Plagiarism

I read stories like <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0302/p12s01-legn.html">this</a> quite often complaining about the Internet and plagiarism. Truthfully, as bad as it may sound, I can understand why students do it. That all powerful grade and college degree are pretty powerful anymore. This just means parents need to work harder to instill that right and wrong in their children so they won't do these kinds of things.<br />n<!–more–><br />nWhat really makes it hard to teach your children that plagiarism is wrong is when you have teachers demand that all work be copied from the book word for word. My oldest daughter is in 7th grade and she has more than one teacher that will mark an answer wrong on homework if it varies by a single punctuation mark or capitalized letter from what is in the book. When we confronted the teachers about our concerns about teaching the children that plagiarism is all right the responses varied from, it is school policy (it isn't), it makes it easier to grade, or that is what they are required to do in high school so they might as well learn it now. Do you have any idea how hard it is to teach a child that plagiarism is wrong when their teachers tell them it's right? We're still fighting that battle and someday maybe we will win before she gets penalized for it, I hope.<br />n<br />n<b>If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research. Wilson Mizner</b>