Cheating Books

One thing that I've somewhat unfortunately learned of and also noticed myself is that cheating in academics is built into Cambodian culture, at least in the places that I've seen so far. Students tell me that it's the norm in the country.

Basically what it all comes down to is that if you pay your teacher, you're going to get a higher grade, and the more you pay the better off you are. Even the director here has to give the kids money for their teachers sometimes because the grading is unfair without it. Not that it's just to help kids get an edge, but they will actually grade you more harshly if you don't have money. I asked the other American here what the kids do about that, since they don't really have any good access to money at all, and he just said, "Well, some of them study their asses off, and sometimes they can pay."

The other thing about paying teachers is not just that they'll give you more favorable grades, but they'll also look the other way when they catch you cheating. And I should be clear, just about everyone pays for that. One of the students came back to the orphanage today with a few books, about a dollar each, that were maybe the size of 50 index cards stacked on top of each other full of cheat sheets for whatever subject you want - writing, morality, history, math, etc. I asked her how you could possibly get away with using something like that without the teacher seeing, and what it boiled down to is, "If you pay them, they won't look at you. And you have to pay, because if you don't someone else will, and then you can't beat them." Other people around confirmed that this was essentially the case. They asked if we had anything like it in the United States, and I said that sure people tried to cheat, but we don't have a pocket-book industry built around it, so I don't think it's really comparable. Apparently the "rich people can go to any university they want if they just donate enough" trick still works in Cambodia though.

Peace out.