Undoubtedly, homework plays a significant role in people’s daily
lives in many of the places where they work or play. There must be many ways to
reduce cheating such as supervision by parents, increasing punishment, and
giving more difficult homework. If I had to choose one, I would say that the
most efficient method decreasing the cheating is the supervision of parents. There
are several reasons as follows.
To begin with, students do not want to
disappoint their parents. A lot of students hope that their parents are not
disappointed by their children, and thus, if parents would monitor children’s
homework, then students would do their best. Therefore, the cheating rate will
reduce evidently. For example, when I was in middle school, I sometimes cheated
friend’s homework because I could not solve some problems and I did not much
time. However, I became more honest and sincere after my parents checked my
homework. Although I did not solve problems, I did not cheat others’ answers
since my parents always said that being honest is the most important factor in
life. As we can see from this compelling example, students would not copy other
students’ homework if their parents examine their homework since students do not
hope that their parents dismay because of their children.
On top of that, monitoring by parents is
the only feasible method to reduce the cheating. This is because students can
still cheat despite increasing punishment or more difficult homework. However,
students cannot cheat if their parents sit next to their children. For
instance, Seoul National University found a huge difference between three
groups of young students in academic attitude. The first group consisted of
those who sat with their parents during homework, the second group was made up
of those who were punished by their teachers if the evidence of cheating were
found, and the third group consisted of those who gave the more complicated
homework. The researchers found that the first group was less likely to cheat
others’ homework than the rest. In particular, many of the first group showed a
longer attention span, a stronger passion in their tasks, and a better ability
to delay gratification. On the other hand, much of the second and third group
tended to get distracted easily, procrastinate, and act on impulse. In the
light of the archetype above, the first method is the only practical method to
decrease the cheating rate.
All things considered, I strongly believe
that the advantages of monitoring by parents far outweigh those of other
methods for the reasons I have mentioned above. All in all, the importance of
supervision cannot be overestimated in life.