Plagiarism in Schools
As quoted by the recent study made by Lancaster University in UK (“Developing a better understanding of the needs of students from diverse cultural backgrounds relating to issues of plagiarism.”, 2003, http://online.northumbria.ac.uk/faculties/art/information_studies/Imri/Jiscpas/docs/external/lancsplagiarismreport.pdf ), preliminary investigation revealed the following:
Over the last 5-10 years there has been a tremendous increase in the prevalence of plagiarism at both undergraduate and graduate levels, the main reason being freely available information on the Internet.
One of the sensitive issues is that plagiarism is viewed differently in different parts of the world and there is a lack of clarity in defining what plagiarism is.
The paper then provides recent incidences of plagiarism from students of different cultural backgrounds. The reasons that the students from different cultural backgrounds gave for doing plagiarism is as follows:
Chinese: In Chinese culture, because of the reverence given to elders, it is okay to just include their writings in your paper instead of re-writing it.
Indian: This student felt that his/her English was not satisfactory to explain the point clearly enough. He/she felt that the original author’s English was better.
Greek: This student interpretation was that copying from textbooks was wrong, but that copying from the Internet was acceptable.
Spanish: This student was accused of plagiarizing although what he/she had written was apparently acceptable in Spanish academic circles. This student was actually a visiting student and he/she was not fully aware of the Universities rules for plagiarism.
African: When a Mauritian student was accused of plagiarism he was shocked as he had written as he would have done in his home institution. In Mauritian academic culture plagiarism is not considered wrong, but is widely accepted.
Although different countries view plagiarism differently, in USA, plagiarism is unacceptable. In academic world, a student could undergo severe consequences if caught.
