Is using Adderall–the ADHD drug similar to Ritalin–a form of cheating among high school and college students?
If students are using a pharmaceutical prop to help them stay up to write a paper, take the SAT or ace that AP test, is this fair to those who choose to compete naturally?
The abuse of Adderall has become the one of the most controversial topics on college campuses–and not simply among administrators. Students who use Adderall to give them a boost justify their behavior by saying they are still using their own brainpower, so it’s not cheating any more than drinking caffeine is cheating.
Those who keep away from the drug are understandably disgruntled. When the class test scores are skewed because half of the students were taking Adderall, it sucks to be one of the students who earned their grades without outside help.
A fascinating article in The San Francisco Chronicle described the scene at high schools and colleges and offered some insights and statistics about cheating.
Who cheats? It’s not the kids at the bottom who are cheating just to pass. Instead, it’s become the norm for students in the most competitive courses to cheat in order to keep those grades–and their chances for top colleges–absolutely perfect.
The SF Chronicle article quotes Denise Pope, a Stanford professor and author of Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students as saying:
“Nationally, 75 percent of all high school students cheat. But the ones who cheat more are the ones who have the most to lose, which is the honors and AP (advanced placement) students. Eighty percent of honors and AP students cheat on a regular basis.”
And those who feel they have to cheat are also the ones most likely to use Adderall.
Pope goes on to say that kids are choosing to take Adderall in order to compete with others who are doing so: “If you’re the one honest kid, you’re actually going to get the lower grades or the lower test scores.”
It’s alarming to think that the best and brightest students who see nothing wrong with a little Adderall advantage are the ones most likely to become prominent professionals in positions of authority.
Once you start rationalizing cheating, it’s a pretty slippery slope….
1 Comment
March 21, 2008 at 2:00 pm
What’s an even worse slippery slope is treating kids like prisoners and criminals. I do not advocate cheating or taking Adderall improve performance. But it’s obvious that all the rules and mistrust in high school do a huge disservice to kids.
Where else in the world do you have to get written permission to use a bathroom?
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “You have the right to be trusted.” This is far more important than your pedantic focus on cheating. We treat kids like irresponsible little criminals and then wonder why they cheat.
There is a reason why high school kids are so disaffected. I don’t know who I should worry about more, the disaffected kids who don’t buy into the high stakes pressure of high school academics and rules following, or the honors kids who do everything they are told to do.