Okay, we all know that SOME Chinese people cheat; however, we can’t just generalize the whole race and call them all cheaters…
People of other races cheat too you know?
So some other cultures are bigger cheaters. That makes it so much better #-o
Not saying its better, just saying you shouldn’t believe that all chinese people cheat,
It’s not fair to say that about the people whom are honest and frown on cheating.
Im Asian and I don’t cheat…
No one here is saying an entire race is predisposed to cheating. But it is a fair generalization to say some NATIONALITIES are predisposed to cheating. Much of the predisposition to cheating has to do w the prevalence of corruption in those countries. In some countries, CORRUPTION SATURATES ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE, requiring bribes to get your drivers license, to bribes for getting one’s child a fair shake in K-12:
http://www.businessinsider.com/china-corruption-begins-at-schools-2013-10?IR=T&r=US&IR=T
In the US, when you get pulled over on the road by a cop, I’ll bet your first impulse isn’t to take cash out of your wallet. In the US and other “clean” countries, I don’t REGULARLY see Ferraris and Lambourghinis on city streets. I don’t read about the offspring of gov’t officials on a civil service salary, living in multi-million dollar flats in London & NY. In corrupt countries, I’ve noticed that city traffic is always bad (w the exception of NKorea). I think it’s because people don’t follow traffic rules since they are imbued w a sense of having to take as much advantage on the road as possible before the competition grabs it. One of the favorite pub topics that my expat collegues and I like to swap stories about, is “shakedown” horror stories by corrupt gov’t flunkies. In China, my company’s policy will not allow us to drive-- we must use a local driver-- because there were too many problems with shakedowns.
Back to the topic of the generalization of a whole race… One of the squeaky “cleanest” countries on earth WRT to corruption is Singapore. It’s a majority ethnic Chinese country. Other ethnic Chinese countries/states rank high on cleanness/transparency: HK & Taiwan.
Here’s Transparency International’s annual Corruption Index List of 174 Countries. Note the ranking of China on the list. HK is broken out separately from China.
** 1st Quinitile **
1 Denmark
2 New Zealand
3 Finland
4 Sweden
5 Norway
5 Switzerland
7 Singapore
8 Netherlands
9 Luxembourg
10 Canada
11 Australia
12 Germany
12 Iceland
14 United Kingdom
15 Belgium
15 Japan
17 Barbados
17 Hong Kong
17 Ireland
17 United States
21 Chile
21 Uruguay
23 Austria
24 Bahamas
25 United Arab Emirates
26 Estonia
26 France
26 Qatar
29 Saint Vincent & Grenadines
30 Bhutan
31 Botswana
31 Cyprus
31 Portugal
31 Puerto Rico
35 Poland
35 Taiwan
** 2nd Quinitile **
37 Israel
37 Spain
39 Dominica
39 Lithuania
39 Slovenia
42 Cape Verde
43 Korea (South)
43 Latvia
43 Malta
43 Seychelles
47 Costa Rica
47 Hungary
47 Mauritius
50 Georgia
50 Malaysia
50 Samoa
53 Czech Repub.
54 Slovakia
55 Bahrain
55 Jordan
55 Lesotho
55 Namibia
55 Rwanda
55 Saudi Arabia
61 Croatia
61 Ghana
63 Cuba
64 Oman
64 The FYR of Macedonia
64 Turkey
67 Kuwait
67 South Africa
69 Brazil
69 Bulgaria
69 Greece
69 Italy
69 Romania
69 Senegal
69 Swaziland
** 3rd Quinitile **
76 Montenegro
76 Sao Tome & Principe
78 Serbia
79 Tunisia
80 Benin
80 Bosnia & Herzegovina
80 El Salvador
80 Mongolia
80 Morocco
85 Burkina Faso
85 India
85 Jamaica
85 Peru
85 Philippines
85 Sri Lanka
85 Thailand
85 Trinidad & Tobago
85 Zambia
94 Armenia
94 Colombia
94 Egypt
94 Gabon
94 Liberia
94 Panama
100 Algeria
100 China
100 Suriname
103 Bolivia
103 Mexico
103 Moldova
103 Niger
** 4th Quinitile **
107 Argentina
107 Djibouti
107 Indonesia
110 Albania
110 Ecuador
110 Ethiopia
110 Kosovo
110 Malawi
115 Côte d´Ivoire
115 Dominican Repub.
115 Guatemala
115 Mali
119 Belarus
119 Mozambique
119 Sierra Leone
119 Tanzania
119 Vietnam
124 Guyana
124 Mauritania
126 Azerbaijan
126 Gambia
126 Honduras
126 Kazakhstan
126 Nepal
126 Pakistan
126 Togo
133 Madagascar
133 Nicaragua
133 Timor-Leste
136 Cameroon
136 Iran
136 Kyrgyzstan
136 Lebanon
136 Nigeria
136 Russia
** 5th Quinitile **
142 Comoros
142 Uganda
142 Ukraine
145 Bangladesh
145 Guinea
145 Kenya
145 Laos
145 Papua New Guinea
150 Central African Repub.
150 Paraguay
152 Congo Repub.
152 Tajikistan
154 Chad
154 Dem. Repub. of Congo
156 Cambodia
156 Myanmar
156 Zimbabwe
159 Burundi
159 Syria
161 Angola
161 Guinea-Bissau
161 Haiti
161 Venezuela
161 Yemen
166 Eritrea
166 Libya
166 Uzbekistan
169 Turkmenistan
170 Iraq
171 South Sudan
172 Afghanistan
173 Sudan
174 Korea (North)
174 Somalia
Well, what do you know? I’m Taiwanese! I’ve never seen/heard of people bribing government officials or anyone in Taiwan and I had lived there for four years…
I was born and raised in LA and I always saw people cheating all the time. Some people who were the “smartest” of the class actually turned out to have cheated their way to the top.
