An industry that helps Chinese cheat their way into and through US colleges

What a touching documentary that shows a different side to the plight of Chinese students. Thank you for sharing it.

The same system exists in America. The US version of this documentary is College, Inc [1]

The whole exchange between parents who want the best for their kids, teachers who are pushing a sub-par education at their private schools that they know takes advantage of poorer students, pre-enrollment students who will do anything to find a job, and graduated students who can see that this education hasn't opened any doors, is easy to see through this documentary. I wonder whether this film is viewable within China or not

The teacher explaining how his school isn't worth it, particularly for the poor, is heartbreakingly honest [2]

The part when she sings a song about what happened to her hands when she was a child is both sad and happy [3]

Also interesting to learn about the term "Ant Tribe", that is, kids who can't find a job after school [4]

[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/collegeinc/

[2] https://youtu.be/BP61LwODTnY?t=50m32s

[3] https://youtu.be/BP61LwODTnY?t=55m50s

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ant_tribe

> Also refusing a gift isn't extremely rude in Chinese culture if it's in the nebulous "I scratch your back you scratch mine" gray area that might be bribery. Accepting is basically signing on for the "deal".

So, the person who tells you it is rude to decline, is really just attempting to persuade you to "sign the deal".

After living in Asia for a few years, I can understand how accepting gifts from family members and pretending to decline them is a form of showing respect. I wonder how that developed and why the straightforward Western approach of simply saying, "this is an amazing gift, thank you so much" isn't more common.

Westerners do sometimes say "you shouldn't have" while accepting gifts. We only try to decline the most over-the-top gifts. I guess levels of "politeness" vary across cultures and from situation to situation. In the case of giving and receiving gifts, China's culture appears to be more polite

At any rate, similar to pushing education on other parts of the world, the act of making this a cultural norm seems to make the act lose its meaning, particularly for people outside the culture, like me.

I wonder whether government officials in China really believe in education, and how many view it as a charade. I tend to think it's only a charade when viewed as a charade, and only helpful when viewed as helpful. Education is what it is to you

Excuse me, ADHD is very serious and real. Let me show you a few relevant quotes. Here's the relevant literature linked.

"Given these deficits in academic skills and behavior, it is not surprising to find that as many as 56% of children with ADHD may require academic tutoring, approximately 30% may repeat a grade in school, and 30–40% may be placed in one or more special education programs. As many as 46% may be suspended from school and 10–35% may drop out entirely and fail to complete high school (Barkley, DuPaul, & McMurray, 1990; Barkley, Fischer, Edelbrock, & Smallish, 1990; Barkley, Fischer, Smallish, & Fletcher, 2006; Faraone et al., 1993; Szatmari, Offord, & Boyle, 1989; Weiss & Hechtman, 1993)." It causes an order of magnitude more problems in your life.

http://l.facebook.com/l.php? u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sciencedirect.com%2Fscience%2Farticle%2Fpii%2FS0160289615001312&h=ZAQFx8Qkc

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204423904275949&se...

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drthomasebrow...

http://www.psychiatrist.com/jcp/article/Pages/2012/v73n07/v7...

^^ 16 year follow up of life outcomes, know that getting medicated gives you remission the majority of the time. I can post more links if necessary.

https://t.co/n1mUvGpOrn

^^ Medication effects on I.Q && Working memory. WM > I.Q. There is one study that has found an increase of up to 4.5 points for kids that are medicated if they have ADHD. Very serious. Deserves to be taken very seriously.

Stop doubting something extremely real and significant.

http://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.medicalnewsto...

^ 2-4x increases your mortality rate.

Yeah, and 30 students out of 30,000 is a tiny drop in the bucket. Just putting it into perspective.

I realise that it's possible to be able to read and not speak it. However these students were supposed to have passed tests of written and spoken English proficiency. If they couldn't understand spoken English it will have been pretty difficult for them to understand the lectures and seminars. I certainly never said they were stupid. I know the languages are very different and it will have been very hard for them. I've spent a little time in China and know how hard it is the other way around. What I said is that this wasn't reflected in the work they submitted. The comparison with times when they wrote without the opportunity for outside help was also significant. There's no dispute that cheating is widespread among Chinese students, and other Chinese students expressed frustration similar to those expressed by commenters here.

As for your point about white people: I don't think skin colour has anything to do with it. It's a problem with English speakers. Foreign language proficiency among native English speakers is terrible. Hypocritically, because so many people do speak English as a second language well, then it is easy to assume, even subconsciously, that if someone doesn't speak it well then they're not as smart. The fact we don't speak their native tongue makes it harder to disabuse ourselves of this. I will say in our defence that it is actually quite hard to learn a foreign language when you're in the country and everyone just replies to you in English. Having lots of Swedish friends and spending quite a bit of time in Sweden, I took several courses to learn the language, even though I never met a single person who was unable to speak English, and nobody under 50 who wasn't totally fluent. In the total of probably three or four months I've spent there over the past decade, not once has anyone responded to me in Swedish when I've spoken to them. It's not useless, as it does at least mean I can understand when they're speaking to each other. Scandinavia is an extreme case, but the phenomenon has spread with English proficiency. In most of Europe it's safe to assume that almost anyone under 40 will speak at least some English. This certainly makes things easy for English speakers, but it does lead to complacency.