
Chinese students and families fight for the right to cheat their exams - DanielRibeiro
http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-students-and-families-fight-for-the-right-to-cheat-their-exams-20130621-2oo6o.html
======
spikels
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?

~~~
istorical
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 the end of the day though, you either learn what you need
to learn or you don't. Industry isn't too terrible at calling out those who
can't produce value, but can only cross their t's and dot their i's.

EDIT: I should definitely draw a distinction between the magnitude of
cheating/carelessness described in the article and what I encountered at an
American university. The article describes a situation that is much worse.

~~~
glesica
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.

~~~
Afforess
I agree, and disagree.

Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a
number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a
disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group" (read:
academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is likely to
suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the long run, but
at the cost of not having a great GPA.

This situation forces any student interested in maintaining a high GPA to
focus more on the grade and not the material. The delicious irony being that
students who are most eligible for graduate studies are those least
intellectual.

~~~
eshvk
> Having recently been a student in an American university, I found that in a
> number of my classes, having a wish to acquire knowledge puts you at a
> disadvantage. When the majority of your peers are "working in a group"
> (read: academically sanctioned cheating) and you are not, your grade is
> likely to suffer. I was able to grasp and learn the material better in the
> long run, but at the cost of not having a great GPA.

You are possibly conflating "working in a group" with "academically sanctioned
cheating". There are several situations where working in a group happens:

1\. Cooperatively solving an assignment as a group, e.g. a programming
assignment where pieces of code are divided amongst the members. In such a
scenario, I would argue that if you were solving it on your own, you were
being stupid. Sure, you learnt how to solve a technical problem on your own;
on the other hand you missed out on learning how to work in a group.

2\. Studying together in order to comprehend the material better. I am not
even sure how this could be interpreted as cheating.

3\. Solving say a theoretical assignment together where in reality one person
solves the damn thing and everyone else copies the solution. Most math/theory
classes (in a decent school) acknowledge that this can happen and have exams
to smooth out the grades.

> This situation forces any student interested in maintaining a high GPA to
> focus more on the grade and not the material. The delicious irony being that
> students who are most eligible for graduate studies are those least
> intellectual.

Really? Tell me more about these graduate programs that look _only_ at your
GPA. If you are so damn well intellectual, you should be out there working
with professors on research projects and whatever to show that you are cut out
for graduate school.

~~~
Volpe
> If you are so damn well intellectual, you should be out there working with
> professors on research projects and whatever to show that you are cut out
> for graduate school.

Out where? Do you mean in between your class load? (I'm not too familiar with
US graduate schools)... I thought your GPA was exactly what they looked for?

~~~
glesica
No, GPA is not generally a priority in graduate school admissions. You need a
reasonable GPA, but a 4.0 is totally unnecessary. GRE scores and other factors
like letters of recommendation and research projects with faculty members
during undergraduate are usually more important.

------
tzs
For those who haven't read the article yet, when they say "fight", they mean
actual physical fighting:

> By late afternoon, the invigilators were trapped as students pelted the
> windows with rocks. Outside, more than 2000 people had gathered, smashing
> cars and chanting: ''We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not
> let us cheat.''

Cheating in China goes way beyond cheating to get into school. Two years ago,
the Journal of Zhejiang University-Science became the first Chinese journal to
use text analysis software to spot plagiarism.

They found that 31% of their papers were plagiarized. 40% for computer science
and life science papers. [1] [2]

[1] [http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-
hi...](http://www.npr.org/2011/08/03/138937778/plagiarism-plague-hinders-
chinas-scientific-ambition)

[2]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467153d...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v467/n7312/full/467153d.html)

~~~
leke
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?

