Blog 6 by Jan

Plagiarism has been an issue highlighted throughout the education. There have been issues highlighted about how plagiarism will cause getting a fail in the subject or get into trouble from the teacher. In my opinion, plagiarizing is a choice chosen by people and the person who is plagiarizing is the only one to be blamed for and be in charge of changing themselves to either be good or keep staying to same dishonest person. Teaching morality would not help to prevent plagiarism as the article “Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal” by Stanley Fish states that “Whenever it comes up plagiarism is a hot button topic and essays about it tend to be philosophically and morally inflated. But there are really only two points to make. (1) Plagiarism is a learned sin. (2) Plagiarism is not a philosophical issue.” It basically says that if professor explains to students that plagiarism is not right students will still plagiaries. I agree with this article that it is true and through my experiences of seeing students plagiarizing it is hard to change their thoughts. People know that cheating is not right from a young age and stealing from other people is not acceptable. Parents, teachers or older people teach their children and students that they should be honest about their works but even though children can be taught not to do something, if they believe that they are not wrong and want to cheat and steal other people’s work that is their fault and problem.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/plagiarism-is-not-a-big-moral-deal/