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

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

#31

Post by istorical »

munin wrote: post #22
istorical wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation. It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At t…

I can promise you that there are schools in America where students and faculty see the knowledge gained as the value, it sucks that you're not at one though.

I'm not trying to suggest that there aren't schools where knowledge is the goal, only that such is the case at a minority of schools. My education was definitely better off than most; I attended a good school. If you do believe there are schools where very little or no cheating occurs, I'd love to hear about it though.

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

#32

Post by glesica »

istorical wrote: post #18
spikels wrote: post #10

Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they want: politicians, students, staff and parents. Yet nothing needs to be taught and nothing needs to be learned. Doesn't this go on a lot more often then we want to admit?

I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation. It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At t…

This has most to do with the student. If the student wishes to acquire knowledge, most American universities can provide the student with a great deal of knowledge. If you are not at such a university (unlikely, though some schools are significantly weaker in some disciplines than other schools, so YMMV), then such a university is generally just a transfer application away (protip: admissions standards are different for transfer applicants, it is generally, though not universally, easier to get into a more prestigious school as a transfer, having already shown an aptitude for college work).

No student at an American university can honestly claim not to have learned anything and yet be blameless for not having learned anything.

I will admit that many students are not ready to attend college at the age of 18. I think we should do more to allow students the freedom to take some time to explore their options and possibly even take a year or two off of school before deciding whether or not to attend college, where to attend college, and what to study once there.

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

#34

Post by salmonellaeater »

spikels wrote: post #10

Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they want: politicians, students, staff and parents. Yet nothing needs to be taught and nothing needs to be learned. Doesn't this go on a lot more often then we want to admit?

This ignores the fact that a huge part of a degree's value is as proof you've passed a lot of difficult filters. One of those filters is ability to do an institution's bidding for many years. For many companies, this is much more important than any particular academic knowledge. For jobs that really require deep knowledge, there are fairly easy ways to test for it that the employer can do themselves (i.e. by interviewing).

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

#35

Post by pjscott »

haarg wrote: post #27
chris_wot wrote: post #7

This is going to effect innovation and education in China very badly. If there elite University students are getting there by cheating, then it means there elites aren't really elite: just better at being dishonest.

As opposed to the elite in the USA...

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.

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

#37

Post by pjscott »

awakeasleep wrote: post #21

> Transmitter disguised as a pencil eraser Let's not forget, resourcefulness is a greater predictor of success than raw intellectual ability.

If all your friends are using pencil eraser radios, then how resourceful do you really have to be to use one too?

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

#38

Post by eigenvector »

istorical wrote: post #18
spikels wrote: post #10

Cargo Cult Education - Schools are built, students attend, teachers lecture, assignments turned in, tests taken and degrees granted. Everyone gets what they want: politicians, students, staff and parents. Yet nothing needs to be taught and nothing needs to be learned. Doesn't this go on a lot more often then we want to admit?

I'm a spring 2013 undergraduate in CS, and this goes on in America just as it does in China. (the entire process is a charade.) I will admit it without hesitation. It's incredibly interesting that not a single party in the process sees actual knowledge as the value gained. Everyone sees the piece of paper as the value: the box that's checked. How long can such an illusion continue? Your guess is as good as mine. At t…

At the engineering school I graduated from in Canada, which is ranked in the top 20 worldwide, cheating was prolific with nearly all unsupervised work being gratuitously plagiarized.

Although supervised examinations accounted for at least 50% of each grade, any student who didn't cheat and wasn't also very, very bright probably lost at least half a letter grade on their CGPA as a result.

It was common for me to do well above average on examinations and well below average on assignments, since I was not plagiarizing them.

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

#39

Post by ishansharma »

anon-cheater wrote: post #29
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,…

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…

Same here! It feels bad when people think that cheating is a RIGHT!

I'm from India and 70% of people in my class think that cheating is fine. They'll copy assignments, cheat in tests and even exams. Though situation is not so bad here that people DEMAND for cheating but everything else is same.

I guess this is because of society and pressure. I don't know about China but in India, professions are like fashion. When doctors seem to be making money, there is a large portion of students wanting to be doctors and there is pressure from parents and society as a whole. Academic qualification is treated as the ONLY thing that one will be judged on and this also leads to parents stopping kids form going into sports, music and arts.

And poor kids who can't cope up with all this have to cheat.

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

#40

Post by icebraining »

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.

Well, I'm not Chinese, but I think they're right. Fairness requires impartiality, and they're being discriminated against. The solution should be to implement the anti-cheating measures everywhere, not just in a few schools.
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