India school cheating

Slate has an article by Ben Mathis-Lilley about amazing ways parents try and help their kids in India:

The photo above is from a video shot in Hajipur, India, recently. It shows parents and friends of students who are taking nationwide tenth-grade examinations climbing the walls of the test building to pass the students information; six hundred students have been expelled in the area for cheating. The incident depicted wasn’t isolated; a BBC photo shows the same thing happening at a different building. Police have been posted outside some exam centers, the BBC says, and have subsequently been offered bribes by determined friends of examinees. (If you’re interested in reading more about the topic, The Los Angeles Times wrote an informative piece about the elaborate culture of cheating that surrounds the nationwide tests, which “determine not only admission to the best schools but also to the most sought-after disciplines, such as engineering and medicine”, in April of 2014.)
It’s at least nice to see teenagers and their parents getting along. Sometimes parents can be embarrassing (when they want to talk to you at the mall), but sometimes they can be cool (when they climb the side of a building like Spider-Man to help you cheat on a nationwide board examination).

Rico says we'd do it here with the SATs, if we could (and people do hire stand-ins to take the test for their dumb kids)...