~~~
miguelrochefort
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.

~~~
javajosh
"Students plagiarize because the source material will always be of higher
quality than their paper" is a very novel argument! And yet, it doesn't hold
water. For one thing, teaching kids how to synthesize information, explain how
a process works, is quite valuable and not at all soul-crushing. "To learn is
to teach," they say, and writing papers about what you've learned is,
essentially, teaching about what you've learned. It's a good thing.

And of course if you generalize the argument, then students could be excused
from learning entirely. How "soul-crushing" is it for a piano student to try
to play Étude in C major, when there are countless recordings of it being
played perfectly, and with great genius? Following in the steps of great
thinkers and doers is not soul-crushing, because you're walking in the
footsteps of greatness. Those notes are the right notes. You play it badly,
but _you 're playing it_. It is humbling, though. The difference between soul
crushing and humility is that for the latter, there's every reason to believe
that one day you too could be great.

The other good thing about writing papers is that, no matter how expository it
may be, there is _always_ opportunity for viewpoint. Even if the viewpoint
expressed has to do with how best to organize the material, every paper is a
chance for self-expression.

The reason students don't like writing papers is that it's really hard. It's
hard to consume the information, and it's hard to organize it, especially if
you're not used to organizing information. But you have to make mistakes,
write papers that are all jumbled and confused, before you can get better.
Those jumbled, bad papers are clearly worse than the source material, and the
teacher is there with her red pen marking the next step toward greatness.

------
jmduke
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, it felt that the best way to see if a student was a fit for the
college was to place him there for a span of a week or so: meeting with
professors, faculty, taking a tour of the place, making sure things 'clicked'.
He or she took an exam at the end of it, focused less on trying to define the
student intellectually and more whether or not they were engaged with the
college: there were quizzes on campus trivia (we're the second oldest college
in the nation, and talk about our history incessantly), open-ended questions
about what they liked, et cetera -- all designed to see if the student was
really meant to be a part of the college.

This worked twofold: it let the admissions faculty see whether or not the
student was really taking the experience seriously, and it let the student see
whether or not they wanted to take it seriously.

(Why no math tests? When a professor spends a few hours with a prospective
student, they can generally deduce whether or not they're smart enough to
handle the rigor.)

Today, such a practice is impossible: the number of applicants has increased
by at least 20x. There literally are not enough days in the calendar.

~~~
anon-cheater
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 someone stole a taxi medallion and I bought
one.

~~~
calibraxis
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
distributed filesystem), Akamai, etc.

Once in "the real world", we discover that corporations and governments
routinely lie, cheat and steal. Because it's effective. Does anyone honestly
think Steve Jobs was averse to sociopathic behavior, or went unrewarded for
it? We live in institutions which reward such sheer winning over obeying
rules. (Regardless whether those rules are important or terrible.) The people
who make the rules themselves are subject to such pressures. The mass of
cheaters here on HN simply are too wise to speak up and admit it.

I say that as someone who never cheated on a school test or homework. I don't
begrudge those who did, because the mainstream educational systems are
disgusting. I have no fear that a cheater will make my worklife hard, because
that's what interviews are for. I'm more concerned about play-by-the-rules
people who've stuck to conventional wisdom all their lives, and defer to
bosses.

~~~
timthorn
> 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.

~~~
barry-cotter
You live in a high trust society with an impartial and competent state, where
the rule of law is a real thing and opportunities for real, lucrative
corruption are relatively limited. Given the demographics of this website
there is an above average chance you work in an industry or sector that is
dominated by literal minded men that tend more autistic than the general
population, and associate mainly with people who are basically bourgeois in
their values. All of these characteristics make the level of rat bastard
weaselness in your environment lower than it would otherwise be.

Nonetheless the upper echelons of the corporate world in the UK probably
resemble those in the UK in that sociopaths are ten to twenty times more
common in the executive class than the general population. I can't see any
reason politics would not favour the same group in the same way.

For further reading see gwern's notes on psychopaths and the psychology of
power.

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/fzy/notes_on_psychopathy/)

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dtg/notes_on_the_psychology_of_power/)

I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers, Clueless
series.

~~~
vorg
> I have also heard good things about Ashok Rao's Psychopaths, Losers,
> Clueless series.

That would be _Venkat_ Rao's Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless series.

------
dmoy
This 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 of inertia to solving it, and it's very hard to do across the
board. For Uni entrance, there's ~10 million+ people taking the exam every
year - that prevents a lot of non-exam based solutions to "who do we let into
Uni?"

