Does China's culture of cheating start in kindergarden?

[sthubbar]

I think that it is a common impression that the percentage of cheating, corruption, and lying are higher in China than in many Western countries. Of course, these exist in all cultures around the world. As an occasional teach of professional (non-English language) classes in several Chinese universities, I can attest that the level of cheating is shocking and accepted by everyone, students, teachers and administrators.

I propose that this is related to "face" and starts in kindergarden.

My son, attending a local Chinese kindergarden, is being taught that face is more important than honesty at the tender age of 3.

I was waiting to pick up my son and noticed the school was displaying student's work and I saw a bunch of drawings and found my son's there. It hit me like a lightning bolt, "There is no way my son did this." The drawing was perfectly drawn. All of the colors were in the lines and the colors were appropriate, meaning no green sun and purple grass. Looking at the rest of the drawings, they all looked the same.

Of course, it is possible that the teacher clearly instructed the students how to color and what color to put where. I have seen my son color and he's lucky to keep the colors on the paper much less staying within the lines. As they say, "When you hear hooves, think horses, not unicorns,"

None of the drawing were done by the students, the teachers did them. This is step one of teaching children that "face" is more important than honesty.

The teacher tells the parent that their child did this wonderful drawing. The child hears this and knows full well that the teacher is lying. Then the parent also praises the child and shows other family members what a great drawing their child did. Of course, the parents know full well, that their child did not do the drawing and the child realizes their parents are also lying.

Children learn, that it is not about doing one's own work, or being proud what they can do, it is more about showing "face", even if that includes lying.

I really doubt anything that is put up on the school walls, including more concrete things like math tests. I bet the teacher is looking right over their shoulders and making sure the students put on good "face".

Anybody else have young children in the Chinese education system?

[imron]

Out of curiosity, did you ask the teachers about this?

[anonymoose]

Sounds pretty bad. Even at a top university like Fudan, cheating is rampant. Having said that, the foreign students do it too.

[skylee]

Shouldn't it be "face is more important than honesty"?

I thought the title of this thread is pretty bad as it assumes that there is a culture of cheating in China. But then I found that there seems to be no way of denying it. And then this thread came to mind -> The People's Republic of Cheating 學術造假

But as imron said, have you asked the teachers about this? Have you voiced your opinions and/or objection? Have you heard of the story of 孟母三遷 (see section 6 here)? If the teachers are giving bad influence to the students and more importantly your child, why would you allow it and do not consider moving or at least enrolling the child in a school with better teachers/culture?

Even at a top university like Fudan, cheating is rampant. Having said that, the foreign students do it too.

I think the fact that some forum members can watch TV programmes/movies free online and read books by Mo Yan and other famous Chinese writers free online somehow has to do with this cheating culture.

[count_zero]

It's completely bonkers.

There was a thread on thebeijinger.com a while ago. A foreign woman sends her daughter (who can pass for Chinese) to a local Beijing school. The school wants to enter the girl into an English-speaking competition because she's completely fluent. The girl thinks this is cheating because she's not actually Chinese. The school is insistent because it will bring them face to win the competition by cheating. The mother meets the teacher and says that she will let her daughter make the decision. At this point the teacher's head practically explodes. All the Chinese posters who read the thread said "What's the problem with her entering the competition?" The idea that cheating is wrong was just completely alien to them.

I know a guy who was flown down south to "judge" an English-speaking competition. In fact, the winner had already been chosen.

There was a wet-T-shirt competition in Beijing a while ago. It was common knowledge the winner had paid money to win (why, I couldn't tell you).

I know a woman who teaches journalism at a Beijing university. She describes her job as working full-time to stop the pupils cheating and plagiarising.

A while ago, the winner of a Sichuan beauty competition was so homely that even Chinese people called foul. It was pretty cruel to see how badly she was mocked but if you use guanxi or money to cheat in a beauty contest in Sichuan you'd better be pretty darned easy on the eye!

[rob07]

I think the fact that some forum members can watch TV programmes/movies free online and read books by Mo Yan and other famous Chinese writers free online somehow has to do with this cheating culture.

I only watch TV programmes/movies online at Tudou/Youku/Youtube where it is legal and supported by advertising. When Tudou/Youku were blocked in Australia for copyright reasons a while back, I bought DVDs in Chinatown rather than visit pirate sites (Tudou/Youku are no longer blocked in Australia). I don't read books online but most Chinese programmes and movies can be watched online without having anything more to do with a cheating culture than free to air television does.

