The book "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn addresses this issue. Kohn argues that when we emphasize external rewards like grades and test scores, we often undermine students' intrinsic motivation to learn and create consequences like cheating.
The educational system has made the reward (the grade or score) more important than the actual learning:
* The grade becomes the goal rather than a measurement of learning
* Students learn to value performance over mastery
* The extrinsic reward (grade) crowds out intrinsic motivation to understand the material
Kohn would view cheating as a predictable outcome of reward-based educational approaches. When schools emphasize test performance, rankings, and grades, they inadvertently teach students that the number matters more than the knowledge. Students rationally respond to these incentives by finding the easiest path to the reward - through cheating.
This doesn't excuse cheating, but it helps explain why reward-focused systems tend to produce it. Restructuring educational approaches to emphasize curiosity, meaningful engagement with material, and learning for understanding rather than for performance metrics could happen, but that would take... effort. Too hard basket? Heh