Does China's culture of cheating start in kindergarden?

[China English Buddy]

I was sharing a meal in CHina with some Chinese students when their American tutor proudly announced how he had cheated in his degree by a. letting a friend write a paper for him and b. cutting and pasting huge unreferenced chunks from other people's papers....he kinda gloated about how lucky he was that nobody checked his work. The Chinese students laughed out of embarrassment but after he left the table had a very open discussion about how dishonourable they felt that was. An interesting cultural exchange took place of which the outcomes were a. it is important not to lose face (maybe if one has to cheat...but you would never reveal it); and b. it is between ourself and your own mind and that if you fail you are letting your family down but if you cheat you are letting yourself down.

As to kindergarten children my experience of pre school in england is just the same.

Also on the topic of cheating. I would like to add that i taught in an fe/he college in the uk. Two of my students never turned up for their 2nd year so i failed them.later they were passed by the programme manager...i then had to deal with a lot of other angry students who felt the injustice. The bottom line was colleges were/ are paid fees by government on student completion, success and outcome so felt justified to pass students for financial reasons....registers were re marked to show their attendance when in fact they had been absent. Institutional cheating. I do know that HE and Universities in the UK are very strict about cheating and plagiarism as are schools.

[kdavid]

Two of my students never turned up for their 2nd year so i failed them.later they were passed by the programme manager...

I've been teaching in China since 2006. In addition to ESL, I've also been involved in TESOL (i.e. teacher) training.

The culture shock session of the course is divided into two sections: personal and professional. During the professional component we discuss issues teachers will undoubtedly face at one point or another should they stay in China long enough.

The comment quoted above is very commonplace, especially for university teachers. I've had former graduates of the program contact me asking for advice. Many have commented how a school administrator would approach them at the end of the year, instructing them on how many A's, B's, C's, etc. to assign, while also telling them that no student should get below a XX.

This happens all the time at the private language school I work for. If a teacher assigns a grade too low, the (Chinese) teaching assistants (TA) change the grade. Clearly, the motives here are a bit different as private schools (businesses) can't fail a student without giving the impression to parents that they've provided an inferior product. It's common for TAs to write the answers to tests on the board.

I've also had older students tell me that some teachers at their public schools will intentionally leave behind test papers and answers the day before a big test.

The students are aware of these issues and other loopholes, and they exploit them.

I was told a story recently about a friend of a classmate who was a PhD candidate at a relatively prestigious university. When it came time for the friend to turn in her graduate dissertation, she had nothing. She told her advisor, who then instructed her to turn in 40 blank pages with the official 封面 filled out and stapled on top.

Originally, the PhD candidate had been horrified that she'd get kicked out and let her family down. When she asked her advisor why he was allowing her to do this, the advisor commented that getting into the school was so difficult a process, that she at least deserved the degree. The candidate received a 70 on her "dissertation"--the lowest passing mark allowed.

In an unrelated story, I was early for my MA class the other day and saw a stack of the most recent graduate dissertations sitting on the desk. I glanced quickly through the topics, purely out of curiosity, and was surprised to see that one of the dissertations, which are aimed at producing original scholarship, was a ~40-page book report. The professors' comment page attached had assigned a passing mark.

It's clear in these instances that professors and administrators are an inextricable component of academic dishonesty.

[johnk]

I am not so sure if I should add to this or not, but ...

20 years ago I came to the UK and I did an ONC at the local FE college. I was a part-time evening course, 2 evenings a week over 2 years with a fair bit of home study required. There were formal exams which were set by the tutors but overseen (and I think marked) by an external body.

For most of the exams, the tutors would give us mock exams in the weeks before. The mock exams were marked, corrected and returned to us before the real exams. In most cases the mock exams were identical to the real exams. So effectively we were told the exam questions and answers beforehand.

The bit that really annoyed me about this was that some people still managed to fail. :-(

I am not sure of how it worked but I believe that the college and tutors had a vested interest in students passing.

[gato]

So it's China and the UK. Who else?

[kdavid]

So it's China and the UK. Who else?

I don't think it's the instances of cheating, here or abroad, that puzzle people. Cheating happens everywhere.

I think the issue is not only its pervasiveness, but also its encouragement and toleration.

[zhouhaochen]

@Kdavid: when China English Buddy was talking about 2 students not turning up for class for a year, she meant in the UK. I think as an example that cheating might actually not be more prevalent in China than other countries.

And that is a point: the people in this forum, including myself, are visitors in this country, and we might be judging something that we dont understand. My earlier comment trying to explain why I thought cheating is more prevalent in China might be the same. I might just not have enough insight.

I have met and know some incredibly trustworthy Chinese people, both in academia and professional life.