Did a little bit of research on cheating in the United States:
“According to the 1998 poll of Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 80% of the country’s best students cheated to get to the top of their class. More than half the students surveyed said they don’t think cheating is a big deal and most did not get caught.”
Ha…The majority of my colleagues were from the 3rd Quintile and the 4th Quintile. (We were from the 1st Quintile.)
Wonder which Quintile a country belongs to has something to do with 1) the income of the bottom 50% of the population living in that country. 2) Social mobility.
Maybe the median income has to be above some threshold as well.
Italy is a rich country. But it ranks down there in corruption with Brazil & Swaziland
It appears to me that many of the highly ranked countries have 1) high tax rate 2) “homogeneous” in their population’s cultural/ethnic composition.
Also,
http://www.henrikkleven.com/uploads/3/7/3/1/37310663/kleven_jep2014.pdf
Many of the countries referred to in the link above seem to be countries which were developed later.
(Were they considered as “not very civilized” by some earlier civilized countries, Italy/Egypt/Iraq, a long time ago?)
Countries which have been civilized for well too long seem to be not doing very well.
Rome – > Italy
It certainly isn’t just China that has grad students with very poor English labgusge skills finding their way into US universities, nor is it a new problem. TAs with poor language skills were common at the research university I attended in the 1980s, and are the number one reason why I encouraged my kids to explore LACs when looking at colleges. No idea how those TAs (specific ones from France and India come to mind) convinced anyone that they had sufficient language skills to teach a section, but cheating certainly seems like a possibility.
While this was an issue in the mid-'80s and earlier, it has become far less common since the extreme late '80s/early ‘90s as universities have stepped up requirements and verification of international grad students’ English proficiency skills.
Also, IME…one sometimes needs to take some post late '80s accusations of foreign looking TAs/Profs having poor language skills to teach with a barrel of salt as I’ve seen many native-born American undergrads use that canard at various colleges as an excuse for poor grades which were mainly due to self-inflicted reasons*.
In one notable case, the Prof several students accused of having a hard to understand “accent” is herself a native-born American who happens to be “foreign looking” to many native-born Americans. From actually seeing her in class/public seminar presentations and from chatting with her in person…her “accent” wouldn’t be distinguishable from other native-born Americans if one was conversing with her over the phone or one doesn’t allow her “foreign looking” looks to influence his/her perceptions.
- Too much partying, not prioritizing studying enough, turning in poorly/no assigned projects/problem sets, being dinged in class for being highly uncivil towards classmates/TA/Prof in class discussions, etc.
HRSMom, when people are acting in ways that oppress and silence other people (racist, sexist, homophobic, etc), they need to be called on it, and their behaviors need to be named. The behaviors on this discussion were hateful and driven by fear. It is not overboard to call hate and fear by name.
I just want to say that this thread just makes me sick to my stomach. Imagine if we had started a thread about URMs not having as much initiative in doing well in school?! No, Americans do not cheat on SAT. Let’s just all pat ourselves on that. When your kids do SAT tutoring, where and how do you think those tutoring centers get their “special test samples”? They send paid test takers to take those tests and are assigned to remember certain number of questions. How do I know? I came very close in going into business with one such place in the States.
In Mexico, bribery of government official is very rampant. Does it mean Mexican culture condones that kind of behavior? Or is it because those officials are paid so little that they need to do what they have to do in order to support their family (policemen were paid $600USD/mon).
D2 told me a story last summer when she worked at a DA’s office. A young woman was put in jail for stealing food at a grocery store. She did it because her mother was sick and they have been hungry. She didn’t know there were assistance she could get. Yes, she was a minority, living in a low income neighborhood. Yes, there are many cases like that. What general race/culture conclusion should one draw from that.
We are not here to try to solve China’s problem on why so many young people feel the need of getting a Western education, but let’s refrain from making statements like “cheating is part of Chinese culture” when you do not know anything about Chinese culture. Students who cheat on SAT tests do not represent large majority of Chinese.
Our focus should be on how CB administers the tests. We pay CB very good money to administer those tests. CB needs to do what they have to do to make safeguard integrity of those tests. If they put more effort on security (changing tests more often and checking student’s credential better) then cheating across the board may go down.
Chinese also are paying good money for the tests
4kidsdad - I get your drift, not really that funny. The (honest) Chinese also deserve to have those tests administered with integrity, not some recycled tests.
Likewise many American are paying good money for the tests - $200-300/hr tutoring sessions.
Isn’t cheating rampant everywhere? In my school, A level is like the Chinese entrance exam test.
Indians, Ghanaians, Germans and other nationalities at my school cheat to pass their exams and it makes me sick to my stomach. CIE has its past papers all over the Internet, and its encouraged to use them as practice.
Instead, students memorize and chew marksxhemes becos similar questions come year after year after year. The actual material is difficult to learn. They think “why not make it easier?” And use their phones and iPads to see the marksxhemes the teacher is using. If the Chinese hav an ethical prob, so do most of my classmates, Chinese, Ghanaian, and the rest. I hate it.
Lol how do I end up here?
I surely wish that some day very few young people feel the need of picking up English and getting a western education, stopping worshiping those whose “physical appearances” have more the look of westerners. I once heard it is an evidence of being conquered even in “culture” even though one culture is not necessarily “better” than the other. It is sick to my stomach to know that this phenomenon is widespread.
I think everyone has talked through the majority of the issues related to this thread. Any new observations or reports can start anew.