The cut and paste generation

Teachers voice plagiarism fears

More than half of teachers believe internet plagiarism is a serious problem among sixth-form students, a teaching union survey suggests. The 58% of 278 teachers who identified it as a problem said they thought 25% of work returned by pupils included material copied from internet sites. One teacher said a piece of work they saw still contained website adverts.

When you get a cut and paste education you can hardly complain about a cut and paste response from students. Leaving the ads in is a bit worrying though. Frankly, at this level, most of education involves plagiarism of sorts. Rewriting guff from Brodie's Notes isn't that much better than just downloading a complete essay. And, to be honest, that student is never going to actually read Paradise Lost, is he?