[stardave]

As someone who have the EXACT opposite background as you guys (born in China, immigrate to USA), I feel like you guys are taking this out of context, as if seems that only Chinese are cheaters and the upright Americans are the good guys who would never do wrong.

There are plenty of example of American teacher helping their students to cheat to pass the school district standards tests, so that they school can get funding or the government won't punishment for low scores.

Here are just 2 article that I found while using google search for 5 seconds

School: Teacher Helps Students Cheat Because She Says They’re ‘Dumb As Hell’

http://atlanta.cbslocal.com/2012/08/28/school-teacher-helps-students-cheat-because-she-says-theyre-dumb-as-hell/

Feds: Teachers embroiled in test-taking fraud

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/25/teachers-cheat-fraud-test/1725231/

Funny thing is, when things like this happen in US, people would always think this is an isolated incidents, that it was just some bad apple, but when the similar thing happen in China, people would automatically attribute this to the inferior Chinese ethics. Really not fair imo....

And lastly the reason I think Chinese students cheats more is because of the competition is so fierce in China as oppose to in US. In China, the factor that determine what college that you will go to starts at grade 1. You need to have money and good connections to go to a good elementary school, to ensure your chance to go to a good middle school, and high school, and while you are in each of those those school you are competing with countless fellow students who's goal is also going to better schools. Unlike in US, you can pretty much screw up in Elementary and middle or even high school and still have a good chance to go to a good college, me for example, when I first arrive to US, i didn't speak jack squad English but I was old enough to go to high school, when I graduated my GPA in high school was below 2.5 (50/100) if I had that score anywhere in Chinese high school I'm pretty much doomed to not go to any college or at beast vocationally schools. But for me, after I graduated High school, my English skill as up to standard so I decided to go to a community college and work hard, in the end my grade was excellent so I actually end to USC Business school. And yes... I cheated my ass off while I was in college and University, and you know what? So did my fellow classmates, White or Asian or Latino, because in College and University that was where the true competition was.

[kdavid]

I feel like you guys are taking this out of context, as if seems that only Chinese are cheaters and the upright Americans are the good guys who would never do wrong.

You'll notice that a number of people have commented on the ubiquity of cheating. It's presence in cultures throughout the world is not what we're discussing; it's its (more) widespread toleration and acceptance in China as a method of helping one get to the next level.

On a relevant note, I recommend this recent Economist article, Campus collaboration, Foreign universities find working in China harder than expected.

From the article:

In 2007 less than a year after the programme was launched, a visiting Yale faculty member, Stephen Stearns, wrote an open letter complaining about the rampant plagiarism he claimed was being committed by many of his Chinese students. “When a student I am teaching steals words and ideas from an author without acknowledgment, I feel cheated,” said Mr Stearns. “I ask myself, why should I teach people who knowingly deceive me?” He added that such practices appeared to be widely tolerated by Chinese academics, and suggested that the nation had lost its way.

A piquant article, it raises other important issues regarding Sino-foreign collaboration, such as:

“Academic culture in China is such that the kind of value system we have in place is not part of the woodwork here,” says Denis Simon, who oversees Arizona State University’s dealings with China....“We want high-quality people with good English and the ability to pay..."

It will be interesting to see if Western institutions are willing to sacrifice standards, moral and academic, for profit.

[renzhe]

I couldn't help but think about this thread when I read this:

http://www.news.com.au/world/dozens-suspended-in-harvard-university-cheat-scandal/story-fndir2ev-1226567299425

[skylee]

I like that report at #49. If universities want to deal with plagiarism, wouldn't putting in place a system requiring the use of turn-it-in or similar software solve (part of) the problem?

[johnk]

I like that report at #49. If universities want to deal with plagiarism, wouldn't putting in place a system requiring the use of turn-it-in or similar software solve (part of) the problem?

According to this article on the BBC website, universities in the UK allready do:

In the UK, 98% of universities now use a computer programme called Turnitin to analyse suspicious essays, the company that provides it says.

The software scans text for passages which match a database of 155 million student papers, 110 million documents, and 14 billion web pages. Back in 2006/7, more than 600,000 essays were checked in this way in the UK. By last year, that figure leapt to three million.

I read the above article on the BBC website some time ago. I searched for it by putting the word "plagiarism" into the search box. I got lots of interesting hits. According to this article, plagiarism is endemic among European politicians.

[realmayo]

Chinese universities -- some at least -- have started using that or similar software. I know of someone whose submission failed who was then given a day to rewrite it in different words so it passed.

Recently Google's Eric Schmidt has weighed in: http://www.independe...dt-8478287.html

"The disparity between American and Chinese firms and their tactics will put both the government and the companies of the United States at a distinct disadvantage,” because “the United States will not take the same path of digital corporate espionage, as its laws are much stricter (and better enforced) and because illicit competition violate the American sense of fair play.”

