Learning to cheat

Published Date: June 17, 2009 By Ahmad Saeid, Staff Writer KUWAIT:

As the final exam season peaks in Kuwait's public and private schools, parents, students and teachers are crossing their fingers and hoping for the best. While some students are studying hard in order to win their ticket for next year, other students are relying on teachers to give them the answers. "We were allowed to cheat last year and the year before" says Abdulmajid, an eighth grade student in a Kuwaiti public school. "We got help from the teacher; he would read the question paper and give usthe answers to [the questions] - and that happened in all exams, except religion.

It's unclear how widespread teacher-encouraged cheating is in Kuwait's public schools, but a quick survey of students suggests that the practice is all too common. Education is the most important part of future planning for any society, since it lays the foundations for the next generation of doctors, school teachers, engineers, voters, MPs and minister who will rule the country when the current generation ages.Students from both public and private schools told the Kuwait Times about the ease with which they cheat and how teachers take part in the practice.

Walid, a ninth grade student in a private school said teachers allow students to cheat openly on exams. According to him, one of the teachers in the classroom where he was taking an English exam told the pupils in the last 15 minutes of the examination period, "'If anyone has any cheat sheets just do it fast!' after which they were allowed to cheat using theirown and other pupils' cheat sheets.Abdulrahman, another private school pupil, this time in fifth grade, said, "A teacher came in during the Arabic language exam and read the exam questions along with the answers." Abdulrahman said that this phenomenon is also widespread in science exams.

Haneen, a fifth grade public school pupil, said, "During the last three exams, a teacher sat next to me and helped me solving exam questions." Asked whether teachers gave the same assistance to other pupils, Haneen said, "Yes they helped them too, there were two teachers in the classroom helping all the students.These testimonies made us curious about the reason why teachers would behave in this way! I mean it's one thing not to give much effort to observing students during the exams, but to go out of your way to help them cheat intentionally is difficult to understand.

The Kuwait Times asked a teacher with over ten years' experience to explain this phenomenon, which was when we realized that this is only the tip of the iceberg. No one is evaluated by the level of education they deliver," said the schoolteacher, who asked to remain anonymous. "Kuwaiti teachers prefer holding exhibitions, workshops and model lessons for visiting observers because it's the easy way to receive excellency, which entitles teacher to an allowance, and the foreign teachers concentrate on private lessons that they give after school, and both groups don't care whether their students will understand.

Classes are not taken seriously, by teachers and students, it's really a difficult way to really teach students because they are difficult to handle, and even if you try to punish a student for bad behavior, you will be thinking about his parents; they always take the side of their kid, even if he or she is wrong, so everyone is just doing it the easy way.

The teacher added, "At the end of the year , every school tries to cover for itself, because they don't want pupils' falling marks to raise questions about the quality of education in their school.The veteran educator went on, "It's not uncommon for the school principal to ask the teachers marking the examination papers to add ten marks on the overall marks of all students, and they usually add them to the essays and questions that require long answers, so they won't be noticed at the first look.

Parents expressed unhappiness at this phenomenon.I don't want my kids to go to school to pass the year, I send them there to study and learn" says one surprised parent. Another told the Kuwait Times, "Yes they will pass, but who will let them cheat in their future?