La première chose qui me vient à l’esprit quand je compare les deux colonnes est qu’aucun élève français ne parle d’avertir un professeur, le pire étant d‘ “essayer d’attirer l’attention du professeur”. Est-ce culturellement correct aux États-Unis de dénoncer un camarade ? En France on risque beaucoup à tricher (3 ans d’interdiction de passer des examens et une expulsion probable) et nous ne voulons pas (je pense en tout cas) attirer tant d’ennuis pour la triche en examen. Peut être risquez vous moins aux États-Unis ?

J’ai souvent entendu dire qu’il était mal vu en France de dénoncer (en rapport à l’histoire de notre pays et aux délations faites pendant la seconde guerre mondiale). Je pensais que c’était une idée reçue, qu’avec le temps les mentalités avaient évolué. Cependant les réponses tendent à soutenir ce point de vue. J’ai donc une question, est-il mal vu aux USA de dénoncer une personne? Car bien qu’il puisse paraître que cela soit juste, en France, la délation à tendance à être mal vu, les gens vous répondront souvent de vous mêler de vos affaires…!

En comparant les résultats des français avec celles des américains j’ai constaté que certains étudiants américains dénoncent leurs camarades en cas de triche alors qu’en France, chacun assume sa responsabilité ! si quelqu’un triche il assume les conséquences !! J’aimerais vraiment savoir, tout comme guillaume, est ce que c’est mal vu en Amérique de dénoncer un étudiant ? ..

I’m also surprised at the number of Americans who said they would report the student. I think it’s possible that a lot of people think they would “do the right thing” and tell on the student, but in actuality would do nothing - but I could be wrong.

Would you have answered the same thing in high school? Do you think the competitiveness of the school environment affects how you’d handle this situation?

I think that American students also see it as bad to turn someone in for cheating. But, if I were to explain why more Americans mentioned turning in students, it’s probably because we are told so often to not cheat. Every single class spends 5 minutes of the first lecture telling us not to cheat.

I thought it is interesting that the French take the risk of cheating much more into consideration, but that makes sense now that I’ve heard that the consequences for cheating. The other thing I think is important to consider is the type of test. In high school, in Brazil for example, there are no such things as multiple choice tests, but in the US practically all the tests in high school are multiple choice. In college, I’ve noticed that at least at MIT, most tests are non-multiple choice. If a test is not multiple choice, it makes cheating a lot harder/not as effective and the risk much greater since it is much more obvious. Are the tests in general in France multiple choice? Or are they short answer?

@elemcy I think it’s interesting that you say that turning someone in is “doing the right thing.” On the one hand, cheating is wrong, and by letting the teacher know you might prevent a student from getting away with it. On the other hand, by telling the teacher, you are a “snitch” which is also seen as wrong.
In response to your question, I don’t think that the competitiveness of MIT changes whether or not I would turn someone in. I think the biggest difference is that I went to a smallish high school, so I knew my teachers pretty well - for instance I was on a first name basis with almost all of my teachers and would talk with or do projects with many of them outside of class. My grade was also pretty small, so I knew almost everyone in my class reasonably well. Consequently, it would have seemed much more offensive if someone were to try to cheat off me in high school than it would here if a random person I had never seen before was trying to do it.
How big are schools/classes/grades in France? How well do you know your teachers/peers outside of class? How do cocurricular/afterschool programs work in France? Do you have them and are they run by the same teachers that you have in school?
@Mathieu Wow! I’m surprised at how strict the punishment for cheating is. At my high school, there would be no punishment the first time someone was caught cheating except for serious warnings. The second time they would get in serious trouble and possibly kicked out. The third time they would definitely be kicked out, but they could always just go to any other school in the state.

As others pointed out, almost all of the French responses say that they would do nothing, whereas the Americans are more conflicted about what to do. I think this difference comes from how much more competitive the American educational system is. The way that college admissions are structured basically puts high schoolers in direct competition with each other: there are a limited number of spots and more than enough qualified students to fill them. This teaches us from an early age that we need to do a lot to get a leg up on the other students. To the French students: did you ever feel worried, before university, that you wouldn’t get into a certain school even though you met the qualifications?

