Click here for article

For the first seven years of my life, I lived in China, and while living there I went through the Chinese education system, which is very different from what we do in Canada. Teachers would force students to copy entire sections and pages from textbooks to make them remember the information. This article I chose talks about how a Chinese girl uses a robot that mimicked her handwriting to cheat the system, which caught my eye because I can see myself in her shoes doing the same thing. The authors, Daniel Victor and Tiffany May, kept the information simple and showed many different opinions on the subject from different people. They also pointed out how it’s ironic that writing out texts repeatedly is a form of punishment in China, even though it’s supposed to help us learn. Although the robot that mimics handwriting was only created not too long ago, people have still found ways to cheat the Chinese education system before. Take me for example, when I was forced to copy phrases, I used to tie two pencils together to write twice as fast as one. This reveals the universality of this article, and how people may find even more ways to cheat in the future. Our world is becoming more and more dependent on technology and this article demonstrates how machines can be used to cheat. Personally, I don’t think the girl is doing the right thing by cheating, although I may do the same; but at the same time, Chinese education seems a bit extreme by going to such lengths forcing students to copy phrases over and over.