Plagiarism Essay

729 Words3 Pages
In the article "School Cheating Scandal Tests a Town's Values," written by Jodi Wilgoren, the primary issue is plagiarism. Plagiarism is considered to be a serious issue, because based on research that both myself and others have conducted, it is reasonable to believe that the majority of society's younger generations have begun to interpret plagiarism as a very minor offense. I believe it has actually deteriorated to a degree to where the very way in which people view plagiarism and its severity is gradually becoming more weak and distorted. Wilgoren's article demonstrated many prime and valid examples. In the article, many students at a high school chose to cheat on their Biology projects, and after receiving a zero on them after the teacher discovered they were plagiarized, many students and their parents complained after the score had devastated their final grades. After the teacher adamantly refused to change the scores, the parents of the students chose to complain to the school board, "insisting the students did not realize what they were doing was wrong" (par.18). This exemplifies the utter misconceptions of the severity of plagiarism, given that the students in question were Sophomores in high school and should have been educated on what qualifies as plagiarism, along with its consequences. Even if the students were taught anything regarding plagiarism, the certainly did not understand its definition; as shown when student and their parents stated they had "thought the admonition was against copying from previous students' papers, not taking simple descriptions from research material" (par.18). Clearly, this demonstrates that although they may have been slightly introduced to the concept of plagiarism, they failed to realize it was not limited to cheating in school in the form of copying another student's work, and that it did have ramifications, and
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