Summary of "Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)"

Brent Staples wrote an article” Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)”. From the studied He said there is a high percentage of high school and university students cheat or plagiarize in their academic study and tend to increase every year. The reasons he points out are unlimited public information’s from the internet is very easy to access and people think that consequences of plagiarism is avoidable and some people who get caught are not even ashamed about it. Students only look to just finish their assignment as soon as possible without using their own idea and practice in their study field and that’s against the main purpose of academic education. To prevent plagiarism, academic institution take an actions to this problem by using the online-base detection to look out for plagiarism in the student’s work. Also many university use online instruction and require students to complete before they enroll. Another way is he give in class written assignment to student so he can watch how students do their work. Cheating students may face severe consequences, more likely to fail in class, lead to probation, and even ask to leave. The last point that he discusses is about new student generation that this plagiarism, copy from the internet way of thinking habit are already spread out everywhere and it will be difficult to change.

My response is....

I will have to agree with the author about plagiarism is bad for students for those only cut and paste then say that’s is their work without trying to understand the main idea of the assignment. This problem will prevent students from thinking critically and intelligently. Later on this might lead to less productivity as a negative workforce into the public.

I also have to argue with his example of a rap musician in the article which he said a new generation’s work but putting musical notes from different songs to create a new mix and claim that’s their work. This is might not be too bad at all. When we think about the old generation which only had a books in their hand to study and generated totally new idea. I am glad and appreciated their work in the past but new generation students today is surrounded by unlimited information. It seems difficult and impossible to come up with 100 percent invented idea. Those totally invented works need highly skill and very intelligent person to create. Especially, when he mentioned about high school student with a young age who do not have those requirements. We might need to think about the academic system with high level of expectation. They need to understand that not everybody is smart. Cutting and pasting from sources provided in the internet might not be the best way but that might be the only way to get work done but students should only use it properly and intelligently. I will use my experience for example about cutting and paste. When I was at the previous university I had a very difficult mathematics homework and I couldn’t solve the problem even I tried many times. So I searched for the solution in the internet and luckily I found the answers so I copied and pasted and summited the homework on time. Later on I used those questions to discuss with my teacher and review for the exam. If I didn’t copy from the internet my points would be deducted and teacher would be disappointed.