Plagiarism is a bad thing, obviously. First of all, it’s theft. When you try to present someone else’s ideas, directly or “in your own words,” you have to give that someone credit – and if you don’t, you’re stealing from that someone. Secondly, it’s deception. Presenting someone else’s ideas as if they are your ideas is a blatant lie. And of course, there’s always the laziness factor.
But the element of plagiarism that really pisses me off is the sheer arrogance.
Let’s face it, a student who presents a plagiarized paper is saying several things to his/her teacher:
1. I couldn’t be bothered with your lame assignment
2. The mark matters, but the learning doesn’t
3. I believe you’re too stupid to catch me
The penalty for plagiarism shouldn’t stop at a letter in the student’s file and a zero on the assignment. The student should have to walk around campus for a week wearing a t-shirt that says “I committed academic plagiarism”. Or that says simply “CHEATER” in big, I mean fricking HUGE, red letters. And the teacher should be allowed to follow the student around swatting him/her with a nerf bat.
Yeah.
This sounds alarmingly similar to a book I read, but it was a scarlet “A”……
I’d support such a punishment. The downside would be the wave of cheering from all the other cheaters looking on; they’d be cheering for the cheater, not for the teacher who caught him (or her).
Do you find that it’s worse now that you can use the Internet to find information? Back in the old days, you’d have to pay someone to write your paper for you or use one that a friend submitted in a previous year. These days, you can probably find loads of information you can simply cut and paste into an essay. 🙁
Lisa: having only been a teacher in recent years, I can’t really answer your question ~ on the other hand, as easy as it may be for students to find information, that’s how easy it is for teachers to track down undocumented sources. We have software that checks electronic files for Internet matches, but so far the best method I’ve found is to Google a few words from the student’s paper. Nine times out of ten, the “borrowed” material turns up in the first page of hits.
What makes me even angrier? The “non-plagiarising” students who are suing to shut down an anti-plagiarism resource on the grounds of copyright. Yeah, they’re just “doing the right thing from the best of motives”… there’s some arrogance for you.
Why nerf?
So you can hit them more often before they pass out.
Oh yes I soooo agree. No mercy! Nerfed unconscious!!!!!
That’s way the betsest answer so far!
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