Honesty is important for its own sake, and it's vital for your education—in high school and later in college.. You can't learn how to write if you simply download your papers from the Internet. You can't learn algebra if you copy your problem sets from a friend or an answer book. You can't learn Spanish or chemistry if you don't complete the assignments yourself. You won't really know the materials in high school, and you won't be prepared for college-level work.
The only way to learn is to do your papers, readings, and problem sets yourself. Later, you'll build on what you learned as you face more advanced assignments. If you didn't do the earlier work yourself, you simply won't be prepared for the later assignments, or for more advanced courses..
Even your mistakes can be valuable (and, believe me, we all make them). They'll show you and your teachers where you need more help and more practice. Correcting your missteps is a vital part of learning. That's as true in Spanish as it is in biology.
Cheating denies you all that. It denies you a chance to learn. Even if you aren't caught (and you may well be!), you'll still miss what is most valuable about college: getting a real education. The only way to get that education is to work honestly. It's the high road to developing your own best values, too.
What does it mean to do honest work? The answer boils down to just three core principles:
Of course, there are plenty of detailed rules about academic honesty. Textbooks are filled with them. But ultimately they boil down to just three core principles. These principles are easy to remember, and they apply to everybody in the university, students or teachers alike. Follow them and you'll do fine.
In talks with high school students, I explain what these principles mean, why they matter, and how they affect student papers, tests, and lab assignments. I highlight the proper use of the Internet, a major source of potential problems. In Q&A, we talk about issues that affect students directly, from writing papers to handling lab assignments.