The teachers usually, only focused on the act of cheating, and NOT seen the motives of why children would cheat on the tests, translated…
I was watching cartoon with my niece who just started in elementary school, the cartoon showed the Chibi Maruko Chan cheated off of the girl Jade who sat next to her on a test, and she was tortured by her own conscience after she’d copied the answers off of her classmate. My niece started telling me about a classmate who’d cheated on the exams, and always made the highest grades.
illustration from the papers online
I’d recalled having a classmate like that too, in my last year of middle school, she was the head of the class, and a GT student, always ranked the first in the class, the classmates, the teachers, we all liked her; once she’d dropped to the fifth highest scorer, and she’d, cried so out of control as she’d returned the exams back to the students, and afterwards, I’d seen her, hugging on the texts between the classes, even on the school’s birthday too.
And surely enough, on the next major exams, she’d, returned to scoring the highest grades, and, she’d, made better grades every time, close to scoring a 100, she’d even, beaten everybody else in the school, and became the highest scorer of the entire school.
But don’t know why, between the classmates, there came the gossips of how she’d, stuffed the smaller pieces of notes inside her desk drawers, and as the teacher walked past her desk, she’d, started, cheating; and, several of the classmates wanted to see if this is true, and they’d, proved that it was. And, everybody became, angrier, and angrier, and angrier, someone finally broke, and went to confront her, she’d, become red in the face, and denied the accusations of cheating, kept her head lowered to the textbooks, and, chewed down on the nails that were, originally, uneven on her hands, refused, to interact with the classmates.
like, this???
And the group of students made a pact, that they were to, catch her cheating in the act, and the way they all stood on the same line, was like, the head of my class had committed some sort of an unforgivable crime.
On the day of the sectional exams, the head of the class was caught cheating, as the teacher slowly, pulled out the notes she kept hidden in her desk drawer, I saw how nervous she’d become, chewing down her nails, her nails were, completely, chewed off. She’d started crying, followed the teacher out with her test in hand, and, the teacher asked the head of our class, to finish her test in the teacher’s office, I’d heard the rest of the classmates told of how she’d deserved it, I’d felt, a bit, cruel, but, there was also, that sense of, bringing her to justice.
As the semester ended, the head of my class transferred out of the school. I’d heard, that after she grew up, she was, a very good teacher, she’d often shared on FB her talks with her students. I can’t help but wondered, how does she, deal with the students who’s cheated on the exams, would she, punish them severely, or, show them the empathies? As I got older, I’d, come to understand, that what drove her to cheat, was her placing too high a demand on her academic performances, or maybe, she’d, turned into a good teacher, who’d told her students, that making the grades is not, the most important thing in the world.
In the cartoon, Jade consoled Maru who started crying hard, “Maru, so long as you’d admitted it, it wouldn’t make you a bad person, I will, keep your secret for you.” My niece told me, that Jade was too kind, I’d, patted her head, not knowing, what to say, because, as I grew up, I found, that I can’t be, as gentle, or kind as Jade, nor could I be, as honest, as Maru either.
What I didn’t want to admit to my niece was: as we became adults, the secrets we’d kept, were from our own despicable selves.
And so, this head of the class, had learned and taken from her experiences of getting caught cheating, it must’ve been hard, for her, to always grill herself that she needed to be perfect, that she can’t, make one single mistake, and, the class went on a witch hunt over how they caught her cheating, and yet, this girl grew up, to become a very good educator, because she remembered how she’d felt as a student, of how she felt she needed to cheat, to maintain that perfect façade.