.Thursday, May 27, 2010 ' 11:43 PM Y
Plagiarism refers to the
copying of authorised work without the author's permission. Within local context, besides tertiary institutions, plagiarism also affects primary school students. With their immature mindsets, they simply 'copy' information found in the internet and 'paste' it as their own work. Primary level students are usually unaware that such doings are wrong. They see the action of copying as perfectly fine to extract needed passages from the internet since it is 'open' information for everyone. Whereas for secondary and tertiary level students who are at an older age, they should know that plagiarism is a serious offence. However, they take the offence lightly and a few are even unbothered by the consequences that they may face if found to have committed the offence. As a result, the teachers will have to take disciplinary action against those students, either by giving them a fail grade, suspension or in the worse scenario, expulsion.
An increasing number of primary schools these days have taken action in advance by imparting the right principles to students; to cite relevant information from websites rather than copying all in a huge chunk. Teachers have taught students to compile essential information that can also be revised through their own words. Thus, students understand that they have to respect the author/publisher of the textbook/online reference websites and select only the needed information for their own purpose.
On the other hand, while primary students learn and comply with the rule of not committing plagiarism, there are tertiary students who still 'illegally' use other author's work and pledge as their own. Tertiary institutions do take such offences seriously and punish the students accordingly. Students should know how to use the information wisely by being more creative to present their answers or projects through their own style of writing.
Out of foolishness, adults also do commit the plagiarism offence. They present false credentials or education certificates which truly belonged to others, while trying to land a job. There are cases of university professors who try to present their 'own' thesis which was in fact plagiarised from other sources. This issue brings out the importance of moral principles and values. Everyone deserves a right to have their own materials copyrighted as their private property though others may refer to it. By plagiarising other people's work, it is being unfair to the author who worked hard to come up with his own work, but ended up being named under someone else's instead. Anyone can just simply 'copy and paste' directly without doing any hard thinking.
Despite all the plagiarism that is going around, primary schools are applauded for taking the initiative to teach younger students how to cite accurate information from resources provided. At a young age, to have knowledge about plagiarism being a wrong method of presenting information beats having no idea about its existence. People are often encouraged to think by processing information that they acquire from various sources. In this way, they can learn much more compared to just blindly copying from others.
-Pearlyn :D-
Labels: Plagiarism
