When a student is caught plagiarizing, there's no need for punitive action that might harm the cheater's self-esteem, because plagiarism is "self-teaching," don't you know.
Students plagiarising internet essay material in their coursework are using a form of 'self-teaching', says the director of the qualifications body...
Dr Ellie Johnson Searle, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, said small scale copying still showed an understanding of the subject.
But she said full plagiarism, without listing sources, was wrong...
Large-scale copying of someone else's work is picked up by the examining bodies and in some cases penalised, she said. But she said pupils who simply copied odd bits of internet essays and used them were not heavily punished, and in most cases would be asked to rewrite the coursework.
She told the programme: "Pupils can change the language and grammar and put it into their own words, but if they are going to that sort of effort they are essentially self-teaching and are learning the subject anyway.
Well, in the sense that reading other people's words is learning, yes, the students are "self-teaching" here. But they aren't copying other people's words for the purpose of learning; they're copying other people's words for the purpose of presenting them as their own and receiving a grade on them which is undeserved. If students aren't punished for copying, no matter how small an amount of text, and no matter how much of the accompanying text is original, then the only thing they're really learning is that it's okay to cheat, not think for oneself, and take credit for other people's work.
Presumably Dr. Searle would be offended if someone else copied "bits and pieces" from one of her journal articles, so why does she insist that allowing students to do the same is a legitimate part of the education process?
Posted by kswygert at April 5, 2004 10:02 AM