I do not envy the position of the people in charge of all of this :(

~~~
jlgreco
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_ more people are going to be rejected or fail to graduate. On the
other hand, it also means _way_ more people are going to be accepted and
graduate. 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 really see why a larger population should mean that cheating is
incentivized more, unless the real problem is an undersupply (proportionately)
of education.

Now, if lack of education positions is the real problem, then cheating isn't a
solution to that; rampant cheating just changes the equation from "top
[whatever] get accepted" to "top [whatever] _at cheating_ get accepted". But
do those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a large population have more
incentive to cheat than those who don't meet "top [whatever]" in a small
population? I don't see why. The incentives should be the same in either a
large or a small population, right?

~~~
dmoy
Sorry, I didn't mean to say that the higher population CAUSES cheating. Just
that the insane volume of people applying makes the current system (single
exam being 99% of your entrance to Uni) more logistically feasible than a lot
of other potential systems.

The disadvantage is that you have no other way to prove yourself than a single
test score. That's also why you're seeing such outrage, because that single
test is going to open (or shut) a lot of doors.

(See above comment about O(n), he articulated it way better than me :P)

------
beedogs
This isn't just a problem with Chinese students in China. A large for-pay
cheating operation which catered exclusively to Chinese students was just
uncovered in New Zealand, too.

[http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-
ch...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8662224/Chinese-cheats-rort-
NZ-universities-with-fakes)

~~~
Volpe
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 cheating is the sensible thing to do, given
their are cheaters, by not cheating yourself you put yourself at a
disadvantage.

~~~
beedogs
The term "Chinese" doesn't describe a race; it is descriptive of a
nationality. And I don't see how the two issues aren't related at least at
some basic level. Cheating at this scale seems to be a cultural phenomenon
moreso than a racial one.

~~~
Volpe
Well sure, technically, blacks aren't a race either, nor are whites or
indians... technically we are All "human" but these semantics don't progress
the discussion.

I agree that right now, given China's recent history and current state of
affairs their is widespread corruption and exploitation. If that qualifies as
"cultural phenomenon" then I agree, but I don't agree it was always there, and
think it is more to do with the mao/deng transition and the massive injection
of wealth into china since.

------
redbit
"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.

~~~
icebraining
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.

~~~
leke
I think it's wrong for people to jump on the band wagon. It just adds to the
problem instead of making it a minority thing which can be easier to deal
with.

~~~
icebraining
But is it a minority thing? That doesn't seem to be the case.

------
sly010
This may be obvious, yet unmentioned in the article, but if you are a Chinese
student, you can take this exam exacly once, and this is the one single number
they will judge you on. Understandable if you are upset. Perhaps if no single
exam would be so important and you were able to retake them whenever you want,
there were less pressure for cheating. Our education and qualification systems
are indeed unscalable. Are we in a need for a more granular and more
subjective way of "quantifying" peoples achievement?

------
pchander
This reads like an article from the onion. I had to double check just to make
sure it wasn't.

~~~
schuke
Welcome to the People's Republic of China.

------
pron
Stories likes this make life worth living! It's got irony, farce, class
struggle, crushed dreams - everything human existence is made of.

I actually have a lot to say about it, but this great Baffler piece, _Adam
Wheeler Went to Harvard_ , says it best:
[http://thebaffler.com/past/adam_wheeler_went_to_harvard](http://thebaffler.com/past/adam_wheeler_went_to_harvard).

Then, I would add a snippet from this Thomas Frank article[1] in Harper's:

 _After all, what universities were selling then, and what they are selling
today, is an extremely valuable commodity: entry into what sociologists call
the professional managerial class. There’s a reason that Lexus LX 570 that
almost ran you down in the crosswalk the other day had a harvard sticker
neatly centered on its rear window. And it isn’t because the driver believes
we would all profit from immersing ourselves in theories of intersectionality,
or because of a lifelong attachment to Crimson field hockey. That sticker is
there because Harvard is a crucial part of who that SUV driver is. A college
degree from a prestigious school is the credential that matters most in
American life, and growing college-enrollment figures suggest that an
increasing number of Americans have figured this out._

[1]: [http://harpers.org/archive/2012/06/the-price-of-
admission/](http://harpers.org/archive/2012/06/the-price-of-admission/)
(subscribers only)

------
chris_wot
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.