Which might be true in broad brush strokes but there have long been rumblings (or maybe ramblings?) that US email-reading technology has been used to help US firms win contracts against European ones.

Perhaps the sense that in the West these things are wrong and marginal keeps them fairly marginal there, whereas in China there's no sense that they are marginal, rather they are mainstream. Anyone know how Taiwan compares with the mainland here?

[icebear]

I thought this might be of interest to the group, as recently discussed on Quora...

Tao Tan, MBB Consultant, VC, I-Banker

4 votes by Anon User, Jing Li, Ada Hui, and Andrew J. Ho

I have no basis to assess whether its "most" or not. But cheating on exams was endorsed and approved by none other than Chairman Mao himself. Of course, you could read his remarks as a sort of a protest against the overly bureaucratic scholar-official elite, who strictly controlled entry to their ranks through proficiency in mindless mental gymnastics

For example, the Imperial civil service exams typically required the candidate to compose poetry on obscure topics not on the basis of how characters were pronounced in the present day, but how they were pronounced thousands of years ago through the use of rime tables, which had to be memorized. Because this was somehow a judgment of the potential of a future public official.

Remarks At The Spring Festival

Our present method of conducting examinations is a method for dealing with the enemy, not a method for dealing with the people. It is a method of surprise attack, asking oblique or strange questions. This is still the same method as the old eight-legged essay. I do not approve of this. It should be changed completely. I am in favour of publishing the questions in advance and letting the students study them and answer them with the aid of books.

For instance, if one sets twenty questions on the Dream of the Red Chamber, and some students answer half of them and answer them well, and some of the answers are very good and contain creative ideas, then one can give them 100 per cent. If some other students answer all twenty questions and answer them correctly, but answer them simply by reciting from their textbooks and lectures, without any creative ideas, they should be given 50 or 60 per cent.

At examinations whispering into each other’s ears and taking other people’s places ought to be allowed. If your answer is good and I copy it, then mine should be counted as good. Whispering in other people’s ears and taking examinations in other people’s names used to be done secretly. Let it now be done openly.

If I can’t do something and you write down the answer, which I then copy, this is all right. Let’s give it a try. We must do things in a lively fashion, not in a lifeless fashion. There are teachers who ramble on and on when they lecture; they should let their students doze off. If your lecture is no good, why insist on others listening to you? Rather than keeping your eyes open and listening to boring lectures, it is better to get some refreshing sleep. You don’t have to listen to nonsense, you can rest your brain instead.

[Zhao Hanqing]

Communism is behind all this.

[Zhao Hanqing]

Honesty is the value we stress most, respect is the second.诚敬为本。

[kdavid]

NBC's "Behind the Wall" blog just recently posted this article: Study: Chinese parents bigger fibbers than American ones, which I thought apt for this discussion.

From the article:

American parents reported using more of what the study calls comparison lies -- untrue statements intended to generate positive feeling or to promote fantasy characters.

Sixty percent of Americans said they would use the line, “That was beautiful piano playing,” even if they thought it sounded terrible. In contrast, 44 percent of Chinese declared they would lie in those circumstances.

The results could be interpreted to mean that Chinese parents are more comfortable lying in general, but the study’s authors said that Chinese parents “made more negative evaluations of children’s lies,” and expressed more negative views than their American counterparts on fibs about fantasy characters like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. Indeed, 88 percent of American respondents said they had used the lie, “Santa Claus will come to deliver your present on Christmas Eve.”

The study suggested that the wide acceptance of parental lying among Chinese adults could be driven by a strong desire for social cohesiveness and an emphasis on respect and obedience, according to the authors.

In other words, lying can be an effective tool in socializing children.

Or as one Chinese parent put it, “When teaching children, it is okay to use well-intentioned lies. It can promote positive development and prevent your child from going astray.”

[skylee]

The sample size was 199... it does not seem to be a big enough sample imho. And the fact that 98% of the Chinese samples admiited they lied to their children (compared to 84% of the American samples) might actually be interpreted that Chinese parents are not that dishonest.

I don't understand the 60% vs 44% interpretation quoted above.

[renzhe]

Recently Google's Eric Schmidt has weighed in

I don't know if I should laugh or cry. This man has built the largest surveillance network the world has ever seen. If he represents the "American sense of fair play" and the good guys, then we can turn the world off because there's no hope.

[imron]

In related news, Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams.

[陳德聰]

Part of that argument kind of rings true for me though. If you aren't going to enforce rules in the entire country, you really are essentially re-un-evening the playing field, aren't you?

I know a few people (Canadian) who simply do not do research for their undergraduate papers and simply fabricate data sets and the like. There is no way their profs would ever know, but if they were discovered the stakes are so high with our disciplinary system with regards to "academic dishonesty". I fee like the stakes are not really as high in China, which perhaps makes people less pressured to hide their cheating.