A couple of days back, a friend of mine called up after a long time. She called on a pretty bad day, I had messed up my exam that day. I told her I was really infuriated because the invigilation was uselessly strict so I couldn't peek anywhere. She replied with an awe," Is this the same Samrat who never cheated in exams, let alone helping others to do so? What has college-life made out of you?"
Suddenly I realised she was right. During school days, I never even thought of cheating in exams. But now, a day ahead of exams, I study like this," Dude I'm leaving this topic for you to tell me. And tell me the STUPID tables we have to scribble on the WOODEN table...." So am I morally corrupt?
Whether or not a person should cheat in life is a different question altogether. The answer to this dilemma is not as straight as it might seem. As a matter of fact, it is a personal favourite of HR personnels while interviewing candidates. The complications are enormous, which, if mentioned, will dilute the issue I'm trying to focus on. So I will stick to the issue that I want to discuss. Whether a person should or shouldn't cheat in an exam is not as complicated as the previous question. No matter what our parents and teachers preach us, which I am sure, although in the darkness of unavailability of evidences to prove my point, they themselves never followed, we keep satisfying our desire for knowledge during examination by peeking into other answersheets, trying to read the illegible micro-sized notes hidden all under our clothes( even in places, too disgusting for hiding any stuff), pre-writing 'importants' on table and numerous other ways that undermine all sophisticated modes of communication invented till date. We keep doing it again and again, but never experience the guilt. So is it that our ethical values are dead? Is it that we have forgotten the values that we ought to adhere to in life?
As already mentioned, the act of cheating in exams doesn't even stray around the fort of moral obligations which stands open for all dilemmas. A person might view any ethical question from a moral perspective but I have kept this particular question miles away from the town of moral conundrums. The ethical dilemma has actually nothing to do with ethics. To understand this we need to know that examinations are a misinterpreted term in our society. They are not meant to intimidate us, they are just a method of testing our knowledge. What is worth noticing is that it says nothing about the timespan during which we can acquire knowledge. Moreover, elders will agree on the point that the process of learning is an eternal process and doesn't cease with an examination. Even the Oxford defines examinations as,"a formal written, spoken or practical test, especially at school or college, to see how much you know about a subject, or WHAT YOU CAN DO.". The last part speaks for itself.
Further if we look deeper into the matter, then we find that even if, by chance, the ghosts of morality haunt us on this issue, we can ward them off easily. The examination system itself teaches us moral misconducts. If gambling is amoral in society, then how can revaluation be justified as a moral act? You place a bet of a 100-500 bucks on your score to change; the examination board( who puts nothing at stake) plays for the negative. If you lose, it costs you your money, but if you win you get your money back. In addition to this, you don't even get to see the gambling table. So you cant even know if it was a fair play. All these things are against the ethics of gambling, in addition to gambling itself being unethical. So the next time you write an examination, feel free to peek.
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