I know some parents will go all out to help their kids do well, but in India this is to the extreme. Please check out this article with pictures - LINK
The article tells about how 600 10th grade Indian students were expelled for cheating on an exam which was so bad the pictures show parents scaling the side of a building to hand test answers to their students. According to the article this particular Indian province is known for this but the fact that the pictures made the international press caused them finally to crack down.
If I were a student seeking unauthorized answers on a test, and if I were at least minimally smart myself, I don’t think I’d trust answers coming from parents stupid enough to climb a fence in broad daylight to get their answers to me.
What, were the parents standing on the ledge outside the windows whispering answers in during the test? If that’s how you’re going to cheat you might as well just let them come inside.
As I understand they were handing them answers on paper. One article described all the bags of trash picked up after the test.
Whats funny to me is if this was a 10th grade test, the questions are bound to be pretty difficult even for someone with a college degree. How would the parents be any big help?
I had an acquaintance who ran an exam ring in China. His equipment was amazing- they would used these tiny speakers the size of a grain of rice that you put in your ear and retrieve with a magnet. A wire antenna was slipped into shirt collars. They would smuggle a copy of the exam our first thing, and then have s team of experts work out the answers in real time.
If examinations are so difficult for moderately intelligent students all over the world, then there may be something fatally flawed in the exam system itself.
The trouble is that those who have succeeded in any system have a vested interest in maintaining that system.
I feel a bit apprehensive about getting accused of racism for posting the following: but I’ll risk it – have always thought the poem, an absolute gem. It’s a parody of Bret Harte’s The Heathen Chinee, by someone called Arthur Clement Hilton, about whom otherwise I know absolutely nothing. I’ll maintain that its purpose is not to mock or demean anyone – rather, to salute the audacity, ingenuity and enterprise of those who cleverly cheat in exams.
In the US, the test is called SAT and administered at grade 12.
You “flunk” those, and college becomes, if it is possible at all, an entirely different game.
The only difference I see is that, in the US, not going to a “good” (or any) college does not condemn you to abject poverty. India (and China) still have horrendous gaps between “have” and "(you won’t believe what all we) Have Not
The Chinese exams, at least, are pretty different from the SATs. For one, the SAT tests general reasoning skills, while the Chinese exam tests are subject matter tests covering everything in high school.
More importantly, in China, your test score determines which university you can go to, as well as what you can major in. And unlike the US, there aren’t many other paths. In China, you generally can’t switch majors and adult students generally aren’t permitted outside of special arrangements. You basically get this one and only chance to seek a better future.
That’s changing a bit as private enterprise grows and people have more opportunities to do things like become entrepreneurs, and the education system definitely is trying to get more in step with the wider world. But for now, the stakes are higher than anything an American student can begin to imagine.
Indian school leaver exams are much closer to what even sven describes than SATs.
I thought I covered the fundamental differences in the consequences of failing the test.
I was simply pointing out that 'murcans are not all that unfamiliar with testing which determines, in one sitting, how one’s future maps.
My folks had 4 kids.
2 went to second-tier State (typically, “Statename College” vs “University of Statename”)
1 went to Regional Accredidation
1 went to first-tier State
All because of those tests.