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Hundreds Expelled, Many Arrested, For Cheating In India's School Exams
Etherwalk writes Sources conflict, but it looks like as many as 300 people have been arrested for cheating in the Indian state of Bihar after the Hindustan Times published images of dozens of men climbing the walls of a test center to pass answers inside. 500-700+ students were expelled and police had been bribed to look the other way. Xinhau's version of the story omits any reference to police bribery, while The ABC's omits the fact that police fired guns into the air.
Remember incidents like this when you see lists of countries supposedly being ahead of other countries in terms of test score results... without knowing how much cheating is going on, such lists are usually pretty worthless predictors of real-world results.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course many feels that they have the right to cheat ...
We only have to look at what happened in Wallstreet to remind us that cheating is MASSIVELY PROFITABLE and if they can cheat, why can't we?
Predictable response when it comes to India and China. Check out the following article.. Hint: cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
On an unrelated note, Chinese students dominate the prestigious International Science Olympiad competitions. You can't cheat in those.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.
Tests aren't needed. They are a lazy, inaccurate way of assessing learning. Socrates needed no tests. Buddha never taught with a closed fist holding some knowledge back. Censorship promotes an effete monoculture, not innovation.
Sadly, it's a cultural thing. The first Indian I met was caught with a forged degree from a University he never went to. Over the years as I've gotten to work and know more Indians, I found an endemic culture of cheating on taxes, cheating on business deals, ripping off customers, degrees bought from diploma mills, and most recently, refusing to honour their own restaurant's gift certificates when you tried to cash them in.
Worse, every single one of these individuals bragged about how they "beat the system."
They don't worry that cheating is wrong, just about getting caught. :(
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
cheating, or at least the temptation, is something universal in human nature.
My experience is that most people will cheat if the following list of criteria are satisfied:
1. They think they will get away with it.
Only those funny foreigners cheat. Never happens here in the US...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2...
Give up testing altogether. Help everyone get to an A+ level.
No amount of education is going to cram an understanding of calculus into the head of someone who is incapable of learning calculus.
How do you propose we get those people "to an A+ level" in calculus? This is not something you can "give" someone, so it's not like we are "selfishly withholding" an understanding of calculus from them. They are just incapable of learning calculus.
So your suggestion is rather naive at best, and lacking in critical thinking skills at worst. It's like asking society to help someone with no arms and no legs "get to an A+ level" in juggling. It's just not going to happen, ever.
If you had critical thinking skills, you'd recognize that equality of opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcome, no matter how much time, effort, and money you pour into trying to make it untrue.
How else will you determine whether someone is worthy of entry to the next level of education or a job? Aren't job interviews tests? Do you just ship software to customers without doing any testing?
These people loved knowledge and were probably already well off. To other people, education is a means to getting a job and therefore, survival.
Olympiads test the top five or six students of a population. It should be obvious to anyone with even a tenuous grasp of mathematics that countries with a large population to draw from will be favored. That does not provide any useful information on the overall level of education in the country, except that it is sufficient enough for preternaturally skilled students to be identified and coached.
China does well in the Olympics for the same reason, but that doesn't mean that Chinese people are overall more athletic.
The tests are the problem. When police are involved, your education has ceased to become about knowledge transfer. It is about control.
what knowledge? 80% of these people are going to get government jobs in India through political connections bribes or reservation. 10% are going to buy a computer engineering degree and end up in the outsourcing business and help create the stereotype of the shallow Indian techie. 9% are going to be unemployed. 1% will do something worthwile in their life .
OK, so the students somehow got the exam answers. The University actually caught it because SOMEBODY WAS DOING THEIR FUCKING JOB, and reporting it. It went up the chain, and the students got dealt with. It's embarrassing, but it doesn't appear that the university condoned the cheating in any way. I'm sure some people do cheat, and manage not to get caught, but at least they system is set up so that they have to be lucky/sneaky to do so.
Now compare to this situation. People are climbing the walls. It's BLATANTLY FUCKING OBVIOUS that it was happening, so why didn't the institution deal with it before it became a viral web sensation?
I'm sorry, but when parents in Harvard, Oxford, or even NoName U are scaling walls and passing notes to the kids in plain view... then you can make a comparison against the host countries. The "well, other people do it too" explanation has got to be one of the worst type of enablers for sort of behavior, and even so there's simply no comparison.
And, that means what? You've already lost your job, the H1B is filling your position, and even IF he is fired, he'll still be here in the US, applying for jobs where HR files YOUR application in the circular file. Because he was a successful cheater, he got to America, and you lost your job. You're going to feel better somehow, because he got fired from your job? You ain't getting it back!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The sad reality is that he very well could live in the usa. Chinese come to the usa, and then stick among themselves, never bothering to learn English and anything about American culture. If this is what they are going to do, they should just stay in china. But they know how fucked up china is, and for this reason they come to America.
It is a genius model: you outsource to Cap Gemini who outsources to cheaper labour from overseas who outsource to free labour from Stack Overflow who does it for brownie points.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Cheaters cheat at every opportunity, they're also the ones who become notorious shysters and con men of every variety, both inside and outside the law. But most people aren't naturally born cheaters. What really brings out the widespread cheating is the perception that the system is rigged. That's why it is so hard to turn a country full of tax fraud, corruption, bribes and so on around, why should I make an honest effort when everybody else isn't?
At least when it comes to certain crimes I think the culture among your friends and family are far more important than what the law says. If your dad is an old Woodstock hippie and your buddies would say "Sure, who hasn't smoked a little pot in college" it's different than if they'd disown you and your bible study group would expel you. Of course they wouldn't support your cheating but if they cheated too and got away with it they won't take the moral high ground, just the practical advice that the first rule of cheating is to not get caught.
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