What India Is Doing To Stop Cheating At Board Exams
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I've been through mind-numbing classes focused on memorization of meaningless trivia, as have all students, and I personally feel fewer moral qualms about cheating in that kind of class than a class where I am able to make the personal connection between the material and its value to me.
However, I've having gone through the public education system in the United States, I know which classes were the worst (the ones all about memorization) and it sounds like the public education system in India has a lot of those classes. Perhaps the educators are only acting on behalf of the system within they exist (as a preparatory organization for this exam), but I think if the buck is to stop anywhere, it's with the administrators of the education system, they need to be held accountable.
That kind of stuff really pisses me off, but I also have a naive perspective. For example, in some parts of the world (particularly in low trust societies) corruption is looked at differently, it's just 'taking care' of the family to the best of your ability. The more power you have, the more 'ability' you have. Maybe the goal should be to increase trust instead of trying to 'fix' the symptom?
It's hard to accept that from an American perspective. In fact, maybe it's even wrong to call it 'corruption' as if our societal views represent some sort of moral standard. But maybe they do. Shrug
The US doesn't have this problem because the gains due to obvious cheating aren't big enough. People do "cheat" in the sense of "acting unfairly to gain an advantage." For example using ADD prescriptions to get extra time on exams is a well-known trick, another is to have college application counsellors ghostwrite essays and then there are numerous other methods which may not technically count as cheating but achieve the desired effect. The difference is that people whose kids do this are also those who control the media narrative, so you've all been brainwashed into thinking that this is somehow more acceptable.
Western society has a much higher chance of getting caught and a much higher cost when caught because it views that behaviour as abnormal. India has a cultural problem where cheating is expected.
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You are condemning an entire country and its "culture" with a single sentence. What evidence can you provide?
Going based on the information in the article, and assuming it's correct, there does seem to be at least some sort of a problem with cheating far beyond what we see in other cultures, and it does appear to be widespread. The preventative actions described would be very unexpected in many other cultures, and totally unthinkable in others.
The most notable example of this is probably the 2000 California audit:
" An analysis of the numbers from the report yielded the following figures: white students were over-represented by 45%, students coming from families whose incomes exceed $100,000 were over-represented by 139%, and students from private schools were over-represented by 100%. The report also concluded that 18.2% of the requests granted were of “questionable” merit and gave students an “unwarranted” and “unfair” advantage. The report cited weaknesses in the College Board’s approval process as the cause of some of the unfair distribution." [1]
In the meantime it actually became more desirable...
"A 2000 audit of California test takers showed a disproportionate number of white, affluent students receiving accommodations, igniting suspicions of exaggerated or nonexistent disabilities. Three years later, in the wake of a lawsuit, ACT and the College Board stopped flagging scores of accommodated students for admissions offices; with the stigma gone, the incentive grew to game the system." [2]
0: https://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/ssd/accommoda...
1: https://www.applerouth.com/blog/2006/04/27/extended-time-and...
2: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/education/edlife/07strateg...
"Who cares if the left/right gave money to their friends. At least it went towards roads. In my country they just pocket the money."
Let's face it , every newspaper you open is flooded with an add of the mother being thankful to a coaching class for a good education. (Not a school or a teacher) commercialization of a students future and dream is what needs to be tackled. Cheating would hypothetically cease to exist if students didn't feel like they have a need to prove themselves on paper by a score
Unfortunately we are moving exactly in the opposite direction:
other companies request them {SAT Scores} even for senior sales and management hires, eliciting scores from job candidates in their 40s and 50s.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230363640...
Ultimately all consistent objective decisionmaking processes [1] must come down to a single number - that's a simple exercise in undergrad topology. Anything else will be either subjective or inconsistent (i.e., we prefer A to B, and B to C, but prefer C to A).
So what are you proposing? A different format/syllabus for standardized tests, a subjective testing procedure, or an inconsistent one?
[1] On a countable set of choices. Things get weird on uncountable sets.
In this perspective, having people working on projects would be an appreciation of the "multidimensional" nature of people.
After all, contemporarily, psychology started to think of multiple intelligences rather than a single one. If we assume this is true, what's the sense of assigning a single number to a person? Either it's false that multiple intelligences exist, or it's useless to single-dimensinally evaluate them. Then, let's start to assign 10 numbers instead of one.
I don't say that single-dimensional ratings are inherently wrong, but just that they're too narrow minded. "Scaling up" such procedures would mean scale up something wrong and inefficient; it's not real scaling up.
I would propose to throw standardized tests in the garbage, and try novel approaches in the evaluation processes of people; I find hard to believe that assigning a number to a person is the only possible (and practical) perspective.