I also thought it was interesting that the French mention things like risk, consequence, and peril a lot. What kinds of consequences would there be if a student were caught cheating by the teacher? I’m guessing that the risks referenced in the responses above are referring to the risk of never learning the material and then being punished for it in the future, but I’m interested to know how a student would be reprimanded by the school system.

The French seem to ignore the action more than the Americans because they feel that it is their business or their responsibility. I think the stronger punishment for cheating discourages the French from informing the teacher. @ French Students: Are the rooms for examinations big? Would you say it is easy to cheat on an exam and get away with it?

En théorie, la triche est punie sévèrement en France au niveau Universitaire (Interdiction d’examens, retrait du titre etc…). Mais dans les faits, les contrôles sont très faibles et il est très facile de tricher dans des amphis de 100 personnes ou plus. Simplement, je pense que cela reste un phénomène limité mais existant. Comme partout, il y a ceux qui jouent le jeu et les autres. Et je pense qu’il est très différent de tricher lors d’un accident de parcours et tricher de façon régulière et prononcée. C’est comme pour le vol. On a tous déjà volé un petit truc(un stylo, un bonbon, un briquet etc…), mais il y a voler et Voler.
Enfin, il est certain que le corp enseignant est totalement contre l’idée de tricher. Il existe par exemple des logiciels qui vérifient que le code d’un projet est personnel.

Like @kashlgh said, I think a lot of it has to do with competition. In the US, if someone else cheats, and does better than you, not only do they have to deal with the consequences by not learning the material, but it also actively harms you, given the highly competitive environment we’re in, someone else getting a good grade unfairly can hurt you through grade curves etc. So it makes more sense for students in the US to turn people in for cheating, because it’s to protect yourself, not necessarily just a moral thing.

I may be wrong, but I feel like the majority of the people who actually say they would turn the person in actually wouldn’t, especially at a place like MIT. There’s enough each individual person has to deal with in their own lives, so would they actually risk harming someone else’s life for so little worth? Is this similar to how the French react to cheating, hence why the majority wouldn’t do/say anything?

I think that the number of people who would actually turn the cheater in in the United States really depends on the atmosphere of the school. Like @Jessica, I went to a very small high school and we had an honor code that was taken extremely seriously. Part of the honor code even dealt with turning people in for cheating - if someone found out that you knew someone cheated, but didn’t turn them in, you would be punished almost as severely as the actual cheater. Because of these rules, people were a lot more likely to speak up if they thought someone was cheating off their test. But like @jlampart said, I am not sure the same atmosphere exists at MIT where people would feel an extreme obligation to turn the person in.

I agree with @jlampart and @erbri - especially since MIT has a very collaborative culture (what with our many study groups - “pset groups” as we call them), I don’t believe that everyone who said that they would turn the person in would actually turn them in.

I think the action-oriented responses have to do with the fact that in the US, in theory, being a “bystander” is considered really bad and so we all always try to evaluate our behavior and (sometimes falsely) convince ourselves that we’re not actually acting as a bystander in a given situation - or that if we are, there’s a very good reason behind it. What do others think?

@guillaume It’s interesting that the French have such a bad connotation associated with turning people in. What would you do if you saw someone on the street being pickpocketed? Or better yet, if you saw an obviously suspicious pickpocket on the street about to reach for the handbag of an elderly woman? I think there’s a certain line that needs to be drawn between obstructing justice and minding one’s own business. I’d say that Americans have a strong sense of social responsibility, and part of social responsibility includes making sure that everyone follows the rules. So, if you see someone who isn’t following the rules (whether the rule is trivial like cheating on an exam or significant like promoting terrorism), we feel more obligated to turn them in.

As @mhk points out, there’s also the bystander effect. If you’re a witness to a crime or some act of harm to another person, and you don’t do anything to prevent or better the situation, then you’re held accountable.

Wow what an interesting discussion. I myself am conflicted about how I would react. I honestly think I would be too focused on writing my exam to notice another student cheating. At any rate, the French seem happy to let ‘karma’ work it’s magic. There American students experience greater inner conflict. Others have mentioned competition as a reason American students are more likely to report the offending student. Do our French colleagues agree that their schooling system is not so competitive that it would prompt students to report cheaters?

