To Cheat Or Not To Cheat

Invigilating my students while they wrote their Business English Exam last Friday, I realised how complacent I have become in Germany.

Instead of like a few years earlier standing like a hawk over them, I was sitting at my desk marking. Now in my own defence I should add I was pretty weak and sick on this day.

However German students and pupils are absolutely notorious for cribbing from each other and yet I was not going to even try and find out if they did.

Unlike Anglo-Saxon countries where one can be expelled from an institution for cheating during an exam, it is by no means seen as an a remotely serious crime in this country. No much worse, most Germans (including my own children) can relate some pretty hair-raising stories of either copying from others during exams or being put under such social pressure to put your exam paper in such a way that others can copy from you. Even my brainy husband did not escape this pressure of others copying from him at his elite Bavarian Gymnasium.

A German friend of mine related how many years ago when he sat an exam at Harvard, he noticed that the moment they got their exam papers how all the German eyes started darting around, before they realised it is absolutely not done at such a prestigious institution. They had to rely on their own knowledge (probably for the first time in their lives).

So there I was last Friday in Trier adapting a very German line: “If you feel like cheating, please be my guest and do so. I will anyway notice when I do the marking.”

I was amazed at the amount of marking I got done in three hours and how relaxed I was. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.