“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:

1. Polish
2. History
3. Mathematics
4. Biology
5. Chemistry
6. Physics
7. English
8. German
9. Computer science
10. Geography
11. PE
12. Social studies
13. 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.