Wow what an interesting discussion. I myself am conflicted about how I would react. I honestly think I would be too focused on writing my exam to notice another student cheating. At any rate, the French seem happy to let ‘karma’ work it’s magic. There American students experience greater inner conflict. Others have mentioned competition as a reason American students are more likely to report the offending student. Do our French colleagues agree that their schooling system is not so competitive that it would prompt students to report cheaters?

Je ne pense pas qu’il y ai besoin de dénoncer les tricheurs dans notre formation.
Il n’y a pas vraiment moyen de tricher efficacement afin d’atteindre le haut de classement.
La plupart des examens se font avec documents autorisés, ce qui justifie l’inutilité de ceux ci.
Par exemple, les cours sont la plupart des diapositives imprimés, jusqu’à 400 diapo. En 1h ou 2, fouiller dedans fait perdre trop de temps, pour chance de trouver ce qu’il faut. Tricher, c’est prendre le risque de ne pas répondre à des questions faciles non traité…

Est-ce que vos examens permettent de tricher de manière à faire mieux que les autres ? Comment se déroulent-ils ?

@Steins I don’t think exams that I have taken at MIT are easy to cheat off of. In almost all of them, we are allowed to bring 1 or more handwritten pages of notes and equations, and most of the time when I think of cheating I think of people sneaking in cheat sheets. MIT exams aren’t really about memorization most of the time, they focus on gaining a conceptual understanding, so it’s not really all that useful to have access to more written notes than you are allowed to bring in. I don’t think I would be able to read what the person next to me is writing without being very obvious about it. People often write small, and it also isn’t all that helpful to see a few numbers even if one could. Simply writing the answer on an exam without showing how you got there would earn partial credit at best and would also be pretty suspicious.
I think cheating could easily and does happen often on things like take-home exams.

Many Americans have commented that they think the American university system is much more competitive, but I highly doubt that that is true. For starters, ours is a pretty biased sample, MIT is harder and the people here are more competitive than most universities in America as well. Second, I have heard that it is much easier for people to fail out of universities in Europe with the tests that they have between years (I’m not 100% sure this is true, correct me if I am wrong), whereas here once someone gets into a college, if they want to and can afford to continue, they will almost certainly graduate. What is the graduation rate at colleges in France?
Do you have exams that you have to pass in order to advance to the next level of education?

@redchip123 : Les réponses ne disent pas que nous trichons plus mais que nous ne dénonçons pas (ou moins que vous). Sinon, pour répondre à ta question, la plus part de nos examens sont des exercices avec des questions ouvertes, nécessitant parfois de courtes réponses et d’autres fois de plus longues réponses (avec les calculs liés). Le système de QCM n’est que très peu utilisé, du moins pour les matières scientifiques.
@kashlgh : Si je voyais quelqu’un sur le point de se faire voler son portable par un pick-pocket je lui dirais. Mais là le problème est différent. C’est de la non assistance que de se taire. Tandis que lors d’un examen tu n’es pas là pour surveiller les autres étudiants. Des professeurs/surveillants sont payés pour ça… Bien entendu que si je suis témoin d’un accident, d’une agression ou d’un vol je ne vais pas rester les bras croisés dans mon coin. Par contre, si je vois quelqu’un tricher pendant un examen cela me passe au-dessus, j’ai bien mieux à faire qu’aller dénoncer la personne en question. En revanche, si lors d’un concours je vois quelqu’un tricher je pense que ma réaction serait différente au vue des répercutions, des enjeux derrière !
D’ailleurs, comment êtes vous rentrés au MIT? Par selection sur dossier ou suite à un concours? Et depuis quand y êtes vous? Immédiatement après le Bac?

