Plagiarism In America Analysis

The Faults Behind Plagiarism Studies show that students across America are slowly resorting cheating to pass their courses in both high school and college courses. Due to this increase in cheating and plagiarism many schools are working to find a solution to the problem. In “Plagiarism in America”, Dudley Erskine Devlin proposes a solution that he believes has the potential to create a major drop in the occurrence of cheating. Devlin proposes an end to plagiarism through the creation of strict rules, punishments, and the use of surveillance. Although his solution is well thought and has a great deal of accuracy behind it, the proposition has major fallacies that could hinder the growth of the American educational system. Devlin begins his proposal by stating that plagiarism has become a casual occurrence in today’s society and that many children continue to cheat after agreeing to the fact that the act is morally wrong. This concept that children continue to cheat after knowing what they had done is not entirely true though. Although there has been an increase in the

Devlin achieves this by referencing the severe system in place at the University of Central Florida and describing some of the strict regulations placed on students. Students in class at UCF are held under conditions similar to prisoners as they are not allowed many basic freedoms such as wearing hats and chewing gum. Devlin also states his belief that,” The minimum punishment should be failure of the paper and failure of the course, and subsequent cases of plagiarism should face academic probation”(105). This punishment is far too severe for an act that, as discussed before, isn’t always purposeful and could be committed accidentally. Students shouldn’t always be afraid to be kicked out of the class whenever they submit an essay and make the simple mistake of incorrectly quoting