Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

smh.com.au

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 127 posts

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#101

Post by wtrk »

Volpe wrote: post #89
wtrk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I provide evidence to prove to you that my generalization is accurate? Can you prove to me that Antarctica exists? That there were ever dinosaurs? If I'm intent on not being convinced? Come to China for an extended visit. Reside in one region for a while, then move to another for a bit. Repeat that process a few times until you're satisfied. Being able to read and write Chinese (simplified characters) and speak P…

I do reside (a lot of the time), in GuangZhou, and whilst there is certainly people who are like that, I know a lot who aren't. (Much like any other country). So I have a counter proof that your generalisation is too broad, hence why I asked for you to clarify. My take is, (having travelled a fair amount within china). That China is very different depending on which region you are in (much like the US is). So alarm b…

You've read the linked article, wherein readers are informed that more than two thousand people (not a tiny number given that only 800 students were sitting for the exam at the school in question -- so think parents and family members) rioted outside an examinations hall demanding that children be allowed to cheat on a test and the local government's response was to agree that enforcement of anti-cheating measures had been too strict.

Are you going to ask me to Google up images of thousands of dead pigs clogging a major river after being dumped there by farmers? Photos of walls of buildings damaged during the 2013 Sichuan earthquake showing that they contain quite a lot of styrofoam beneath a thin layer of cement? Reports of intentional (rather than accidental) food contamination and tampering? The gutter oil rackets -- one of which was busted operating in HK late in 2012? You can find all of that information for yourself.

As for HK, off the top of my head, besides the gutter oil operation there (similar to some of those in the PRC proper) ... Both CE candidates had illegal structures in/on their homes but one managed to squeak through the Beijing-run coronation process before his was discovered, the development secretary resigned last year as a result of a corruption investigation, the head of the city's urban renewal authority resigned recently after being targeted for investigation, the head of security at the airport (a former high-ranking police officer) is being investigated for corruption, etc.

How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#102

Post by redbit »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #86
redbit wrote: post #23

"We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat." I can't imagine how people can say it out their mouth. Just like when someone kill, due to fairness you kill too. I am a Chinese, and I feel shame on this kind of Chinese logic. They use wording like fairness, human right not seek for proper, but their benefit, I have see too much ridiculous in my homeland.

What do you think of the "right to privacy"? Isn't it as ridiculous as a "right to cheating"? I mean, they're both dishonest ways to reach fairness.

I think they are misusing the word "fairness" fairness can have both size, all doing the same or all not doing it both we just usually prefer the wrong side as we know we are hard to change the mind of others

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#103

Post by dnautics »

glesica wrote: post #97
Afforess wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and disagree. Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group" (read: academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is likely to suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the long run, but at the cost of not…

GPA really isn't all that important for graduate study. GRE score, personal statement, letters of recommendation all matter more, provided the GPA is reasonable. This is, of course, also dependent on the program you are applying to. But with hundreds to choose from, it is usually possible to find a good fit.

as is the essay. My PhD co-advisor was the dean of the graduate students for a spell, and he repeatedly said, 'the one factor that determines the success of a grad student is their GRE writing score and the quality of their essay'. Which is deliciously ironic, because I think he himself was an atrocious writer, I think he has dyslexia, yet, he's the only professor in the institute that has a drug that made it to Phase I.

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#104

Post by javajosh »

miguelrochefort wrote: post #81
leke wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we have this scheme in our Finnish polytechnic. Regardless though, people still do it and try and get away with it. Sometimes they don't even try and make any small changes to the original document. I have no idea why they do it -- perhaps they don't believe the system will catch it?

People plagiarize because doing the actual work is soul-crushing. How motivating is it to read a bunch of high quality work, put them together and produce a mediocre work? It's not motivating at all, and people simply try to stay sane.

"Students plagiarize because the source material will always be of higher quality than their paper" is a very novel argument! And yet, it doesn't hold water. For one thing, teaching kids how to synthesize information, explain how a process works, is quite valuable and not at all soul-crushing. "To learn is to teach," they say, and writing papers about what you've learned is, essentially, teaching about what you've learned. It's a good thing.

And of course if you generalize the argument, then students could be excused from learning entirely. How "soul-crushing" is it for a piano student to try to play Étude in C major, when there are countless recordings of it being played perfectly, and with great genius? Following in the steps of great thinkers and doers is not soul-crushing, because you're walking in the footsteps of greatness. Those notes are the right notes. You play it badly, but you're playing it. It is humbling, though. The difference between soul crushing and humility is that for the latter, there's every reason to believe that one day you too could be great.

The other good thing about writing papers is that, no matter how expository it may be, there is always opportunity for viewpoint. Even if the viewpoint expressed has to do with how best to organize the material, every paper is a chance for self-expression.

