Punchline
Teachers as plagiarists?
By Ermin Garcia Jr.
AFTER my last week’s item about the inclination of some local papers to resort to plagiarism to fill their empty editorial spaces, I had hoped that those whom we named randomly would quickly reform but to our dismay, it wasn’t to be.
The February 8 issue of Northern Mirror Newsweekly showed columnist Korina C. Inacay’s “February: The Month of Love” in her A Grain of Salt column was completely lifted this time from the blog of Mary Jane Hurley Brant’s “ Love that makes the world go around” (http://www.everywomansvoice.com/?q=node/617). Utterly shameless! Does Mr. Ruben Rivera, publisher-editor, see nothing wrong with plagiarized articles filling up his paper’s pages? Tsk-tsk.
Then, in our continued random check of past issues, the Ilocano Observer’s, Feb 5 issue had for its editorial “A Judgmental Society and Trafficing (sic)” a timely piece except that it merely copied the editorial “Trafficking and the kasambahay” published in the Sun.Star Davao newspaper on January 30, 2012 without any attribution, claiming it as its own. A case of mere oversight, editor Vernon Galletes?
The Regional Examiner’s February 5 issue showed columnist Ani Lagao’s “Stupid Mother, Stupid God” article in his Reflection column, was lifted from Fr. Arsenio C. Jesena’s “Pumbrera”( http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewArticle.asp?id=7237) posted last Sep 29,2002. Some words and situations were changed to escape detection.
I have a proposition to deans of mass communication of local colleges and universities: Form your own “Plagiarism-Watch” groups to heighten your students’ awareness towards ethical practice in journalism, and The PUNCH will post the results of your groups’ investigative research in our ONLINE edition, and space permitting, in our print edition. Do this to help the local media regain its stature of respectability.
Also, our budding journalists and PR practitioners must be taught that without ethics, there can be no professional practice worth respecting.
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TEACHERS AS PLAGIARISTS? But there is a more serious and worrisome situation about plagiarism with impunity in the province.
I was wrong to think that only media practitioners in the province have been infected by the “copy-and-paste” virus a.k.a. plagiarism. Checking on articles supposedly authored by our pubic schoolteachers in the province as published in local papers, many of these teachers had already resorted to plagiarism as well!
And the main culprit is DepEd’s requirement for such publication in order to be promoted in rank in any of the province’s school divisions.
In the Feb 5 issue of Ilocano Observer alone, three teachers unscrupulously lifted articles from various sources on the internet without any attribution and were made to appear as their own; four appeared in Northwest Sun; two in Regional Examiner’s Feb 5 issue; one in Northern Journal’s Feb 1 issue. (I will not name the teachers here and leave it to offices of the school division heads to identify them.).
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Frankly, I don’t understand DepEd’s intent for the requirement. Is the publication of the teacher’s article in a local newspaper proof of their worthiness? Or is it simply an administrative requirement to see who would go out of their way to buy space in a local paper?
If worthiness of topic or test of writing talent is the intent, they must know that local newspapers worth their salt normally do not have the luxury of space to accommodate the submitted articles that are usually parochial, insular or sectoral in nature. This being the case, a desperate teacher has little or no chance at passing an editor’s judgment and therefore, have no choice but simply opt to offer to buy advertising space.
Worse, the noted high incidence of plagiarism indicates that the school divisions don’t really care about plagiarized work submitted to them, blindly accepting certifications from publishers and editors that aspiring teachers’ articles were published. I am told that a published article merits one point in the run for promotion, but one point costs the teacher P300-P500 in paid space per article in local newspapers.
Mercifully, this DepEd’s stringent point system and requirement has provided local papers not simply another legitimate source of advertising revenue but also helped fill up pages that otherwise would have been filled by local news.
But I am told plagiarism by the public schoolteachers is not altogether the latter’s fault. Some enterprising local papers actually offer “articles” as an edge to compete for the growing market, courtesy of the teachers. In other words, without having to worry about writing their articles, the paper can provide the articles as a package to go with the advertising rate. The unsuspecting and desperate teacher is, of course, unaware that the offered article is plagiarized! (This was told our office by one teacher who wondered if we offered the same “package” being offered by others that she could avail of. She decided to go to another paper after we replied The PUNCH does not offer such “packages”).
To Schools Superintendents of Pangasinan I, Pangasinan II, Dagupan City, Alaminos City and San Carlos City and Urdaneta City: Your laxity is producing a generation of unethical breed of teachers-cum-plagiarists in whose hands the education and future of our next generation of citizens lie. If they see nothing wrong with plagiarism today, how can they teach their wards about honest work? Are these the teachers that will make K+12 work for our children? I invite the school superintendents to do a quick check on submitted published articles and I am certain they will be thoroughly shocked by what they will discover. (Simply type one whole sentence or paragraph in the Google Search box and they will be told where the articles were lifted from).
Meanwhile, DepEd should seriously consider evaluating the need for this requirement before our teachers lose all qualms to do honest work, and infect the young minds under their care with the mindset that plagiarizing is OK. It is NOT OK!
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CALAMITY BENJIE. It is reassuring to note that the Lim administration is seriously taking threats of calamities seriously.
The plan to dredge main rivers in the city is definitely the good place to start if it isn’t too late yet. Then the strict enforcement of waste segregation will go a long way. Even while the construction of a tsunami hill is another wild idea, the fact that it is being proposed indicates some people are thinking out of the box. (Were they thinking of a 300-meter wide, 5-storey mound of cement? Heaven forbid!).
I hope the City Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (CDRRMC) will continue to learn from the lessons brought by the onslaught of recent floods, landslides and tsunami that nearly wiped out communities here and overseas..
Finally, I sincerely pray the Lim administration will not exploit new ideas being proposed contra-calamity measures as potential “value engineering” to justify profiteering for “special friends” on the side.
Nothing can be more dangerous and threatening to the residents than “Calamity Benjie”.
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FLAGSHIP OF CORRUPTION. The Dagupan sanggunian panglunsod would be well advised to closely scrutinize every aspect of the budget for the proposed primary hospital for indigent Dagupeños.
I strongly suspect that the ploy to ask P10 million for the initial phase of the construction of the hospital is not only to commit the city to a dubious flagship project over the next three years but to build on a campaign fund for 2013.
Anticipating the approval of the initial P10M, the Lim administration will soon ask for another P30M initially to fund the relocation of the Juan Guadiz Elementary School that will give way to the hospital, then another P30M for the relocation of the city engineering office that will give way to the school.
In my conservative estimate, the plan to provide a 24-lying-in clinic/hospital will eventually cost the city a whooping P93 million, at the very least!
Mr. Lim labels the primary hospital project as his flagship project. It’s just another flagship for corruption.
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