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Lack of planning school is one of the factors that favor plagiarism.
The internet makes available thousands of publications, texts, articles, books, academic papers on a wide range of topics, making this tool the largest source of accessible research. The internet is becoming the fastest way to obtain information and learn.
Research, in general, is in its essence a collection of information that aims to produce results of new information and new knowledge from the analysis, deconstruction and reconstruction of these knowledge.
With the expansion of access and use of the internet, which in general terms tends to be beneficial, there are those students who use the work, articles and texts found on the web not to guide or become aware of the content of a given topic exposed in the classroom, but use the expedient of plagiarism to copy texts or excerpts from documents that are printed and delivered to the teacher as belonging to their authorship.
It is noticeable the increase of complaints from teachers, mainly from high school and higher education, about school researches copied in the fully or partially, conveying the idea that the internet reinforces a culture of copying and pasting that until then was done in such a way rudimentary. What actually happens is that the works copied electronically are, in general, much richer in terms of information, content and images, with a relatively lower cost.
As some scholars of the subject maintain, school research presented as simple copies of texts originate from a series of factors directly linked to the teacher's performance, among which we highlight:
- Lack of teacher's pedagogical planning
- Greater clarity of procedures for performing a search
- Greater willingness of teachers to guide students towards an analytical and critical production of school work
- School research is a process, where the student needs to be assisted, guided, supported and not just evaluated after the work is finished.
Thus, the origin of the problem of the copy-and-paste methodology employed by the students is not in a “character flaw of the students”, in their “laziness of reading and summarizing" or "the ease with which one can copy and paste entire texts or excerpts and images from the Internet", but rather the inability to teacher to propose, support, monitor and participate with the student in research where the pure and simple copy does not meet the previously defined requirements on task.
What is certain is that in this process, the student is the person most harmed by plagiarism, as he ends up losing not only the right to learn the content of the topic, but also in the way used to produce such knowledge.
The issue of school plagiarism is a problem that must be faced, as students are using this fraudulent expedient earlier and earlier and the punishment is mild, reaching the maximum to have their school work canceled and there is no other type of more severe penalty to intimidate this practice that has been very disseminated.
Plagiarism goes against ethics and morals, and the only loser in this story is the student, who fails to learn by having this kind of attitude. It is true that Brazilian public education is going “badly”, but dishonesty cannot be accepted. Of course there are limitations for the construction of any school/scientific work, from the simplest, and the prior, students are able to contribute their knowledge. However, in order to perform this function, it is necessary for students to follow standards, and the texts of other authors can and should serve as a basis for the construction of the work, which should not happen are copies of the texts and works.
Orson Camargo
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Sociology and Politics from the School of Sociology and Politics of São Paulo – FESPSP
Master in Sociology from the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
Sociology - Brazil School
Source: Brazil School - https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/sociologia/ctrl-c-ctrl-v-plagio-escolar.htm
