Back in the days of the Great Cultural Revolution, students who handed in blank answer sheets were praised as 'white paper heroes'. Now, at least they are trying to write something rather than nothing.
Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
111–120 of 127 posts
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ok, they only have to implement plans stolen from other companies.
Flagged. Lets keep xenophobic comments off HN. [Edit: s/racist/xenophobic as per conversation below]
edit: I'm going to tone back my comment a bit and try to assume the best - that this was a simple misunderstanding and not an attempt to trivialize intolerance.
I believe the person you are replying to was making a statement about widespread Chinese government and corporate practices, and not about the Chinese people in general. God knows that the American government and corporate practices are under a constant barrage of attacks from around the world, yet we do not accuse those critics of xenophobia or racism.
Also, from the Hacker News Guidelines: "If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did."
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#113This is going to take a long time to change for the better. My Chinese friends who don't cheat because they actually want to learn stuff definitely complain a lot about the rampant cheating. If you want to get into and finish Uni completely legit, you have to work way, way harder than everyone else :\ And you will end up doing worse than people who cheated and got away with it, just have to suck it up. There's a lot…
I am not coming from a perspective that has inherent insight into this, but this all seems very strange to me. It seems to me that only the top [whatever] percent of a population is going to be able to get into a class of school of their choosing, and only a top [whatever] percent of those admitted to those schools are going to successfully graduate. Now, China's population is unfathomably large, so that means way mo…
10x the population should mean 10x the rejected people, but it should also mean 10x the accepted and 10x the graduated, right?
I don't know where you got that. The number of seats in "elite" or even "good enough" universities is not a linear function of the national population. In populous but poor countries like China and India and Bangladesh, there is much less educational opportunity than there are smart people.
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
"business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt" You should read up on the City of London Corporation.[1][2][3][4] [1] - http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2013/04/mysterious-residen... [2] - http://streebgreebling.blogspot.com/2011/04/state-within-sta... [3] - http://www.newstatesman.com/economy/2011/02/london-corporati... [4] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation
Sorry, what does that have to do with anything? I'm well aware of it, I work within the City - it's just local government. It, in common with many ancient bodies in the UK, has quirks, but none that are corrupt.
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#115Earlier 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.
> business and governance in the UK doesn't seem to be particularly corrupt.
Read any issue of Private Eye and you might form a different opinion.
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#116Earlier 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.
In case you missed it, that was for a Journal, not for undergraduate academic work.
The people writing journal papers are supposed to be doing high quality, original work, contributing to science, the knowledge of mankind, all that kind of thing.
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#117Earlier 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.
I like to think different people can express things in different ways. For example, if you can simplify a piece so that it is more understandable to a wider audience, is it still mediocre?
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flagged. Lets keep xenophobic comments off HN. [Edit: s/racist/xenophobic as per conversation below]
There's enough corporate espionage happening in the US also. Just 3 days ago, an officer at a certain US software company announced their intention to launder some open source code written 2 years ago by someone else and bundle it in the next version of their product.
That sounds interesting. Do you have a link you could share?
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a great system, but unsustainable for the volume, you are right. As a non-cheater who has been blessed with a lot of academic success, this article upsets me so much. my academic success has been dearly earned and I feel like cheaters completely undermine my efforts. True, cheaters don't have the knowledge and maybe I am a step ahead of them, because I actually put in the effort. But still, it feels like some…
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…
Do you have a link to the keynote where he mentions this perhaps? Would be very interested in it and my google powers didn't find anything.
While I haven't done it, I have recommended it to various people to lie on their resumes if they think it is the resumes preventing them to get a job. I was lucky to enter the work world in a time that they accepted just about everyone, but I see very smart folks nowadays scrapping for a job because they don't 'cheat' the interview process.
Re: Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams
#120As a though experiment, what do you think Americans would do if the government banned SAT prep courses? I know this isn't exactly a parallel; but consider that in many ways those courses are a leg up for the with it and able families.. just as this racket sounds like it was.