~~~
vehementi
Devil's advocate: grades are a stupid thing; if someone sits in class and
learns and for the exam needs to cheat in order to keep up with cheat-driven-
grades-inflation, we have not made a comment about that student's ability or
anything. The elites may yet be elite.

~~~
chris_wot
All that proves is that exams aren't the best way of assessing someone's
ability. However, cheating doesn't show ability in anything, other than
deviousness.

------
danpalmer
In the usual pre-exam instructions this year at university (in the UK) the
invigilators made specific reference to network enabled watches as a
prohibited item - I have a Pebble, as do a few of my friends, but not many
students do in general.

One interesting thing I've noticed is with assignments we have strict anti-
plagiarism checks which always seem to be emphasised for foreign students. We
have quite a few students from China and India on our courses and it's almost
like it's a special mention for them. Several times lecturers have made
reference to different cultures having an expectation of plagiarism, and I've
spoken to academics who say it is a very common thing from foreign students.

------
xarien
If this was jeopardy, the question would be: "What is the combination of a
child-centric culture and a one child policy."

------
evoloution
Selecting to enforce more strictly the law in a particular area is unfair and
not the way to go when you have such high cheating levels reported in the
whole country. To walk the path of the "Rule of Law" they have to make the
rules stricter for all.

------
roy_x
I am a native Chinese and I must say this is something considered very
abnormal in China.

The college entrance examination is one of the most important exam hold in the
whole country level. If anything happen in this exam, the governor whom in
charge of the area will lose a lot of score in their KPI performance.

~~~
ttflee
Less important in this case, from my perspective, as the students are
competing SPORTS and ARTS colleges/majors, which are always seen as categories
that requires less solemn test scores on everything(, except for the talent in
specific sports/arts, which is hard to test though).

My mother always watches Youth Singers Competition year after year on TV,
where they draw random questions as 'overall quality' section. And you can
tell many of the best youth singers in China are less competitive in
literature, history and some common knowledge in science(, and some of them
are even less competitive in answering questions in music theory/history).

I am not trying to generalize any conclusion about the cheating rate or
something. I am just less inclined to believe that the media have already
reported all the truth(, nothing but the truth). And it may not necessarily
hint that other students who focus other majors like science, technology or
business are cheating in the same level.

------
mynameishere
If everyone cheats and they construct a pilot enforcement program that focuses
on .1 percent of the population, of course it's unfair. The real solution is
to drop the cheatable system altogether. You aren't going to fix universal
corruption with baby steps.

~~~
wtrk
Cheating is not endemic within the gaokao system because, as a testing regime,
it's excessively vulnerable to cheating. It's not any more cheatable than the
SAT, GREs, or other standardized entrance or aptitude exams.

Mainland Chinese society at all levels is thoroughly corrupt and its pretty
much impossible to achieve what a reasonable observer would recognize as a
materially successful life within the PRC without being actively involved in
corruption.

Even simply to muddle along and live hand-to-mouth, content to have most of
the doors to success either closed to them from the get-go or slammed in their
face, a regular Mainland person has to turn a blind eye to a steady stream of
illegal, unethical, and downright harmful behavior on the part of their peers.

That's a part of why (along with many other factors) many Mainland citizens
are eager to emigrate to pretty much anywhere that's not the PRC.

~~~
Volpe
This feels like a massive over generalisation (given the size of china)... Any
kind of evidence of this?

~~~
wtrk
Can I provide evidence to prove to you that my generalization is accurate?

Can you prove to me that Antarctica exists? That there were ever dinosaurs? If
I'm intent on not being convinced?

Come to China for an extended visit. Reside in one region for a while, then
move to another for a bit. Repeat that process a few times until you're
satisfied. Being able to read and write Chinese (simplified characters) and
speak Putonghua (or, if you stay in one place long enough, the local dialect)
would probably speed things up for you.

Even then, you could (if you were determined enough) maintain a conviction
that you had just had a run of bad luck in terms of the places you'd chosen to
live and the people with whom you'd happened to interact.

I don't know how much time you'd have to spend here to be satisfied.

~~~
Volpe
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
bells ring, when I see people making broad statements such as "Chinese are all
corrupt".