@Jessica : Je ne peux pas vraiment te répondre. Nous sommes en école d’ingénieur et par conséquent nous ne fonctionnons pas tout à fait comme les universités. Dans notre école la plus part des étudiants proviennent des classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles. Tous ces gens ont donc passé un concours après 2 ans de classe prépa à échelle nationale. Ainsi, durant ces deux années il régnait un petit esprit de compétition… Cependant, une fois arrivé en école d’ingénieur on est quasiment certains, nous aussi, d’avoir notre diplôme à la fin de l’école (à moins de le faire exprès ou de ne plus vouloir continuer). En école, pour passer d’une année à une autre il nous faut valider nos semestres. Pour cela nous devons avoir la moyenne dans nos 4 UE (UE = groupe de 3 à 5 matières). Suite à chaque semestre, les élèvent n’ayant pas la moyenne partout peuvent allé aux rattrapages afin de bénéficier d’une seconde chance !
Et vous, comment cela se passe t-il? Choisissez-vous vous même vos cours?

Peut être que les américains prennent la triche comme une offense à leur égard. C’est surement pour cela qu’ils sont plus enclins à dénoncer cet acte.

In response to erbri, I went to a very big high school where cheating was actually not taken very seriously. I definitely let people cheat off of me in high school, and even though I knew it was wrong I wasn’t going to let my friends fail if there was something I could do to help. At MIT, it’s way way harder to cheat or let someone cheat off of you, and I don’t think it really happens.

Would you all consider giving someone the answer during a test as bad as asking someone for the answer? If you were taking a test and your friend asked you for the answer, what would you do?

En considérant le fraudeur étant un ami. L’aider en lui donnant une réponse, on le ferai plus facilement qu’à un inconnu.
Je ne sais pas si les procédures d’examens sont les mêmes pour vous. Ici, les places sont aléatoires et tomber proche d’un ami n’est pas fréquent, ce qui rend la possibilité de partager des réponses faible.
Comparer la culpabilité d’aider à tricher et de tricher en demandant la réponse est difficile. Cela ne m’ait jamais arrivé, je ne peux répondre. Faut voir avec quelqu’un qui l’a déjà fait.
┻━┻ ︵ ¯\ (ツ)/¯ ︵ ┻━┻
Une meilleur solution est d’aider son ami pendant ses révisions s’il en a besoin. Personnellement, je préfère prémunir que guérir.

@elemcy Je trouve que cela arrive beaucoup moins après le lycée, pensez-vous que la maturité rentre en jeu?
Sinon pour répondre à ta question c’est très difficile de ne pas répondre à un ami s’il a besoin d’une réponse, même si ce n’est pas la solution ca pourra l’aider un peu, par contre s’il pose des questions sans cesse je lui dirais d’arreter.

Je pense comme l’as dis @guillaume que la délation en France est très mal vue. Le fait de dénoncer quelqu’un qui triche est pire que le fait de tricher. Vous n’avez pas un mauvais avis sur quelqu’un qui dénonce un de ses camarades ?

I agree very much with many of the responses above, and @erbri’s in particular to say that turning in a cheater very much depends on the environment you’re in. Depending on the school, or even class, taking a multiple choice exam might be an easy way to cheat. In some environments, friends let friends cheat on those. In others, they don’t. In environments like MIT where pure multiple choice exams aren’t as prevalent, there is much less of a benefit to cheating, hence overall discouraging that culture here. But other colleges are probably very different, even here in Boston and Cambridge.

@ Jean-Michel Durant: Like I said above, I believe that many Americans may have responded to the prompt with the “bystander effect” in mind. In fact, I would say that it is very much considered bad to turn in a classmate or to act as a “tattletale” (even if no one really talks about this stigma) and that most people wouldn’t actually go through with it. However, it definitely depends on the situation, and on a societal level, turning in a cheating classmate is the technically “right” thing to do.

@jean-mi “Le fait de dénoncer quelqu’un qui triche est pire que le fait de tricher.”

Euh, personnellement ça ne me pose aucun problème de dénoncer une personne en train de tricher, si cela m’apporte une récompense ou si je ne peux pas voir la personne en peinture.

