121–127 of 127 posts
As 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.
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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 ha…
All those cases you raise, are indeed bad, but are you saying they are the majority?
The cheating example isn't a show of corruption, it's a show of fairness. If this generation of students sitting the gaokou are all cheating, forcing a tiny subset of them to not be allowed to cheat, is disadvantaging. You seem to understand china fairly well, if it were my child, I'd be angry (even if they weren't cheating), as it is clearly setting that group at a disadvantage. Perhaps if the government did it either ubiquitously or (probably better) at random each year, then the issue of cheating would go away. But to "trial" it in one area, is wrong.
> How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of time and be so in the dark?
Perhaps I am just more optimistic about where things are at.
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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.
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I went to school in the US. Anecdotally, the top students genuinely cared about learning. Most of the cheaters just barely got by, if that.
Anecdotal data point: My brother taught pure math in both Australia, and the U.S (in ivy league institutions). His view is that the quality of students in Australia (largely classless given the govt subsidies education so much) is leagues above the undergrads at top ivy leagues (who are there because of $$$).
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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…
I didn't say "lie and misrepresent", I said "BS and charm". It was a rephrasing of an earlier tweet of mine:
https://twitter.com/argv0/statuses/222618738250350592
My main point was that all this stuff can be learned without a degree, but should always be learned, and that these jobs mainly require skills not taught in school; that charm goes a long way, etc.
Your parsing of what I said is unfortunate and your characterization of what I was espousing ('sociopathic', 'cheaters') is wrong.
EDIT: Try to interpret what I said in a positive way.
I was talking about personal intellectual growth, not obtaining things you don't deserve via lies.
I was talking only about bootstrapping yourself into a career you want - of course you must then master whatever it is you have set out to do or will be found out and fired.
If you want a job and know you can learn it, then obtain that job however you can and prove yourself.
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Wow. You realize that this world where people care enough about school to put in that much effort is /completely foreign/ to me, right? Personally, I think the school system I came from, where nobody cares is in bigger trouble than the system where cheating is endemic.
They still don't care about school. They care about not being weeded from the pile of resumes because they didn't have "the right grade" - which they got by a pantomime that superficially resembled school. As a system it's highly optimized to select candidates who'll "go along to get along".
Yeah, but isn't that a big part of what school teaches, though? It's an important skill, too. If you want to get a good grade on that paper, you've gotta read the professor and figure out what they are expecting, and give it to them. That's an important skill.
I mean, what school doesn't teach is that you can also choose who you want to please; different people want different things, so if you want to be one way, well, you just find a boss/partner/whatever that wants you to do the things you want to do. school doesn't cover that.