Pressure
According to the essay “Too Much Pressure” by Colleen Wenke, the reason that students cheat on their tests is because they are under too much pressure to get good grades, which is accurately portrayed since cheating is usually seen as one of the only ways to pass tests and that’s what students are being stressed to do. Based on her essay, teachers should be teaching students right from wrong as opposed to pressuring to the extent of making them cheat. This is important to see because it is a way to solve a worldwide problem that can possibly, greatly affect the future. Wenke structures her essay in a way which we are in the perspective of a student, then documenting the process she went through, explaining more as she continues. Wenke uses devices such as premises and anecdotes to support her judgment. Wenke uses a technique of point of view to help a reader better understand how students feel in the situation of cheating. This is shown in the quote, “You hear the clock ticking in your head, and your teacher keeps erasing, in ten-minute decrements, the time you have left to complete the test. You do not remember anything from the last month of class. You probably should have studied more, watched less television, and spent less time on the phone. All the “should haves” are not important now. You need to finish the test and get out of here.” (Wenke, 533) Many thoughts go through your head as your taking a test, which is greatly emphasized to show that is not easy to take a test and so students turn to cheating as the answer to their problems. This is an effective method to get readers to better understand the issue of students being pressured to much to do good and instead the opposite is happening. Another quote that demonstrates this is, “ It came in many forms, from copying homework to giving out copies of the exam. Students even wrote the answers to a Scantron exam down the sides of number-2 pencils and gave the pencils to their friends. … The teachers