I was reading an article about nursing students in Bangladesh, and they said that classmates who are put together in groups are called "batchmates." They share a strong attachment, the article said, and feel obligated for the remainder of their lives to associate for a mutual benefit. I see, from the Internet, that the word batchmate is commonly used in British commonwealth countries. We do not use it here in the states. Do you use it in England? Canada? Australia? New Zealand? How do you use it? The article compared it to sororities or fraternities here in the U.S.

Interestingly, it is "through this lens of obligation" that cheating and copying are apparently acceptable in Bangladesh. We have a huge cheating problem in the U.S., but I had never heard that it was culturally acceptable elsewhere. Have you?

IHOP workers are probably "batch mates."

Never heard batchmates but I have read that it is quite common in some places to have a friend take an exam for you and I have experienced some adult classes in the UK where students see nothing wrong in having a friend do their homework. Whether this a genuine cultural difference or just people rationalising their cheating to themselves, I couldn't say.

The article I read was very enlightening about that, Bob. For example:

quote:

One of the most confounding experiences for visiting faculty is the extent of cheating and plagiarism among students. We advise them to recognize that students may have been trained to memorize teachers' lectures, and in exams would be expected to echo passages exactly, as a sign of respect as well as learning. For instance, one nursing student reported that in secondary school he had been marked lower than a classmate who had plagiarized; his teacher said that he could never know more than the person being "quoted," therefore the plagiarizing student repeating "the words of the master" was superior.