I haven’t yet gotten ’round to writing about cheating here, but thanks to this article in today’s The National, my fingers are itching.
Exam students face pressure to cheat
The key word here is ‘pressure’, and I agree that it’s one ingredient in the culture of academic dishonesty over here, but I think there’s far more going on than the article puts forth.
(Let me just point out that I have had cheaters in almost every course I’ve ever taught — graduate, undergraduate, community college, tier 1 university, west, east, and so forth. While the issue of academic dishonesty is a global one, I nevertheless believe that it is more prevalent here than in any other culture I have worked in.)
According to the Zayed U. sociologist interviewed, the greatest pressure seems to be on Emirati women — to perform, to be marketable, to satisfy parents, or to snatch a husband (Swan & el Dasher, 2010). This last item seems rather hard to take in light of the fact that only 20% of Emirati men actually manage to graduate from high school (Morgan, n.d.), so I’d like to see some real numbers rather than sociological speculation. But I do agree that the pressure exists, for a reason not mentioned at all in the article: grades seem to be a heavily weighted, if not sole, criterion, for university admission, scholarships and stipends, and even extracurricular perks like international field trips. My best students are all too aware of this grade-dependence in the system, and freely admit that given the choice between an easy ‘A’ and actually learning something, they’ll opt for the former (how do I know this? because I’ve come right out and asked them). To make matters worse, grade benchmarks are often different for Emirati nationals than for expats (lower for the nationals), creating a sense of unfairness that may facilitate the justification of cheating on the part of otherwise honest students.
There are other ingredients that compound the problem. The culture of taking care of one’s friends comes to mind, and may be more prevalent in societies where religion plays a major role. This is, in fact, the first place I’ve worked where students have come into my office for the sole purpose of enquiring about another student’s performance. Some of them are genuinely concerned — they don’t want to see their ‘brothers’ or ‘sisters’ fail. And that concern is all too often manifested in an eleventh-hour gift of this week’s assignment answers. Again, because of the emphasis on grades, and not learning, the fact that such a gift has no real value goes unnoticed.
Swan and el Dasher mention another cultural obstacle to academic honesty — pampering and being accustomed to getting things too easily. It is unfortunately the case that the UAE is not a meritocracy, but a society in which status can often be inherited or bought. This, in combination with a spoiled child I-want-therefore-I-deserve mentality, results in an attitude of abject laziness — why work for that A when it can be gotten by other means?
The article also discusses the failure on the part of the educational system to really teach students how to learn. Incoming freshman are sadly not equipped to take meaningful notes, assimilate information, or think independently. I blame this on two things: the primary and secondary academic culture and the religion, both of which I believe emphasise the memorisation and regurgitation of dogma (be it secular or not). Many of my students have been fearful of questioning me, not because they necessarily believe what I’ve said, but because they have been taught to respect someone in my position unconditionally. Others ‘learn’ only what they know will be on a final exam (and promptly forget it) because they’ve been taught that learning equals knowledge of facts. When faced with the novelty of having to work with information instead of simply acquiring information, these students are at a loss.
And finally, there’s the problem of having (unwittingly) set students up to fail by teaching them in Arabic through the primary and secondary levels, and then switching to an all-English curriculum at the tertiary. Admissions criteria of low TOEFL and IELTS scores doesn’t help. The sad fact is that I have students who do not have a command spoken or written English at the level necessary to read their textbooks or understand that an assignment is due at a certain date and time. These unfortunate young people are expected to succeed, but not provided with the basic equipment. What is their recourse?
So how to solve the problem? In my mind, to combat cheating out here in the desert, several things need to change. Emiratisation policies aside, we cannot continue to push students into academic environments that they are not ready for — we simply have to say that dirty word “no” until and unless students are prepared. We need to shift the focus from the material (grades) to the abstract (learning) beginning at the earliest age possible. We need to level the playing field and create a merit-based and culture-blind academic environment so that no student feels he is playing a game where the rules are unfairly bent against him. And sometimes we need to toss out the textbooks, put a hold on the lectures, and get young men and women to see the beauty of thinking.
It can be done, but it’ll be a long row to hoe.
References:
Swan, M. & N. el Dasher. (14 June 2010). Exam students face pressure to cheat. The National. Retrieved (14 June 2010) from http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100614/NATIONAL/706149890/1040
Morgan, B. (n.d.). Research in the UAE: An opportunity for UK universities? The British Council. Retrieved (5 May 2010) from http://www.britishcouncil.org/research_in_the_uae.ppt
Academics in the Desert 