Page 78 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 14

Leadership
Leadership

WESTERN EDUCATION

The Cheat, The Liar and The Fool

DEBUNKING THE FASLSEHOOD ABOUT A “HOLY” WEST

Chioma Phillips

ebora Patta, a foreign the carefully curated narrative. Cheating, which was inaugurated in
correspondent from the year 2016. The term, contract
CBS News, filed a Her video piece is on something cheating, was coined in 2006 in a
Dreport from Kenya called ‘contract cheating’, which paper by Thomas Lancaster and
towards the end of July 2021 that according to turnitin.com is “the Robert Clarke, though academicin-
began: “Cheating in college is nothing practice of students engaging a tegrity.org clarifies that ghostwriting
new, but as more and more degrees are third-party to complete assignments. for academic papers took place even
done online, it’s become a billion-dollar It occurs when someone other than before 2006.
industry and the heart of it is right here the student completes an assign-
in Nairobi, often using top-class Kenyan ment--and which the student then ‘Essays for sale: the booming online
graduates, who come from poverty like submits for assessment/credit.” The industry in writing academic work to
this.” This last part she says with third party can be another student, a order’ is the title of a 2017 article in
her hands outstretched, seeking to parent, a teacher or tutor or some- The Guardian, authored by Simon
draw the viewer’s attention to the one who is paid to do the assign- Usborn. The article has this as a
environment that surrounds her. ment on behalf of the student. sub-header: “Selling essays, assign-
Her chosen backdrop? A narrow ments and even PhDs is big busi-
street in a strategically selected slum According to news reports, and ness – and legal, although everyone
in Nairobi. The kind that foreign other online sources, contract cheat- knows many students will submit
correspondents like to show viewers ing is carried out by students in the the work as their own”. He was
in the west or east, to illustrate how US and North America, Australia, writing this from the UK in refer-
backward, poor and dirty Afrika China and the UK, to such an extent ence to information he had obtained
is, because the skyscrapers are an that there is even an International from UK Essays who referred to
inconvenient truth that do not fit in Day of Action Against Contract their essays as ‘study aids’ that were

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