On est tous presque d’accord qu’il ne faut pas laisser un tricheur triche et qu’il s’en sort saint et sauf… déjà parce que ça contredit et casse l’égalité entre les candidats du concours et l’examen en cours, vu qu’une autre personne qui essaie de tout faire sans tricher à fournis un effort pour mériter une meilleure récompense qu’un tricheur. Sinon, un tricheur, peut garder ce défaut pour toute sa vie… ce qui nous donnerons des citoyens qui ne sont pas compétents et qui seront là comme obstacle à notre évolution.
Une question qui se pose: comment peut-on remédier efficacement à cet maladie ?

@elemcy: Je crois que ça dépend, au fait de la situation. Personnellement, je tolére pas que je vois quelqu’un trichant et que je reste les bras croisés, car c’est déjà insultant pour moi même vu que j’ai passé des nuits à préparer et j’ai fourni un vrai effort pour réussir alors qu’il y a d’autres qui étaient en vacance jusqu’à le jour de l’examen et commencent à tricher…
Ce qui peut changer ton opinion @elemcy et quand cette personne tricheuse ait une meilleure note que toi ou qu’elle soit sélectionnée (en trichant) pour un poste pour lequel t’as tout fait, alors que tu sais très bien que l’autre n’a fait que tricher pour avoir ce poste.

On est tous presque d’accord qu’il ne faut pas laisser un tricheur triche et qu’il s’en sort saint et sauf… déjà parce que ça contredit et casse l’égalité entre les candidats du concours et l’examen en cours, vu qu’une autre personne qui essaie de tout faire sans tricher à fournis un effort pour mériter une meilleure récompense qu’un tricheur. Sinon, un tricheur, peut garder ce défaut pour toute sa vie… ce qui nous donnerons des citoyens qui ne sont pas compétents et qui seront là comme obstacle à notre évolution.
Une question qui se pose: comment peut-on remédier efficacement à cet maladie ?

@elemcy: Je crois que ça dépend, au fait de la situation. Personnellement, je tolére pas que je vois quelqu’un trichant et que je reste les bras croisés, car c’est déjà insultant pour moi même vu que j’ai passé des nuits à préparer et j’ai fourni un vrai effort pour réussir alors qu’il y a d’autres qui étaient en vacance jusqu’à le jour de l’examen et commencent à tricher…
Ce qui peut changer ton opinion @elemcy et quand cette personne tricheuse ait une meilleure note que toi ou qu’elle soit sélectionnée (en trichant) pour un poste pour lequel t’as tout fait, alors que tu sais très bien que l’autre n’a fait que tricher pour avoir ce poste.

@fejiro : Ici à l’ENSEIRB-MATMECA, la session des examens se déroulent comme suit :
* généralement tous les partiels se passent au grand amphi (un amphi de 508 places)
* chaque étudiant s’installe suivant un plan préparé par la scolarité pour chaque partiel.
* entre deux étudiants il y a environs 4 places vides
* entre deux rangées il y a une rangée vide
* généralement 3 ou 4 surveillants lors du déroulement de l’examen.
⇒ A toi de décider tout seul si c’est facile ou pas de tricher.
J’aime bien savoir comment ça se passe à MIT ?

@Jessica, j’aime bien savoir comment fonctionne MIT? Comment passer d’une année à une autre? Est ce que vous choisissez vos matières? Combien d’heures de cours avez vous par semaine? Quels sont les projets que vous faites?, etc.

@chaf.madkour, if it’s an important test like an AP test or the SATs or something that determined a lot, I wouldn’t cheat or let someone cheat. What I had in mind was like a weekly quiz in high school that didn’t affect our grades very much and was, in the long run, not a big deal. Even if my friend did wind up with a better grade, I figure they would’ve done the same for me had it been the other way around.

@Hanine, We choose our majors and within the major, there are certain classes we must take, but we can take others other than those, and there is some flexibility to what order we want to take the classes in (as long as you don’t have to know the material from one class to take the other class). There is a minimum amount of classes you must take each semester to be considered a student (for MIT you have to take at least 3 classes) but there technically is no maximum number of classes you can take. I think the average number of hours taken by students here is about 50 hours (this is supposed to include the amount of time spent on homework as well although it’s usually a number of hours higher than that).
@guillaume Most people go to college about three months after graduating from high school. Most people apply to colleges either in November or February of their senior year (which is the last year of high school). To apply, you have to have scores on standardized tests, have volunteer hours, be in clubs, have good essays on the applications and get good grades. And you have to work on all of this all of high school.
After hearing this, are there some aspects of the American process you would rather have integrated into the French process? Or do you guys like the process you guys have to go through to go to college? For example, I particularly like the price of colleges in France :)

