On C List of Movie Reviews
(For optimum viewing, adjust the zoom level of your browser to 125%.)
Cheaters (2000)
Rate:
10
Viewed:
4/20
4/20:
How do the students prepare to defend themselves against accusations of academic cheating?
Simple: they watch Stand and Deliver and take notes. I thought it was the most perfect "aha" moment out of many in
Cheaters. It's the best I've seen when it comes to academic fraud, and the strategies used to get ahead are spot-on.
At one point, the teacher (Jeff Daniels) tried to rationalize why cheating was okay and cited a couple of examples how the
other school was cheating, too. I agree, but the problem here is: he and his students have made it too obvious; they should've
learned how to lay low by blending in. Had they done it, there's no way of being caught.
How some schools cheat is not immediately clear to a lot of people, but this is what they do: recruit and enroll high-IQ
students, therefore stacking their teams with many super smart players. To be accepted at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, the
prospective students must take entrance exams first which explains why they always win the Illinois State championships in
academic decathlon (the last I checked, it's been 34 out of the last 35 years).
The only way the game can be made fair is to homogenize the student population which is how it's done in public schools although
any of them with a high percentage of black and/or Hispanic students won't do well in these academic competitions. It's
just how the IQ distribution works across races; hence, you'll see so many Asians excelling in science, math,
geography, and spelling bee competitions.
I wouldn't feel bad if I were the students who either never participated or didn't do well in such endeavors. I just
question the point of them because it's an awful waste of time when kids should be kids who only have eighteen years
before leaving high school to work for rest of their lives. There's no reason to be so serious at such a young age by memorizing
useless trivia and facts; when students win, what did they really accomplish: a memory championship while pissing away
their childhood?
When I heard the guy in wheelchair talking about random number probability experiments, mixed model methodologies, two-way
ANOVAs, and statistical variances and parameters, I immediately knew the film's research was legit. Schools
who got caught cheating on the state or national examinations showed an abnormal increase in scores in a short amount of time
as compared to the past. It's not possible because, historically speaking, students on average don't improve
that much. It has a lot to do with IQ.
Let's go back to Stand and Deliver and examine why they were suspected of cheating. There are three possible
reasons: (1) They were taught the same methods; (2) They responded more or less the same way on the AP Calculus exam; and (3)
They shared the same answers. Having known the subject well, there should be little variability among the answers.
A big factor is that
they studied together for a long time whereas in Cheaters it was only for two or three weeks between the regional and
state competitions which is a huge jump in improvement.
Well, Cheaters is perfect. They got everything right which happened to Chicago's 1994–1995 Steinmetz High School team
during the academic decathlon. It's also a funny movie in a matter of factly way. The cast is outstanding with super
strong performances, especially by Jeff Daniels and Paul Sorvino.
When D. Sharon Grant, the Board of Education president, talked about how cheating was a monumental offense and how honor had
to be held in high esteem, I literally rolled my eyes during her high-and-mighty talk and said that she probably stole money from
taxpayers. Then, I laughed hard at the end, learning that Grant was sent to prison after pleading guilty to state and
federal charges for failing to file tax returns for seventeen years. In 1994, she made $175,500, a princely sum when most people made
roughly ten to fifteen percent of it, and "used a phony name and Social Security numbers to conceal $644,000 in income in one
Chicago financial institution."
Remember Jolie Fitch, the female protagonist who's played by Jena Malone? She went to college for a bit while but got *whoops*
pregnant and therefore dropped out of school. The last info of her is she was working in a department store somewhere
in Chicago. Nice try, Jolie, for making people think that you were too cool and smart.
All in all, I'm impressed with Cheaters when I thought it would be another hip teen comedy and consider it the
best movie made about cheating which is prevalent today not in just academics but in every other arena such as
politics, sports, military, and business.