[gougou]

I think in many cases cheating is in the eye of the beholder. Like renegotiating a contract would be considered cheating by most Western businesses, while it is accepted business practice in China which is supposed to make both parties more flexible (of course, it is not always used to this end). Or a taxi driver quoting inflated prices for short distances may be perceived as cheating by the Westerner, while you could also look at it as a contest of wits, or of information (which is pretty much how Western stock exchanges work, too).

Having said that, I did find Chinese to be more Machiavellian overall than, say, Germans, and there were plenty of times I felt cheated. (And probably it was at those times I came up with the above line of reasoning, so I could feel better about myself...)

"There is no way my son did this."

Isn't there a possibility that your son could do this under the careful watch of a tiger mum kindergarten teacher?

And as for all the pictures looking the same, now THAT strikes me as a cultural trait imposed by the kindergarten/school system.

[WestTexas]

Essentially, yes, face is more important than honesty in their culture.

I read a book that proposed, essentially, that the Chinese do not believe in contextually independent morals. The belief in moral rules that can never be broken for any reason is, to the Chinese, illogical and/or idealistic. Pragmatism and family/national loyalty trump western ideals like honesty, honor, etc. This explains a lot of the corruption in China: enforcement is lax and bribes are high because people do not see the laws as something to obey; rather, they see the laws as something to not be caught disobeying. Going back to cheating, because getting a high score leads to (1)Face for the family (2)Stable future employment, it is, in fact, far more important to a Chinese to get a high score than to be honest. This is one cross-cultural moral conflict of several that, as a foreigner living in China, I'm really never going to feel OK with.

The Chinese school system is horribly broken, and most Chinese will admit to this. It is a big reason why most foreigners who have children in China will either (1)Home school their children or (2)Move out of China by the time their kids are school-aged. Of course, there are international schools, but these are prohibitively expensive for most.

[dwq]

In Hong Kong there was rampant corruption in the 60s. But after the establishment of the ICAC and years of strict enforcement it is now considered a clean city. The populace wasn't replaced with a new, clean one; they adopted to the rules and changed to the better. They learned that cheating now come with a price which they can't afford anymore so they stopped doing it.

I believe most Hong Kong people would say that life now is better than life with corruption; they accepted cheating in the past not because it was better or right, but only because it was too much an effort to battle it.

I think this has nothing to do with culture. It is just human nature to take the easy way out, so you see corruption happen everywhere there's lax enforcement and people don't need to bear the consequences of their cheating. It doesn't matter whether it is the U.S. financial market or a Chinese kindergarten.

And thus the status of China now reflects more the strength of its government and the will of its leaders, than the culture of the people.

[Guest realmayo]

I think it's relative, culturally. As Skylee points out, plenty of people in the west download pirated material. Is it wrong for parents to help children with their homework? How about exam coursework? Is teaching children to tell their aunt they love their Christmas present even when they hate it wrong? Adapting to the norms of a new society, or resisting those norms, affects immigrants and ex-pats everywhere. It's hard to criticise people acting within the norms of their own society.

But I still think you can argue that it would be benficial to a society if it changed certain of its norms. The acceptance of cheating in China can't be good for China, so I think it's fair to criticise one aspect of mainland Chinese cultural norms and wish that they were different.

[renzhe]

The belief in moral rules that can never be broken for any reason is, to the Chinese, illogical and/or idealistic. Pragmatism and family/national loyalty trump western ideals like honesty, honor, etc.

I feel that calling honesty and honour "western ideals" is rather offensive and quite incorrect.

This explains a lot of the corruption in China: enforcement is lax and bribes are high because people do not see the laws as something to obey; rather, they see the laws as something to not be caught disobeying.

How does it explain the corruption in European countries, like Italy or Greece? These are the countries which invented the laws as we know them in the "western" world (oh, how I hate that word!)

Perhaps some people are jumping to conclusions here. I can't comment on the prevalence of cheating in Chinese schools or irrelevant contests, I can accept that it is prevalent based on people's experience. But implying deep cultural causes for this, relating to lack of "western ideals" such as honour seems a bit excessive to me.

It could be that some of these situations -- irrelevant beauty pageant contests and small school competitions -- are not considered terribly important and bending the rules not seen as the ultimate test of one's morality. If the rules don't explicitly say that bribery in a wet T-shirt contest or signing up non-Chinese kids for a competition are prohibited, then should you stick to the rules or guess what the intent was?

