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Published on April 5, 2008

While cheating is practised in a multitude of circumstances such as gambling, sport, personal relationships and the workplace, recent reports have focused on the exam room.

Cheating among students is rife around the world. In a 1998 survey carried out by the website Who's Who Among American High School Students, 80 per cent of them admitted to cheating in exams. And two years ago, Rutgers Professor Donald McCabe published a paper that revealed cheating in more than 50 per cent of students studying in MBA and engineering programmes.

In the meantime, cheating among students in England rose by more than a quarter in 2006 and according to the China Youth Daily, 83 per cent of 900 students recently polled said they had cheated in examinations.

These days, surfing the Internet provides advice and methods on how to cheat in exams. There is sophisticated gadgetry like mobile communications and specially equipped writing utensils, and unscrupulous lecturers who are willing to ghost-write term papers and theses for fees of up to US$700 (Bt22,000).

So, what's the big deal about students cheating in Thailand? Just last term, a Thai friend of mine was instructed to change seats for speaking in exams. She was angered by the punishment, but I quickly informed her that being caught cheating in my day meant your paper torn to shreds, ejection from the room and zero marks.

In Thailand, the Machiavellian concept could have a slightly different interpretation - it's okay cheating because nothing really happens if anyone gets caught.

The Thai way

It seems in Thailand that cheating is accepted as an unavoidable fact of life, and society's lackadaisical response to it tends to promote its widespread use.

The year I arrived here, a young Thai lad challenged me to a game of snooker. With an unlit cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth, he waltzed around the table nonchalantly potting every ball in sight - he seemed unstoppable.

At last I had the chance to make some impact on the game, but instead of going for a high break, I placed the white ball behind the blue in a perfect snooker - so my opponent couldn't hit his target ball directly.

The move was met with a stunned silence. The boy looked at me, then the table, at me and then the table again. Suddenly, he leant forward, picked up the white ball and replaced it two inches left of the blue. When I asked him what the hell he was doing, he explained that without moving the white ball with his hand, he couldn't hit a red. The whole idea, I said.

The argument developed into a confused mixture of Thai, English and inventive sign language before the manager of the club intervened. In perfect English he explained that the boy was simply playing the Thai way. Trying to hit the red indirectly was too difficult. I was left thinking that if Thai people play the game this way, they cannot call it snooker.

Fooling oneself

Moving the white ball had made me angry, but as time went by I saw it moving everywhere in Thailand, and I eventually started to move it myself. While I still stick rigidly to the rules of snooker, overtaking on the inside and ignoring no entry signs has saved me no end of time when motoring, and finding somewhere to drink on election days makes the beer taste even better.

After living 44 years in England, where rules are rules and cameras watch to make sure they're kept, there's something relaxing about a country in which most things are negotiable.

I have come to the conclusion that sometimes it's best if people are left to judge for themselves on how honest they are, without the force of law, and in serious matters such as unpunished crimes and corruption - well - fingers can be pointed all over the globe, not just in Thailand. 

And having said that, the prevalence of cheating in exams in Thailand is probably no worse than that in England, China or the US, where far stricter prevention and penalty measures seem to be taken. Perhaps cheating everywhere stems from an overwhelming fear of failure or simply an exercise of ones ingenuity to beat the system.

But no matter where or why, cheating in exams is an inexcusably dishonest route to success. There can be no joy in donning a graduation gown, posing for photos, stepping up to royalty and receiving a degree that was achieved by cheating.

Anyone who graduates by cheating cannot be considered qualified. They can call themselves doctors, scientists, whatever, but they will go on cheating for the rest of their lives - sometimes fooling society - and all of the time fooling themselves.

bob kimmins

the nation