Plagiarism

[Mindychan]

A bit outdated, but here's an article for you:
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/archive/julie_nichols/020311col1.html

Do you think the teacher was out of line or did the right thing?

[Merr]

Wow, I think what the students did to her seems a lot worse.

The teacher didn't really do anything wrong. Those students KNEW the assignment would be worth 50% of the grade but they cheated anyway. Of course if I were the teacher I'd at least offer some sort of extra-credit assignment so they could at least pass, but I don't think they should've just let off scot free either.

Besides, they could just all go to summer scool and retake Bio. It's not like their lives would be completely destroyed because of one F.

[Fernie]

The teacher absolutely did the right thing. I mean, what did the kids expect to happen when caught cheating? A slap on the wrist? And the story becomes even more ridiculous when both the parents and the school board defend the kids for cheating. Hell, I remember a time where parents would be angry at the kids and would have taken the teacher’s side. Summer school would have been an appropriate punishment. Instead, the spoiled brats are now getting off scott free and the teacher was forced out. Another example of the many things that are contributing to the wussification of America’s children. :/

[Chris Nagy]

I don't think the teacher did enough. The plagarism should have been noted on their transcripts. They should have failed the course completely. Taking credit for someone else's work is no small matter.

I can understand why the parents would fight it. It is an inconvenience for them if their children are held back, or have to take summer school. The assignment itself probably seems trivial, inconsequential. I doubt any future biologists were amongst those that plagiarized, anyway.

That the school board would side with the students is apalling, and personally I'd want to smear their names across the papers, and see what the state has to say about their pro-cheating stance.

[Tom]

I think the teacher did the right thing. If the students did not do the assignment--choosing, instead, to plagiarize--they should not have gotten a passing grade on said assignment. Fail their asses. It should have been a lesson to them, but, instead, they were taught that cheating is OK. And, that's not OK.

[Cefaclor]

I don't think the teacher did enough. The plagarism should have been noted on their transcripts. They should have failed the course completely. Taking credit for someone else's work is no small matter.

Agreed but then we dont know the full story. Is the teacher sure each kid plagiarized or were they not taught the proper way to extract information from text and rewrite it. Some people just blindly copy stuff from course text books thinking its not plagiarism because its a defenition of a strange term etc. You know what I mean?

[Chris Nagy]

True enough. If the situation is a case of ignorance, then there is room for some leeway. If it is obviously a case of plagiarism where the students copied entire swaths of text into their papers, let alone used an already written paper, then the harshest penalty should be laid down.

[hideko_dahlia]

My question is how much did they plagerise? If it was like, one line, without a proper source, I would just have called them on it and docked a few points. If the entire paper was a copy of someone else's........ THAT constitues as a zero.

As an artist, and somewhat of a writer, I really can't stand plagerism. Outright plagerism. If it's still at the point where you can tell you were copying someone's work..... No. If you can take the same meaning and completely re-write it, that's different....

As to this situation, the kids should have realised that they had done something wrong and were being given penance through failing. The teacher had every right to fail them. Sharing answers and plagerism on a big project like that are difinitely different.

[Shagster Shan]

That the school board would side with the students is apalling,
It's a tough balance being a teacher. You can fight to enforce the rules of your class, but once the school board buckles under pressure and discredits you, you've essentially lost all authority over the students. There was really no choice but for her to leave, which is pretty sad.

[Taryn]

Most schools I hear of have a pretty much zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. I got packets and contracts all four years of high school for English. If you plagiarize, you PLAGIARIZE. It's a SERIOUS offense in the world of academia. The school board failed in its job to back the teacher where she was so clearly in the right.

It seems likely to me that it had been a case of ignorance and not enough teaching about what plagiarism IS, the complaints from teachers and students would have reflected that. This article only talks about the parents wanting their kids to pass. If there was any possible reason the kids could've been in the right, it would have been exploited.

[Cheshire]

I think the teacher did the right thing. It's not fair for someone to go and buy an exellently written paper on the internet the day before it's due and get a passing grade, when someone who gets the same grade actually did the work for it.

Apparently my world history teacher has a problem with this every year. During the very first class, we were sat down and told what would happen if we plagiarized(sp?): We be given a zero on the work, ahve our parents and the school board notified, and it would be kept on our transcript. We just had a lengthy book report due Friday, which we'd had over a month to work on. Guess what some people got pulled out of class for? Gah, is it really that hard to read something and write about it? -_-

[Doki-Chan]

Its ture we don't have the full story or no what leingth of plagerism was comited however, if the case was they fully plagerized their projects then yes, the teacher did do the right thing. It sounds like they were warned about the penalties of Plagerism. Although, I've got to say the whole thing of an assignment being worth 50% of the samester is pretty iffy to me. But still, stealing others' hard work and calling it your own is a very awful thing to do.
At my highschool, there are alot of teachers that will refuse to write recomindations on University applications if they ever find out you plagerized.