Who's Cheating Whom Alfie Kohn Analysis

In Alfie Kohn’s argument, “Who’s Cheating Whom?” he explains that cheating happens because students are not engaged in class because of a few different factors, like a lack of interest in a subject, or the pressures of getting good grades instead of learning. He states evidence from different experiments, allowing him to appear more credible, showing that students are more likely to cheat because their school puts more emphasis on how well students do on tests and homework versus how much is being learned in class. Kohn effectively argues that if students were truly engaged in what is being taught, and learning was more encouraged than memorizing and passing a test, cheating would be less of a problem. In simplest terms, cheating is wrong because teachers cannot accurately assess how much is being learned in class, and what they need to improve on the next time they teach that lesson. Kohn stated, “when teachers don’t seem to have a

They believe that the reward is more important than the time spent learning. Many people I have come across that are in an honor roll joke about how they would not be a part of it if it were not for them cheating on their tests and other assignments. They think that having “National Honor Society” on their college application is better than learning on their own. What is going to help them in the long run, being in an honor roll or the information they were supposed to absorb and learn? Kohn does not believe that students should cheat but understands why they do. Throughout his whole argument, he provides evidence and examples of why students cheat and explain that students feel more pressured to do well than learn. If the school was more about learning and less about how well a student performs on a standardized test at the end of the year, cheating would be less of a