It's not debatable if you believe in the axiom of induction (or the axiom of choice for countably infinite sets).
Theorem: If there is a total order (a consistent decisionmaking process) on the set of people (or any countable set), then there exists an order preserving function f: People->Real numbers.
Sketch of proof: Start with an arbitrary person A. Define the ranking function f(A)=0. Choose an arbitrary person besides A, call them B. If B > A then f(B)=1, else if B = a then f(B)=0 else f(B) = -1. Choose a third person C, different from A and B. If C > max(A,B) define F(C) = f(max(A,B))+1. If A < C < B or B < C < A define f(C)=0.5x(f(A)+f(B)). If C < min(A,B) then f(C) = f(min(A,B))-1. Continue ad nauseum.
Either it's false that multiple intelligences exist, or it's useless to single-dimensinally evaluate them.
Multiple intelligences probably don't exist. But even supposing they do, claiming that the domain of a function is multidimensional does not disagree with my claim that the range is one dimensional.
Background:
A total order is a way of saying "person A is at least as good as person B" which obeys all the obvious laws. Person B can be either a real person or a standard of achievement (e.g. "passing").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_order
http://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2013/metrics_manifesto.htm...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense
This all ignoring the fact any such "total order" is going to be highly variable through time (today's top engineer is tomorrow's dementia patient is yesterday's toddler)!
I'm assuming that consistency and objectivity are obvious properties that any reasonable process must have. If you want to argue against consistency and/or objectivity, go ahead and do so. It'll certainly be interesting.
Of course, it's irrelevant for exams - the decision function in that case is just to answer the question "is student A > minimum passing standard" or "is student A > student B at math".
Look up Campbell's law. Here, I'll even do it for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law
I can bet that it won't happen. As long as people need to complete, they will try to cheat.
The matters were made worse by the uninterested, unintuitive and unqualified teachers (no exception), outdated and idiotic curricula, arcane books written in an ad-hoc manner, uninteresting tests. Everything was showing just one solution - rote, which I am pathologically allergic too (though sometimes I wish I had just done it like everybody else and this what I told my younger brother).
The result is I didn't study Math, didn't study Physics either and certainly didn't study Geography. I took up Computer Science - just because it has the jobs. All along knowing fully well that you end up being a clerk or a daily wage worker (or a teacher which has a similar pay; professorship is rare) in this country if you try to follow your passion in studies and study anything other than a course that gives you a professional degree. Another path was to have rich parents who can send you to The Fancy University of UK/USA/West to study psychology/political science/geography and what not. This was certainly not under my control. Well, that's my reason.
"Excuses" try to put an unjustifiably positive (or perhaps a less-negative) slant on the explanation of why something is as it is.
balladeer wrote things like, "So, there was no way I was going to pass my 10+2 (last school year) without cheating and I am lucky that I somehow managed to cheat." and, "I wish I could have cheated better so that the meagre Chemistry score couldn't bring my total % to around 75."
To me, those appear to try to make it sound like the cheating was somehow okay, or even a good thing, even though this cheating was apparently covering up a lack of ability. They aren't merely saying why cheating was used; they try to make it sound acceptable, when it clearly isn't.
The only thing I wanted to convey was: "I didn't have an option". You want to debate why and how I didn't have an option? Well, you are welcome to do it but my answer would be simple and I've typed most in my original comment.
> covering up a lack of ability
I hope you were not simply trying to be mean.
> they try to make it sound acceptable
I am not sure whether I am right replying to your highly judgemental comment but anyway I did. And yes, you are almost entirely off the mark and wrong.
Flying squads with police protection, surveillance cameras and mobile jammers are deployed to stop the nation's students from cheating.
It's examination season across India, a matter of grave security concern. The threat comes from cheating, which has organised itself into an industry. For those who seek to prevent cheating, like flying squads that randomly check exam centres for malpractices, police protection is often necessary.
The exam season could well be called cheating season. It began in the middle of February. Here are the headlines. In Bihar, 200 class 12 examinees of the Bihar School Examination Board have already been expelled for cheating. In Assam, 421 have been caught across various centres. Odisha had a slightly better time, with only 367 caught this year, down from 654 last year. The Odisha board attributes this to multiple-choice question papers that give them no time to cheat. Students who want to pass the exam will have to answer 50 questions in 60 minutes.
Here you go, I hate those developers with small brains think that these kind of cheap tricks will prevent the content to be copied!
(I know the founders and developers of scroll.in, and I'm 99% sure that the developers just did what they were told.)
But all boards agree and exist for the rote learning model which leaves no scope for creativity. kid in, zombie out!