@Jean-Michel I think there is definitely a stigma associated with telling on someone, but in my opinion it’s only really seen badly if the person telling is known for being tattle-tale or does it with a bad attitude/overtly. I think people would likely appreciate and look up to someone who quietly tells the teacher after class that people had cheated on an exam, because I think we all believe cheaters should be caught and punished, but we often feel like “Someone ELSE should tell on them; I don’t want to”. So basically it depends on how you do it.

@spira Tests vary by each class. In almost all of my classes, they separate us by one chair between each student, in the classroom we usually are in (which hold between 40-300 students). Rarely will they also separate us with a whole empty row as well. For finals, some of them are still held in regular classrooms, but those with more students (200, 300+) will be in the gyms, with 1 student per table, and each table quite separated from the rest (making it very hard to cheat off someone else).

I think even with just one seat between students, it becomes much harder to cheat. You’d have to be pretty obvious and would likely get caught, nevermind the fact that the questions we’re asked are generally not questions you can copy answers for.

@redchip123 et concernant la vie associative ? j’aime bien savoir le taux d”importance que vous y accordez à MIT ! comment ça se passe chez vous exactement ? Avez vous des clubs ? des associations ? :)

@laika : merci pour ces informations :)

I very much agree with how @laika put it, that people would prefer that some else do it. But then again I feel, at least in environments like MIT (not fully sure about other environments) that even if people were seated one chair apart they wouldn’t cheat. And I feel that’s more due to the people in the sense that the people who got there aren’t people who cheat, they work hard and put in at least enough effort to not feel the need to cheat.

@laika, je comprends mieux votre façon de voire les choses, la différence qui persiste me semble être que vous vouliez à tout prix que le tricheur soit prit. Pourquoi donc ? Ne pensez vous pas que quelqu’un qui triche ne pourras tricher toutes sa vie et le résultats qu’il a “volé” reste un épiphénomène et n’influencera de façon globale les résultats du concours ?

@spira and @hanine
Passing from one year to another basically just requires passing most of your classes. I know a few people who failed 2 or 3 of the 8 classes they took in the first year and they still advanced. They didn’t receive credit for those classes and are now retaking them, and consequently might not graduate on time, but if they make up with work in the end it won’t really matter. I think most people pass most if not all of their classes though. There aren’t really as many requirements to get from one year to the next as there are to actually graduate.
I agree with what redchip123 said about majors and requirements and how those work. The average number of hours of work is probably around 50 hours here, but I think many MIT students also try to take on many projects outside of class - clubs, sports, projects, etc - and so people get very busy very fast.
This semester I am taking 15 hours of lecture, and am in lab for another 10 or so. I don’t know how long I spend on homework each week. I am taking 51 units (1 unit is approximately 1 hour of work) which technically means I should be spending roughly 26 or so hours on homework per week, but it definitely varies a lot.
I’ve never seen someone openly try to cheat during an exam.

@spira - I think MIT is definately enriched for people who do more academic type clubs, but many people still join athletic teams. I don’t actually know what the climate is like at other schools, but at MIT I would guess about half of students play some kind of sport - varsity, club, or intramural - during their time here. There are also lots of cool engineering type clubs on campus (I’m a mechanical engineer so those are the ones I find particularly interesting, but there are all sorts of clubs). There’s a solar car team, an underwater robotics team, a model railroad club etc. People also do events within their dorm. One dorm here built a wooden roller coaster and 3 story wooden fortress in their courtyard at the start of the school year and build various wooden projects each year.
Over the summer, most people do internships or will do research on campus for a professor. What kinds of projects, summer jobs, and clubs do people in France tend to participate in?

@redchip123 , @Jessica et @laika merci beaucoup pour ces informations. C’est vraiment enrichissant :)

J’ai reconnu des tricheurs dans les messages. Mais je ne dirai rien…