I know that, growing up in Europe, everybody cheated in school. Homework and tests were a nuissance which did not help you learn in any practical way, so everybody cheated. I know I did, perhaps this means that I'm Chinese. Important exams were closely monitored to stop such behaviour. I experienced exactly the same thing while attending universities in England and Germany -- people didn't cheat because the exams were set up in a way that made it hard. But if exam questions somehow leaked out, you BET that everybody knew them and prepared for them. Students would leave the exam room and tell the next batch of students what the exams were, and everybody prepared for those. Cheating? Well, it's not against the rules, but it is certainly against the spirit.

Again, I'm not saying cheating doesn't happen in China, or that it is not common, but making an east-west dichotomy and a moral issue out of it is just wrong. How many major European politicians got caught in the last couple of years for completely plagiarising their Master's and PhD theses? I can think of 3-4 off the top of my head.

[Guest realmayo]

I'm not sure you can complain about singling out China when you then single out (okay, double-out) Greece and Italy. By doing so you are implicitly agreeing that certain countries are demonstrably more corrupt than others.

I agree it's daft to talk about "western ideals like honesty, honor", it would make more sense to say "the western concepts of honesty and honour" though even that's pretty vague. The Ancient Greek idea of a hero included not just bravery but also cunning and the ability to deceive. Different from the chivalric heroes of the Romances.

Why is it wrong to say that different cultures produce different types of behaviour? Isn't that to be expected?

As for cheating, seriously, it is integral to Chinese universities. But I remember there being a moral code: 10 years ago I was told it was wrong for a student to cheat if it gave then a score of 90% or more, but okay if they were below that.

[renzhe]

I'm not sure you can complain about singling out China when you then single out (okay, double-out) Greece and Italy.

Oh, these are just two counter-examples for the "European ideals" that are hard to argue with. I could give examples from other places, too, like Portugal and Spain where I live right now. Or places in north Europe where I used to live. All of them different, but certainly light years away from a chivalrous idealistic honest European ideal

I think that breaking the rules is considered unethical if and only if the rules are considered just and fair. This is probably a universal human trait.

Why is it wrong to say that different cultures produce different types of behaviour? Isn't that to be expected?

Of course it is correct, but it's such a complex issue that reducing it to "culture of cheating" without exploring dozens of equally important factors is unfair.

How does avoiding paying taxes fit with the western culture of honesty and honour? Everybody I've ever met cheats on taxes in Europe, and it caused a huge diplomatic row between Germany and Switzerland in the past. I know respected university professors who cheat on tax by insuring their motorcycles in the wrong country. And let's not even get started on Google, Apple, and friends.

So it seems that cheating on taxes is completely OK in Europe and you will be seen as a hero sticking it to the man if you do it, while cheating at university is not cool and you will lose your position and be castigated. I'd suggest that the ultra-competitive nature of Chinese schools, and the importance it has on the rest of one's life (and the life of their parents and children down the road) encourages an "everything goes" attitude. Perhaps the university system is not perceived to be fair, so people have no qualms about cheating on it? I find that it's preferable to look at the bigger picture when discussing such complex (and sensitive) issues rather than positing a "culture of cheating".

[Guest realmayo]

Yes, I agree that these things are relative, that the idea of what's right and what's wrong changes from country to country. It's tricky ground though. Does that mean that the idea of human rights changes from country to country too? Or the idea of representative governance?

[renzhe]

We're not going to answer THOSE questions in this thread, surely ;) In essence, I'm arguing two things:

1) Instead of "fair European universities" vs "rampant cheating in China", it's a matter of "who cheats more?" because there's rampant cheating everywhere.

2) To determine who cheats more and why, it's useful to look at the educational system, rather than culture. Education geared towards rote memorisation and many standardised exams tends to promote cheating far more than education geared towards learning for the sake of it.

This leads to the question of how much educational system is influenced by culture, and that is an interesting question. I grew up in a Marxist-Leninist country, and learning by rote was the norm. I think that much of Eastern Europe is like this, and that it is still the norm there. Very much European cultures, all of them, and cheating of epic proportions.

[Meng Lelan]

Have you heard of the story of 孟母三遷

You guys talking about me? Yes, I've moved around a lot to have them in good schools.

I wonder what sthubbar found out from talking to teachers...?

