Entry 36: Cheating

Comment on this passage from an article in Forbes magazine on the recent revelations about the prevalence of cheating on college applications by Chinese high school students:

Many Chinese [people] don’t have any moral qualms about cheating, especially as long as it’s not within your close family and trusted friends within the guanxi networks. Many feel that the history of guanxi networks and even bribing often seen in the past three decades in China’s “economic growth miracle” mean that they at some points in their lives must cheat to succeed. Thus, many Chinese parents have simply been acting “normally,” ignoring or not even understanding that some actions might be unethical.
 
Do you think that the attitudes reflected in this passage might be applicable to Taiwan as well as to China? What do you think of cheating? Is it ever acceptable? If so, under what circumstances. What constitutes cheating?

See the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonma/2012/02/13/how-to-stop-chinese-kids-from-cheating-on-college-apps/


The article was written by Jason L. Ma (馬良傑), Founder, CEO and Head Mentor of ThreeEQ, Inc., an organization that prepares young leaders for top universities.

• I believe that in Taiwan, there are many places where this passage does reflect the attitudes of people in Taiwan. One example is the Taiwanese education system, especially the public education systems. Many students are cheating during their tests, and are also plagiarizing when they write their essays as well as applications (including both college applications and job applications.
• I believe that cheating is a very bad action that anyone can do. By cheating, one does not learn anything from cheating. It takes away the opportunity for one to learn new skills and knowledge, and slowly corrupts and person as cheating becomes a habit. I believe that cheating should never be accepted. People might be able to accept using clever ways to complete or pass a task, because they used their own knowledge and ability to create such strategy, but cheating cannot be accepted because one does not give any effort for the work that they produce.
• Cheating is mainly constituted of one person copying another person's work, and claiming it as his or her own. If one quoted their source, then that would not be considered as cheating, since the person does not claim the piece of work as his or her own.