my years in 4-H, I have no doubt this is happening with online school as well. Cheating-whether by plagiarism, commission, or parents-is unacceptable.

As I said, editing something that is already written in the upper levels of education (when the student should have already learned those needed basic writing skills and just needs the eye of someone with more advanced skills) is different than completely doing homework for students. Still, I have met other freelancers who do not seem to care about the ethics of writing papers and doing assignments for those in school. This is wrong, but simply telling them this when they have no ethical care to begin with does not help. You also cannot appeal to the students who are cheating by informing them that they are making homework more difficult and harming others by their act. It is time the government shut down websites that cater to cheating.