My column last week - TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES THE KEYS “COPY” AND “PASTE” is one of the most revolutionary features of the modern day personal computer. With one simple click on your mouse, the highlighted text can be instantly “copied” and “pasted” on a separate document. Gone were the days when copying a text meant either writing it again by hand or typing it on another sheet of paper, thanks to the trusty typewriter. Unless you really mastered how to touch-type, retyping would probably hours of tapping your fingers on your typewriter just to copy a 300-word essay. But things have changed nowadays. Especially with the emergence of the Internet as the almost-limitless depository of knowledge and information just-about-everything, not to mention the presence of Wikipedia, research, for many of our students, nowadays seemed to be limited on “Googling” on the subject matter and then with a few clicks, “copying” and “pasting” the information on a Word document. By simply putting on a printed front cover and a folder, your “research” paper is now ready for submission. Perhaps the most frustrating experience I had as a teacher was to read papers submitted by your students that obviously have been “copied” and “pasted”. The plagiarism was made even more obvious especially when the student didn’t even bother to change the layout or even the format of the original text as found online. Despite my best efforts to teach them how to write source citations for information lifted from online sources, it seemed that many students nowadays care less about honesty in their school papers. For me, it would just be forgivable had the student really read the information he or she lifted from the Internet. But sometimes, given the incoherent organization of the paper sans logically or critical thinking, one could easily assume the student didn’t even care to learn from what he “copied” and “pasted”. Well, that was until I required my students to handwrite their papers for their class. I guess I could safely assume that somehow the “copying” and “pasting” ended. Intellectually honesty is one of the key foundations of academic research. Not only does it indicate respect for the original authors, learning without intellectual honesty defeats the value of education itself. Plain and simple, plagiarism is stealing another person’s copyright. It is simply put – cheating– copying another’s intellectual property without permission, without citing the source – be it a written research paper, a published book or even a painting or a photograph. In fact, in today’s digital age where information can be conveniently shared, plagiarism has become one of the high crimes in the academic world, so grave that it can rightly merit you an expulsion from an academic institution. But, one can rightly argue – “When can knowledge be considered original?” – that one can actually claim a personal right to it. Once I thought of these questions as mere trivial or a distraction from the morality, or lack thereof, of plagiarism. One can ask, “When is knowledge original, when one succeeding body of knowledge seems to be an imitation, a reinvention, an echo of knowledge that is already a well-accepted fact?” Didn’t the ancient Greek philosophers themselves said that learning is but a “re-cognition”, from the Latin re + cognoscere, to know again, to see once more what we already know? Didn’t the world’s greatest theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas copy many of the principles of the Greek thinker Aristotle in an attempt to create a dialogue between the pagan philosophies of the Greek with the truths of the Christian Gospel? One succeeding thinker copied another’s ideas in an attempt to create a better understanding of the world and everything around us. Unlikely may it seem, but that’s how the body of human knowledge evolves. In the process of knowing more ourselves and the world around us, we build on whatever knowledge already have to gain an even more clearer understanding of facts and things. The truth is that plagiarism is not just about originality. In fact, it is not just about intellectual honesty or the failure to put source citations on an academic paper. It is about our self-respect and our self-understanding. Plagiarism is self-deception – it deceives us from gaining a truthful understanding of the world. But apparently we have lost that sense of truthfulness. Well, how else would we explain the prevalence of plagiarism nowadays? Not even one of the country’s richest tycoons was spared when it was later on proven that his commencement speech to one of the top Catholic universities in the Philippines contained parts that were liberally lifted, in a way, “copied” and “pasted” from another person’s speech posted online? Well, many of us still remember when the speech made by Senator Vicente Sotto III in the Senate during the debates over the Reproductive Health Bill was later found out to be plagiarized from an online blog. Just recently, UP cum laude graduate and UP-NCPAG student, Mark Joseph Solis won first prize in a photo contest sponsored by the Chilean embassy in Manila – sadly, entered a “plagiarized” entry. The photo he said was taken of a seaweed farmer in Zamboanga was later discovered to be a photo of a young boy Brazil and stolen from Brazil-based entrepreneur Gregory John Smith. Who is to be blamed for this prevalence of plagiarism in our schools, in our offices, in our institutions? Is technology the reason why it has become convenient for unscrupulous persons to “steal” other people’s works? Can we all simply point our fingers at Senator Sotto or Mark Joseph Solis or those other plagiarists for the acts of dishonesty that they have committed that have caused the nation’s disgust? Quid est veritas? Pontius Pilate once asked the Christ. What is truth? In a way, the image of Pilate asking the Christ this question can best describe the reality of our times. Here was a man who had the power to pass judgments, who so obviously knew the truth, but eventually succumbed to the convenience and expediency of siding with the Jewish priests. Imagine how much he had panicked when the priests and rabbis raised a truth that appealed more to his sensibilities – “We have no king but Cesar. If you are Cesar’s friend…” In the face of two truths, he compromised one to save his political career. In the end, he lost both – his truthfulness and his integrity. Why have we lost this sense of truthfulness? Simply because we have lost the moral appetite for it. Why do we have to care for honesty in our academic papers when we have government officials who corrupt and rob our nation’s coffers for personal gain? Why would care for truthfulness and fairness in competitions, when every day we face and consume lies after lies of false advertising? Why do we have to care for honesty in our words, when we care less about it in our personal actions? Why be truthful when it is corruption, deception and dishonesty that get rewarded? What is sad about Mark Joseph Solis act of plagiarism is the context of irony in which he has committed it. An honor graduate of the country’s national university, with so much potential and good qualities, has defrauded a contest designed to honor the laudable qualities of the Filipino. But not even the theme or the purpose of the contest was enough to make Solis think twice about submitting the stolen entry. When asked for the reason why did he do it – he said he was blinded by the prize money at stake, saying it could do much to solve his family’s financial woes. But that is the sad truth about our society today. Modern man has been blinded by his wants and desires – the desire for material wants, desire to be praised or appreciated, desire to win over others, desire to be better than the rest – the desire to have more and more and care less and less. For example, politics have been driven more and more by the desire for power and control and less and less for service for others. Business enterprises lust for more and more profit without regard for the worker and the consumer. Even show business nowadays is fueled by intrigues and gossips rather than the goal of providing clean fun and entertainment. So the student – the example has been set – why worry about painstaking research when it is easier and more convenient to “copy” and “paste” an article on the Internet? Why think about intellectual honest when the country’s leaders exchange tirades and accusations about each other’s acts of graft and corruption? Why care about truthfulness when the omnipresent television media pollute their mind of false and deceiving information? Truth has its consequences. There is a price to pay for honesty. But there is an even higher price for dishonesty. The Solis incident should be more than enough to remind us that. Life cannot move on with a mere “copy” and “paste”. Most of the times, we have to think and decide by ourselves and make the right choices, decisions that are consistent with our moral values – not because of profit, convenience or expediency. In the end, it would not just be about one person’s act of plagiarism. It is, and will always show one country’s sense of truthfulness. Just thinking out loud. ### For comments and reactions, please email the writer at philipjudeacidre@yahoo.
Posted on: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 08:05:41 +0000
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