| Psst, Got the Answer?
Many Say 'Yes'
By Andrew Curry
Special to the Christian
Science Monitor
July 10, 1997, International
Section
DATELINE: WARSAW
Cheating on
an oral exam - even in Poland, where cheating is as much a part of education
as textbooks and blackboards - is pretty tough.
So when a student
at Warsaw's private Higher School of Management found himself unprepared
for an oral accounting exam in front of the dean of the school and two
other professors, he got creative.
Wearing his
long hair loose, he hooked a bud earphone up to his cellular phone and
hid a small microphone in his tie. A friend well-versed in the subject
called him right before the exam, ready to read him the answers he needed.
But his cell
phone ran out of batteries halfway through the test and started beeping.
He failed the exam, but not the class, and can take the exam again at least
twice.
In Poland,
cheating and half-hearted enforcement efforts from teachers are a sort
of national sport, and cheating is seen as a natural phenomenon. "There
is student solidarity, and faculty solidarity working in the opposite direction,"
says Kazik Friske, dean of the University of Warsaw's Sociology department.
"I and the
majority of my colleagues consider cheating natural behavior - only when
it gets too obvious or arrogant do I cut it off. It's a sort of fight -
a student's right is to cheat, and my right is to make all possible attempts
to catch them," he adds.
Cheating begins
in elementary school. The average Polish student takes 10 or more subjects,
from history and geography to biology, physics, and two foreign languages,
at once. Teachers emphasize specific knowledge over general understanding
and critical thinking. In high school and college, cumulative final exams
are the only grades students get.
Most students
see cheating as the only possible response to an educational system that
values rote memorization more than personal creativity.
Students copy
one another's work during exams and get together in marathon minimizing
sessions at copy machines to prepare cheat sheets - sometimes shrinking
entire books to palm size. Not helping classmates on an exam is socially
unacceptable.
"If the person
really knows [the answer], has the time, and just doesn't want to tell
you, that's definitely not cool," says Mateusz Kowalyk, a student at the
Higher School of Management.
Mr. Kowalyk,
who spent several years in American high schools, was shocked at the lack
of consequences for cheating in Poland. "Nothing happens except [the student]
might fail the test. If you don't know anything, you can't lose anything
by going in and cheating."
"I passed a
math exam by handing it out the window to a guy who solved the whole thing
and passed it back. The same guy went to take tests for four other people,"
he adds. "There are situations where people pay someone to take a test,
but usually it's just a friend that wants to help."
"Every teacher
knows students cheat - it's a part of school," explains Katarzyna Skupinska,
a law student at the University of Warsaw. "Some people are just lazy,
but most people do it because the system expects you to have encyclopedic
knowledge [in all subjects], and sometimes it's just too much."
In fact, the
largest disagreement between teachers and students is not over whether
cheating is right but over the educational system itself. Teachers say
memorizing facts provides a basis for more general understanding, and students
argue that there is too much to learn. All scoff at the idea of an honor
code.
"This isn't
a question of moral principles, but of utilitarian rules," says Dr. Friske.
|
