Hunglish.orgCheating in schools isn't as dangerous as it appears, 'puskak' is Hungarian for 'shotgun' but it is slang for a cheat sheet. It isn't a matter of life and death, but it is not advantageous for Hungarian students to be hiding these little papers in order to pass their exams.
Written by Scott Savoie
Hungary has a serious probem of kids bringing puskak (Hungarian for 'shotguns') to school and using them.
Of course, they aren’t literally bringing guns to class, but rather 'puska' is instead a slang term for what we in the US would call a 'cheat sheet,' i.e. a little piece of paper with the answers to the test written on it.
This is a fairly common practice in Hungarian secondary grammar schools (high school), and colleges.
Cheating is a practice sort of winked at in Hungary.
If you ask most people about cheating in school, most will admit to having done it.
Most will insist that cheating was necessary, and that they were learning all the time that they were writing the material in microscopic letters on tiny sheets of paper.
Cheating on Hungarian tests can also take the form of open discussion during the test.
The teachers don’t stop them because they cheated 'their' way through school as well.
These cheaters, in turn, make excellent marks. They go to the best schools, they get good jobs. They become captains of industry and politicians. The implications of this are obvious.
Personally, I would hate to think of a surgeon standing over me, knife in hand, using crib notes.
In universities elsewhere, cheating is grounds for immediate expulsion from school.
However, in other places, kids sometimes bring real guns to school and take out their academic and social failures on the student body with buckshot and hollow-tipped ammo.
The implications of this are obvious.
Different societies, different sociolocial problems...