“Michele asks in a comment if it’s “not MORE difficult to cheat in the field of English because of the essay style answers that are required?” Perhaps in theory, but remember: essays require vocabulary, which is conducive to cheating.
Explaining how students in Poland cheat leads naturally to explanations as to why they do it.
One of the reasons, I think, is the sheer number of courses they take every year. Here’s a list of courses for one third-year (senior) class:
- Polish
- History
- Mathematics
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- English
- German
- Computer science
- Geography
- PE
- Social studies
- Religion
That’s not possible courses — that’s the required course work. As opposed to the American system, where you have physics only your final year, with chemistry your junior year and biology as a sophomore, they have all three sciences throughout high school. Of course they don’t have each course every day. For example, senior students have four hours of English a week, and so they meet Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday — like the university scheduling system in the States. Still, that’s an insane amount of studying every week.
A second cause, put forth by a teacher, was historical. “Teachers during communism were seen as the Establishment, and so it was a way to fight the establishment.” Sounds weak. I don’t buy it.
Option three: the rote memory required by many teachers necessitates it. This might have some merit. I know teachers here sometimes simply dictate from a book and the students just write down everything and vomit it back up the next lesson. Admittedly, I do something similar when I give vocabulary quizzes — and I give an obscene number of such quizzes. “Without words, all the grammar in the world won’t help you!” tell the kids.
Choice four, which is the most logical now: as a fellow English teacher put it, “We let them.” Pure and simple. I do my damnedest to stop them from cheating, and I sometimes fail them for even a glance to the side (and that’s no exaggeration — I do it early in the year with first-year students, usually with a not-so-important grade, to set a precedent), and I take no excuses. And yet they still cheat.
The cheating won’t disappear soon, I’m afraid. I always use as an example the cultural attitude in the States towards cheating, but I know that that is slowing being eroded and that more and more students are cheating in the States.