The reason students don't like writing papers is that it's really hard. It's hard to consume the information, and it's hard to organize it, especially if you're not used to organizing information. But you have to make mistakes, write papers that are all jumbled and confused, before you can get better. Those jumbled, bad papers are clearly worse than the source material, and the teacher is there with her red pen marking the next step toward greatness.

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#106

Post by fspeech »

Volpe wrote: post #75
beedogs wrote: post #4

This isn't just a problem with Chinese students in China. A large for-pay cheating operation which catered exclusively to Chinese students was just uncovered in New Zealand, too. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-ch...

These are completely different issues (which you are simply conflating by race). The exam mentioned in the article is THE exam. If you fail, that's it for you. You can't re-sit and you can't attend a reputable university. Your choices are the equivalent of technical colleges (few which have any reputation), working in low skill jobs, or (if you have A LOT of money) studying abroad. Given the circumstances, I think ch…

You can retake exams in China, but they are offered only once a year.

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#107

Post by fspeech »

moonese wrote: post #93
jmduke wrote: post #13

Entrance exams treat undergraduate admissions as an O(n) problem. As anyone who has worked in undergraduate admissions will tell you, it is far more complex than that. But when n grows prohibitively large, you have to go with solutions that are less than ideal. My alma mater, thirty years ago, eschewed the traditional college application in favor of a more homebrew approach: since it was a small liberal arts college,…

Entrance exam is a big thing in China, it will determine one's future, and we all take it quite seriously. Cheating is reported every year, but not in large cities, and this is the first time that someone will 'fight' as their children will not being able to cheat. Comparing to the total number of students who take the exam, 9,120,000 this year, cheating is really really quite small, from my experience, I never heard…

The dilemma here is that admission quota is by province, so there is incentive for municipalities to go easy so that local students gain more seats at the prestigious schools. In other words the local education bureaus administering the tests are not disinterested parties.

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#108

Post by MaysonL »

timthorn wrote: post #46
calibraxis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that these people are fighting for the right to have more decent lives and better schools. If so, organized cheating is a cost of the unequal system they live under. Reminds me of Basho's chief architect (the Riak company), who advised at Ricon's closing keynote that you should lie and misrepresent yourself to anyplace doing interesting things, as he did at Apple (where he got to write a distribu…

> Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments routinely lie, cheat and steal. Really? I'm not sure I've experience of this. Might be a geographic/cultural thing, I guess, but business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.

Go read Le Carré. Or examine the record of News Corp phone hacking, and the politicians with whom they are entwined.

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#109

Post by laumars »

stfu wrote: post #60
calibraxis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that these people are fighting for the right to have more decent lives and better schools. If so, organized cheating is a cost of the unequal system they live under. Reminds me of Basho's chief architect (the Riak company), who advised at Ricon's closing keynote that you should lie and misrepresent yourself to anyplace doing interesting things, as he did at Apple (where he got to write a distribu…

In my personal value system I value the one who is able to beat a system through a clever hack much higher than the one who follows just the instructions to the point how somebody else planned it out. After all in you world of non-cheating companies you would have to be strictly agains the business practices of companies such as Uber or Airbnb. After all they were certainly breaking the rules when they first started…

Your post reminds me of a fictional example taken from Star Trek where Kirk (just a cadet at that point) cheated on the Kobayashi Maru test. For those who are not familiar (or even fans) of the franchise, the Kobayashi Maru[1] is a simulation that's designed to test a cadets ability to cope with failure when faced with a scenario that is unwinnable. In Kirks case, he hacked the computer to give him a better odds and thus went on to beat the simulation.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobayashi_Maru

Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams

#110

Post by ttflee »

roy_x wrote: post #80

I am a native Chinese and I must say this is something considered very abnormal in China. The college entrance examination is one of the most important exam hold in the whole country level. If anything happen in this exam, the governor whom in charge of the area will lose a lot of score in their KPI performance.

Less important in this case, from my perspective, as the students are competing SPORTS and ARTS colleges/majors, which are always seen as categories that requires less solemn test scores on everything(, except for the talent in specific sports/arts, which is hard to test though).

My mother always watches Youth Singers Competition year after year on TV, where they draw random questions as 'overall quality' section. And you can tell many of the best youth singers in China are less competitive in literature, history and some common knowledge in science(, and some of them are even less competitive in answering questions in music theory/history).

I am not trying to generalize any conclusion about the cheating rate or something. I am just less inclined to believe that the media have already reported all the truth(, nothing but the truth). And it may not necessarily hint that other students who focus other majors like science, technology or business are cheating in the same level.

Post reply on HN