What should I do when my classmates are cheating

Lol sure

 

I never said "Don't snitch", I said do nothing as cheating in everything will hurt the cheater in the long run.

If you see someone poisoning others, you don't snitch, you kill them. That's better than snitching.

 

If you're an honest person who wants to see justice done, and if there's any way to do it anonymously, without them finding out who betrayed them, report those $#@%&%. They aren't the type you want to be friendly/comfortable with in the first place.

But I'd probably go with what everyone else said, which is that you should ignore it to the best of our abilities, because you may be found out, and I know public school kids can hold grudges for a looonng time. You probably don't want people to hold grudges against you.

 

Do not snitch, I repeat, do not snitch. What you should do is tell your classmates that cheating is wrong and their only hurting themselves. Their choice from there on. Snitching will just make people hate you and you’ll have to deal with a lot more negatives than being that morally right person.

 

I went to a good, respectable public high school with a strict honor code. If this happened to me back then, I probably would have told on them for fun. I also had no friends so there was nothing at stake. It just would have been funny to see a bunch of dumb honor-less people get reprimanded or suspended/expelled. If you threw my current self in high school in that situation, I might just keep to myself (it's high school so who gives a shit?) and watch my own back in case they try to cheat off of me. Unless it was like an AP exam or an SAT, then fuck that I'm telling.

But I'm in college now, so if I stay quiet, they'd probably make everyone retake the exam. In that case, I'd rather tell on them and point out all the cheaters than be forced to do extra work.

And don't listen to the "omg but snitching bad!!!11!!!" people. They have watched too many mafia movies and think that being complicit in thuggery is somehow cool or morally justifiable. I'm not out to make friends who have no regard for honesty and integrity. If bunch of thugs hate me, that's perfectly ok, I wouldn't want to hang out with them anyway. Rats and snitches are heroes in my opinion. They do what's right despite the consequences. That's assuming they don't do it just because they got caught - that's another story.

 

Call it whatever you like. It's fact. The first exposure of collective unsupervised coexistence in the face of pressure which a child faces is school itself.

 

Why not help them instead of trying to hurt them? If they get reprimanded then maybe they will stop cheating and become a better person, rather than continue to cheat and be emboldened by a lack of opposition.

Wow, nice analogies!

I guess I shouldn't help someone who's drowning either, because it's none of my business. It doesn't affect me, so there's no point in taking action. And if someone's raping a woman in the alley as I walk by, I should keep walking, huh? I could get hurt if I intervened. It's better to respect their decision and keep morality out of it.

 

Help them by not helping them cheat. They won't appreciate it, but it is the right thing to do.

 

You can conceptualize as much as you like.

The reason you do not do this is because they do not see you as an enforcing party, they trust you to be part of the group and expose to you their "secret". Same way someone might tell you something they do not want others to know.
Betraying that "secret" betrays your trust to the entire group and everyone in the group will reject you. Members of the group will not trust you anymore and will not be able to do in your presence what they would normally do, you will become "the teacher" but you are not the teacher, you become a "trator" and they now have to worry about what you see and hear. So the entire group will reject you and make you an outsider. Emotional and even physical abuse will follow.

If someone is drowning it is your business not just morally, it is actually your legal obligation to help.
if someone is being raped, it is your business not just morally, it is actually your legal obligation to help.
If you ignore moral and legal obligations - you can go to jail.

Please do not confuse moral and legal obligations with social dynamics in classroom environments.
Students share comradery, they face same problems and they expect other students to have their backs, if you brake that code - you become backstabbing "asshole" who deserves to suffer. Even teachers have no respect for these "moral" people
If you did not learn that code - too bad, because it is shown in movies all the time.