Cheating Kazakh-Style

For those of you teachers familiar with the concept of cheating, I’ve got news for you – they have made it an Olympic sport in Kazakhstan, and, I should add, other erstwhile Soviet satellite countries. They learned well from Mother Russia.

While I have not had cheating incidents that I know of– yet—I have served on a disciplinary committee already that took five students to task for having cheated on their Intensive English listening exam. Five! They were from different classes, but they had all gotten the answers and pasted them to their notebooks, which they had placed conveniently on their laps. Although the teachers said they did not actually witness their using the crib sheets, their intention was clear. Several of the students in the meeting cried, but not because they’d lost face or were ashamed; they were just sorry they got caught. Actually, we found out that one of the students -- the only boy -- had bought the answers for $200 from someone on the street in front of the university. Only they were the wrong answers! This selling of answers is not at all unusual and has turned into quite a cottage industry. Too bad he had no return policy for his bogus answers.

Cheating seems to be one of those wonderful hand-me-down habits from the Soviet period when it was more important to appear to be right than to actually know the answers. Frank Thoms, who spent a lot of time observing the students in the Soviet system, wrote Through Their Eyes: Encounters with Soviet People, (don’t know if it’s published), said that students went to such elaborate lengths to cheat that they often spent more time preparing the cheat sheets than it would have taken to learn the material. He cites writing on their hands, thighs, the inside of their jackets, notes tucked inside the cap of a Bic pen, and so forth. One student at my university had apparently spent many, many hours writing formulas and what not on the long table in the back of the room where the teacher couldn’t see. With every seat in the room taken by examinees, he was certain to be able to sit in the back and have practically his entire textbook etched into the table. He was only found out because the janitor saw it one evening and told the teacher.

The system developed, Mr. Thoms suggests, because cheating “serves the collective. But unlike American students, Soviets do not cheat from one another but with one another [emphasis his], with the brighter students helping the weaker ones…cheating enables some teachers and their students to proceed through assignments with success.”

He talks a lot about the prompting that goes on. Students provide answers to those who lag behind. “Prompting kindles the collective spirit,” Mr. Thoms points out. “Prompting ensures that…slower students will not be left behind. Prompting provides for success at every lesson. It enables lessons to move along, to keep pace with the demands of the curriculum. Without it there would be silence, the dreaded silence of failure. There is no time for waiting in a Soviet classroom, no time for pausing, no time for reflecting.” He also points out that prompting replaces personal responsibility and initiative. Everyone learns to stay together and no one is allowed to get ahead, thus perpetuating mediocrity. “Excelling breeds envy.”

So cheating has a different etiology and a different purpose over here. Unfortunately the result is still the same – students don’t learn. The dirty little secret is that teachers collude with the students. They want them to succeed because it makes them look good. In fact, even the teachers who came to the disciplinary hearing tried to defend the students in that they “didn’t actually see them cheat.” Come on, folks. I only need to hear the quacking and I know it’s a duck. I’ll be on the lookout for cheaters. But then cheaters aren’t new to me. Just the reasons behind it.

Cheers everyone!