You are essentially saying that some weird twist of the CCP causes corruption
in the society, else how do you explain Taiwan, and HK? Is that what you are
meaning to say? That is an interesting thesis.

~~~
wtrk
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 had been too strict.

Are you going to ask me to Google up images of thousands of dead pigs clogging
a major river after being dumped there by farmers? Photos of walls of
buildings damaged during the 2013 Sichuan earthquake showing that they contain
quite a lot of styrofoam beneath a thin layer of cement? Reports of
intentional (rather than accidental) food contamination and tampering? The
gutter oil rackets -- one of which was busted operating in HK late in 2012?
You can find all of that information for yourself.

As for HK, off the top of my head, besides the gutter oil operation there
(similar to some of those in the PRC proper) ... Both CE candidates had
illegal structures in/on their homes but one managed to squeak through the
Beijing-run coronation process before his was discovered, the development
secretary resigned last year as a result of a corruption investigation, the
head of the city's urban renewal authority resigned recently after being
targeted for investigation, the head of security at the airport (a former
high-ranking police officer) is being investigated for corruption, etc.

How could you really have lived in Guangzhou for any significant length of
time and be so in the dark?

~~~
Volpe
You seem to believe this kind of corruption doesn't exist elsewhere in the
world, and that P.R China is somehow unique in it's corruption. I don't agree
with this. I'd say the recent wealth in china means you have very rich, and
very poor very close to each other and thus corruption is more visible. But
the "chinese" are not any different to any other people. Spend some time in
India, there is just as much corruption there (if not more?). Spend some time
in the U.S discover how corrupt they are... it's no different the world over,
just the visibility changes

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.

------
lucb1e
Instead of calling it cheating, whynot describe _objectively_ what they are
doing and let us judge ourselves whether it's cheating? This article makes it
sound obvious that everyone is using cell phones or other devices to
communicate with people outside or with each other, but for all we know that
was a single occurrence out of thousands of students. Too often articles like
these turn out to tell only one side of the story, and I don't like it. It
sounds too crazy that all Chinese students think cheating is fair; heck, it
wouldn't be called cheating by them if they thought it was!

------
b0rsuk
The article reads as if it was something from The Onion. It's funny, then you
realize it's real, and it become _scary_.

I got a very similar vibe from "Journey Beyond Tomorrow" by Robert Sheckley.
It's half SF, half satire, and very witty. The book chilled me a few times
because I realized things he makes fun are happening around the world, just on
a smaller scale (for example, people committing crimes in order to be sent to
jail. Free food and shelter). When reading the book, I had to make breaks not
because I was tired, but because it was like overdosing laughing gas.

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ttflee
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.

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gbraad
This is about the 高考 (gaokao) or the university entrance exam. There are many
discussions about this since ages. The parents in other provinces think it is
unfair their child needs a higher score than those from Beijing; well, the
cheating is one reason, but also the universities are paid by the taxpayers
from Beijing. In short: This exam decides a lot about the students future...
If they have a bad score, no good uni, no good future. After this, only money
can help you get a way to buy you into education or a good future.

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kenster07
1) Stephen Covey often talked about the "personality ethic" over the
"character ethic." The set of ethics a society chooses will determine its
future in the long-term. Charades cannot last forever.

2) The article didn't hesitate to conflate the events at this one school with
the character of the entire country, which, given the disparate scale of the
two, seems to be poor journalism. But then again, such articles have come to
be expected nowadays.

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awakeasleep
> Transmitter disguised as a pencil eraser

Let's not forget, resourcefulness is a greater predictor of success than raw
intellectual ability.

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

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e3pi
"...Mr Li had confiscated a mobile phone from his son and then refused a bribe
to return the handset.

Cohen Bros' A Serious Man, deftly sounded this Asian custom as a passing grade
bribe into a mixed-metaphor with 'Schrodinger's Cat', all the while quantum
engineer uncle Arthur's Mentaculous, returns a fortune.

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redwood
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.

~~~
rdouble
Nothing, because there are about a thousand colleges one can get into with
dismal SAT scores.

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samsolomon
This is a perfect example of the problem with test scores. The test becomes a
metric to game, and any actual learning is negated in the process.

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maximem
At this level, some might say "Cheating is an art", the more crafty and
resourceful you get the more you'll go farther!

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msie
I'm glad to see that there wasn't a comments thread on that story. It would
have probably been filled with racist comments.

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rorrr2
Surprisingly, not The Onion.

