There's no excuse for Internet plagiarism
The Jan. 30 article on student cheating was interesting, even though this subject has been a frequent subject in recent years. The difference in the Plano, Texas, situation was that the teacher gave the student the zero he/she deserved for plagiarizing the paper from the Internet and apparently the student's parents did not demand that the grade be changed nor did they sue the teacher.
In other school districts, parents have been successful in getting failing grades changed, becoming enablers and setting precisely the wrong example for their children. However, I was amazed to read that educators say that students "often don't know that surfing Web sites and lifting passages for their own"is stealing?
Excuse me? Don't the educators tell them about plagiarism at the time the assignment is given? If not, why wouldn't they? And how can any student with average intelligence and any common sense not figure out on his/her own that wholesale copying without attribution is unethical if not illegal.
No, let's face facts here. Many students are lazy and consider cutting corners as perfectly acceptable in life, so long as they get whatever the seek. With this attitude fairly common, we should expect more Enrons for years to come.
Keith Hoile
Greensboro
Comments (4)
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Mr. Hoile,
You will recall the James Frey saga and his fictional memoirs, "A Million Little Pieces", don't you? Even though he admitted that about 5% of the book was fiction (which is 5% too much for non-fiction), many people justified that as artistic or poetic license. They felt that adding non-factual accounts to the book made it more compelling for people as a self-help book. Duh. As long as there are people around that have that attitude, how do you think that young people will ever understand that plagiarizing is wrong? Young people learn from the behaviors of adults quickly. If they see that any behavior can be justified to meet a desired end, then many of them will behave in that manner. Ethics in our society is nearly extinct.
Posted on February 3, 2006 8:34 AM
ORR, Blame Frey, blame the teacher, blame other adults for the shortcomings of children. But the blame for not teaching children that stealing is wrong should begin at home. If kids were taught by their parents BEFORE they entered school and the world in general, they would already know stealing is wrong, be it money, property or words.
Posted on February 3, 2006 12:35 PM
Yvonne,
Oh, I agree, parents are responsible for teaching their kids right and wrong, but increasingly that isn't happening. In many cases, those parents don't teach their kids what's right, because they didn't learn themselves. My point about James Frey is that it is representative of our society. Anything and everything can be overlooked and justified. The excuse makers for James Frey are just examples of our society's problem. Now, where do we start getting an ethical society again? If parents are part of the problem and not part of the answer, where do we start in adressing this societal problem.
P.S. I never mentioned nor suggested that teachers should be blamed. That was your call.
Posted on February 3, 2006 7:24 PM
Actually ORR, I believe that maybe, just maybe that the "teacher blame" came from the original LTE writer. I do not mean to speak for Yvonne, however, I did read the "teacher blame" in the LTE.
And, in that thought, no, educators (in Public Education) rarely have the opportunity to teach plagarism. This was done in my English classes when I was a student. However, with less and less English Composition being taught in the Public Education sector today, we have a problem. Students today are not as familiar with this concept as their predecessors.
Shalom
Posted on February 3, 2006 7:38 PM