Today was the day before Khmer New Year break starts, and as the halfway point in the semester, was the day we gave midterms at school. Cheating on tests in Cambodia is a problem, as it unfortunately is in much of this part of the world. The perimeters of the main high schools in Phnom Penh are even monitored by police officers during the national exams in order to prevent students from launching cheat sheets over the fences and into the classrooms.
Before heading to this part of the world, PiA prepares its teachers for encounters with cheating. It’s cultural. And to a certain extent, I buy it. My experience in China last summer showed me how willing my students were to work together and go out of their way to help their classmates understand to an extent that I’ve rarely seen in a US classroom. I’ve seen students in my classes here sacrifice their own free time or their own ability to listen and learn about the next topic so that they can bring their classmates up to speed and clarify any points that they might not completely understand. So, yes, I do believe that students value helping their classmates advance and succeed more than they care about whether something is technically against the rules.
With that said, though, everyone here also knows that cheating on tests is wrong. Yes, it’s cultural, but I don’t buy that as an excuse. If you’re hiding it and ashamed of it, you know it’s wrong, even if it is common practice.
We had been warned before last semester’s finals about all of the different ways that our students would probably try to cheat. Nonetheless, I was naïve until I gave my finals last semester. Now, it’s an exciting game I play to try to catch anyone cheating, like I’m on a secret mission. Though I could easily just be missing it, I haven’t ever seen anyone cheat on regular quizzes or essays, which gives me some relief, and though it happens, I certainly don’t think everyone partakes. If I don’t find someone cheating on a midterm or a final, though, I’ve started to feel like I’ve failed my mission, not that no cheated.
Today was particularly exciting because the two students I caught cheating, both in my first class, had actually written the answers out along the inside of their arms. It was as if it was straight out of a movie. I’ve established a firm, Princeton-style intolerance for cheating in my classroom, but before I could even deal with those students after class, a teacher who I really like and respect and who teaches the same class, came from her classroom next door to talk to me. She was very upset and worked up because she had found two students with cheat sheets with all of the answers of our test written out.
We don’t use the same exams from year to year, and the students literally had all of the answers, not simply helpful definitions that might aid them on any test related to the subjects we are studying. I couldn’t talk for long because I had to give my 304 classes their midterm, but afterwards, it came out that one of the cheaters in the other class had finally fessed up to having gotten a copy of the answers from another student in her major who’s in one of the other 202 sections and who somehow got the test from her teacher.
There’s one member of our 202 band who rarely shows up to our Friday morning meetings, who contributes little to creating our class materials, and whom I’ve always felt was removed in personality from the hard-working and charismatic teachers that I otherwise work with.
Well, after classes ended and back at the office, I was filled in on some back story, and it turns out that this fourth 202 teacher had tried to give the midterm one day early because he was going to be “busy” today during class time. Since we all give the same test, though, it would have been an unfair advantage to certain students (either the other students would have gotten one more day to study or they would have been fed the questions by students who had already taken the exam). Sensing something might be up, one of the members of the management team of our department asked to collect all of the copies of our exam, which were, at the time, sitting in our office mailboxes, until the day we gave the test.
Yesterday, though, this fourth 202 teacher asked him for a copy of the exam, and feeling that he had every right to have a copy, Sovannthea gave him one. Today, however, it came out that he had given, in some form, a copy of the test to his students. We’re not sure why he either went over the test in class, told them the questions, or gave them the answers. It seems somewhat shortsighted that he wouldn’t think it would come to light within a day or two. In the franticness of yesterday’s midterms and on the already hectic day before break, people were coming up with their own theories, proposing what should be done with the midterms we now had, and talking about how to move forward. No consensus was reached, and it’s probably a good idea to let it sit for a bit before coming to a decision.
I really feel like I should feel a little more distressed about what happened, and some of the teachers were truly upset, but with a grain of salt, it just added to the adventure of catching people cheating and added a twist of an inside job to the plot. When I return from break, I guess I’ll find out how we’re going to deal with the possibility that numerous students had seen the exam before today.
In two days, I’m heading to Laos for two weeks for Khmer and Laos New Years. In case I don’t write again before leaving, Happy New Years (take 2)!