Ethics Newsline®

BEIJING
The largest exam in the world took place last week, with millions of students in China confronting a competitive university entrance exam that raises questions about the ethics of such a high-stakes affair and spotlights efforts to stanch high-tech cheating.

According to the Reuters news agency, about 10 million high school students were expected to sit for the national exam, competing for about half that number of university seats.

While the system is credited as being part of China’s explosive growth in the modern reform era, critics say the system puts too much stress on students, causes logistical chaos in the nation’s cities, and rewards rote learning, according to the Reuters report.

The exam often is regarded as the single most important event in a child’s life, and parents are often as frantic as the children, according to the Associated Press. In one eastern city, for example, parents pressured an airline to change its route because they feared the noise from overhead jets could distract students during the listening comprehension portion of the English test.

To fight cheating, police conducted checks around electronic markets, confiscating devices that could help students cheat, reports the Economic Times of India.

In addition, notes the official Chinese government publication People’s Daily and the news agency Xinhua, authorities set up a national video-monitoring network to supervise hundreds of exam venues.

They also established a national database to record incidents of cheating, with the promise that the records will be available to universities and employers.