Cheating Across Cultures

Original Article

to normal foreign students, as long as they understand the requirements they should be held responsible. ... environment may have certain effects on the behaviors — As higher ed become an important economic factor in the US, these behaviors can happen.

First of all, I am immigrant from Asian, and I studied in US and taught at US. Here’s what I would say.

When I just got here, I do admire the general honor code of American — not everyone but the majority. As everyone understand, not all Asian are cheaters and not all White are honesty.

There are definitely culture differences but I do believe there is no excuses if the expectation have been communicated effectively. I was not been taught about paraphrasing or to quote the source until just before I came to US and went through a culture camp which not everyone from my country is required to attend. As to the language barrier, I do have students that real have trouble understand English and I will say communicate with them is definitely necessary if you even allow them to your class. But as to normal foreign students, as long as they understand the requirements they should be held responsible. By the way, after spending half my lifetime here, I still not certain if I can serve effective jury duty which I, so far, is not willing to take part.

In my native country, expectation are high and students are under pressure to not to fail. I don’t mean this to be an excuse, but I do think this environment may have certain effects on the behaviors — As higher ed become an important economic factor in the US, these behaviors can happen. As you can see, there will be kids that do not need to cheat to success (they either work hard or are gifted (which I never valued much), and will hate those who cheat. On the other hand, when pressure are high, you will see people resort to other means to pass. The environment adopt to this by more carefully monitoring the evaluation process. So the testing environment is well monitored and in class test is the dominate way of evaluating students.

After saying these, the linking of high performance of Asian to cheating is miss leading especially if we are talking about monitored tests. You are not likely to cheat on that unless there is a security breach of the exam administrator or if you count the study of historical exam material as cheating too. To me, there is no crime to study these material if they aren’t anything illegal. To be realistic, you can’t given the same questions over and over again unless you think memorizing those facts are of evaluation value. Just think about what will happen if driver license test never change the order of the question — it just asking for trouble. And you sure kids of any race is not tempting?

0. As long as expectation are communicated, everyone is responsible.
1. The competing environment have its effects.
2. Language bareer could be real.
3. This can happen in US with the increasing role higher ed played in people's financial future.
4. Not all white kid can resist the temping.