In a persuasive article written by Brent Staples called “Cutting
and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name),” Staples argues that the increased
use of plagiarism in schools can be at a detriment to a student’s academic
success. He starts off by talking about
one of his teacher friends having to punish students when he finds evidence of
plagiarism and develops his positions through the views of other college
professors and their thoughts on plagiarism.
Staples sheds light on the increasing use of plagiarism in order to
spread awareness and I am guessing that he wants to see its use decrease. Staples article is an easy read intended for
a general audience.
I thought the title of the article
was clever, however, I think the body of the article is lacking substance. Although this may just be an excerpt from the
full article, Staples does not really state how big of a problem plagiarism
plays in schools and offers no statistics on how many students are actually involved
in plagiarizing their papers. I do agree
that students would learn more effectively by doing their own work and that
plagiarism can create a problem in schools, but this article offers little in
the form of solutions aside from students taking online tutorials explaining
plagiarism and telling a student that if they plagiarize then they may be
kicked out of school. I find it
interesting that schools are all to forward in discussing how plagiarism may
get you kicked out of school on the very first day of class and yet some students
have to wait until half of the semester is over with in order to learn how to
correctly cite the works of others.
Staples’
friend talks about students plagiarizing and says, “I have to assume that in every
class, someone will do it” (147). Not
even many people in every class or some people in every class will do it, but
someone. Unless Staples’ friend only
teaches classes of two, this is hardly an epidemic of plagiarism. Staples suggests that “Not everyone who gets
caught knows enough about what they did to be remorseful” (147). Again, I think that if schools are insistent
on punishing people who plagiarize then they should be putting more of an
emphasis on teaching students how to correctly cite the works of others before
throwing the book at them.
