It's not a straw-man. I have attempted to refute nothing. I was merely asking my parent to consider how he might behave in such a situation.
I used a different situation, it is true, but only because I have found being on the instructional end of cheating feels very different than you might imagine, so I guessed my parent was not familiar with it.
You attempted to refute the claim that people should control themselves better in such situations. And you did so very clearly, by inferring that spreading the mood to the 75% was perfectly logical.
As a student who has not cheated, but has had to sit through countless lectures about cheating, and a few where large portions of the class did, I ask you and (other?) teachers this question: to whom are you teaching? The ones who are learning, or the ones who are cheating?
I understand that you're stuck with both, but either find motivation in the successes or consider another line of work - it's part of the job. Otherwise you're screwing the ones who did the right thing.
People have limits. I don't know enough about the situation to know if he was under the kind of load that would cause most people to act differently, but I suspect that is the case.
I used a different situation, it is true, but only because I have found being on the instructional end of cheating feels very different than you might imagine, so I guessed my parent was not familiar with it.