Organized cheating on academic tests takes place all the time in Asian countries; accounts of wholesale cheating in China have received mainstream press attention, but it’s common throughout the region. The most common methodology involves students using mobile phones or small radio transceivers with earpieces to get test answers from someone located nearby who has copies of the tests, stolen or obtained through bribery from teachers and school administrators.

In the few instances in which teachers try to stop students from cheating (probably because the parents in question hadn’t paid the requisite bribes, or because the local government feels the need to make an example due to press mentions of rampant cheating in their areas), there’s generally a bad reaction from parents.

Note that parents are saying, “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat.” In Asian societies, where parents routinely are expected to pay bribes to school administrators and teachers in order to ensure that their children are admitted to schools, and that they receive passing grades, this sort of perverse logic is actually valid, within that context.

My guess is that a substantial number of the children involved in this cheating scandal are Asian, and that their families knew or suspected that the ‘tutor’ they hired planned on employing the same kind of espionage-like methods to ensure that their children received passing grades. Cheating amongst Asian students in the United States is widespread, and is a reflection of their cultural values. (See here, here and here.)

The fact that the parents of a child implicated in the scandal above lawyered up, instead of shaming their child into coming clean, suggests to me that this family is Asian. My parents would have forced me to confess and to take the consequences of my actions, had I done such a thing; when I explain that to Asians, at first they don’t believe me, and then when I persist, they think my parents must have been crazy, as they themselves would do anything and everything to protect a family member from the consequences of his actions for any crime up to and including murder.