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‘The Shadow Scholars’ Review: A Thought-Provoking Probe Into the Contract Cheating Industry
Eloïse King's 'The Shadow Scholars' shines a light on the young Kenyans supplying privileged college students with essays to pass off as their own.
But many of these tireless ghost writers don’t see themselves as exploited, nor as agents of fraud: With upbeat pragmatism, one radio reporter describes them as “finding African solutions to western problems.” The line gets a laugh in Eloïse King ‘s documentary “ The Shadow Scholars,” but this engrossing, morally nuanced film isn’t flippant or glib about the multibillion-dollar “contract cheating” industry that grants a meager livelihood to many learned, enterprising Kenyans who can’t afford to realize their own academic dreams. Single mother Mercy writes by night to support her kindergarten-age daughter, in the hope that the young girl will eventually excel academically in her own right; for husband-and-wife writers Chege and Faith, secondhand scholarship is an outlet for frustration over Master’s programs that they’ve been offered but can’t fund. Though it’s assembled with slick, pacy efficiency — with witty visual flourishes like onscreen academic citations for certain quotes, aptly showing and sourcing the filmmakers’ work — “The Shadow Scholars” offers no neat solutions or resolutions to an intellectual crisis entering a post-intellectual age, except to suggest more of us take a moment to think for ourselves.
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