[Guest realmayo]

To determine who cheats more and why, it's useful to look at the educational system, rather than culture.

I'm not going to disagree that it's logical to look at the context of the cheating (i.e. here, the educational system).

But: why don't you think it's also right and important to look at the culture? Don't you think it's possible to have a society where cheating and corruption are seen as morally defensible, and another society where those things are seen as morally wrong? Meaning that a cheating Chinese student isn't being "bad" because it's not bad to cheat in a test in China.

I mean, most people would say that there's quite a different culture between (say) the north of Europe and the south. Do you explicitly exclude "moral things" like cheating from these cultural differences? If you accept that different societies have different values, isn't it logical that at least some societies will have different attitudes towards cheating in exams?

For your first point, I don't remember rampant cheating at my UK university. Are British people more honest than the rest of Europe? Was I more honest and naive versus most UK students? I rather doubt it.

Edit: Actually I think we're saying almost the same thing, except you're saying that cheating is part of the mainland Chinese educational system, and I'm saying that cheating is part of mainland Chinese cultural norms.

[renzhe]

But: why don't you think it's also right and important to look at the culture?

I do think that it's important but I also think that reducing it to "cheating is good" or "cheating is bad" oversimplifies things to the point where it has to be completely wrong.

I don't think that the cultural difference is about whether lying and cheating is OK (with Chinese=cheaters and Europeans=virtuous), but when it is acceptable and when not. Ever bought a used car? Or followed an election campaign? Ever read a CV? It is completely accepted that these people are lying, and it's not a big deal because everybody knows they're lying and everybody does it. If you write somebody's PhD thesis, it's bad! If you write a book and your professor puts his name on it, claiming he wrote it, then it's OK again.

Or we can take a topic this forum is familiar with: how many foreigners teach at Chinese universities or schools illegally, without a valid visa, and how many Chinese people teach at European universities or schools illegally, without a valid visa? Is this a result of culture or strict enforcement? Is working illegally better or worse than cheating in a wet T-shirt contest?

For your first point, I don't remember rampant cheating at my UK university

"Rampant" is perhaps too strong of a word, but I certainly remember that there was cheating.

Not at final exams, which were meticulously organised to the point where it's impossible to cheat. But coursework..... attendance sheets....

I completely agree with dwq -- if you made cheating very hard and expelled anyone caught cheating (as they do in Europe), you'd have less cheating.

Edited December 11, 2012 at 09:57 PM by renzhe

[johnk]

A lot of this is based on preception.

This thread reminds me of one of the first conversations I had with my Chinese tutor.

She told me about how her family owned a business in China. She was sent to the bank one day to withdraw money and to pay a bribe to an official. She was telling me this to illustrate how corrupt and dishonest China was.

I told her about my former boss in the construction industry. He was once complaining about a building inspector wanting a £5000 'backhander'. My boss had no problem paying the money. Brown envelopes are common enough. He did have a problem in that this guy wanted the money to be left in an envelope in a 'phone box.

My Chinese tutor would not believe such things happen in England.

The UK is perceived to be an 'honest' country, China is perceived to be corrupt. As they say "your milage may vary ..."

[kdavid]

If it's fair, perhaps one way of viewing the gravity of these issues is by weighing the detriment caused to their respective countries. For example:

How much do revenue collection agencies lose out on each year due to tax evaders?

How drained is the market of capable and competent employees due to a dysfunctional education system?

If the people of the countries in question found these issues such a threat to national security and stability, I'm sure austere enough measures could be introduced to change things. This is, of course, assuming that people have the best interests of their nation and nation's future in mind.

To get back to the original question:

Anybody else have young children in the Chinese education system?

I believe I have a unique perspective on the Chinese education system: I've been living here for the better part of a decade. I've taught in public and private schools, from primary school to university. I am a graduate student at a local university, studying alongside, not foreigners, but Chinese. I am also the father of a child in a public kindergarten.

I could go on and on about my experiences and biases, but at the end of the day I feel my son will get a better education, and have a more meaningful childhood, in America than he will here in China.

Sure, he won't be doing advanced Calculus and differential equations by the time he's 16. Sure, he won't be able to recite medieval poetry. Sure, he may not love his country. However, if I have anything to do with it, he'll be ahead of the curve scholastically, involved in team sports, work well with others, social, have a sense of respecting others, put the needs of the greater good and others ahead of his own, and, if he's lucky, he'll get into a little trouble.