Friday, February 9, 2018

Differences in Plagiarism between Peru and the United States



When we talk about plagiarism in the U.S it can be considered a serious theme for most of the people living here, the first time that I came here I received a workshop talking about how to avoid plagiarism and why the rules against it are so strict also, we studied the consequences of doing plagiarism. One of the rules gain my attention, and it was that I could be expelled if I commit plagiarism, even if it was not intentional I would have to pass several steps to prove that it was not my fault.

 Comparing the American system with the Peruvian system I could rapidly notice the huge difference between both, in America, students are more worried about learning new things or at least do an effort to understand what the professor is saying in the lecture, however, Peruvian students are more interested in parties, drinking and that kind of stuff rather than attend to classes, maybe this could be the reason why plagiarism in Peru, and all Latinoamerica, is not considered really bad or a crime. 

Peruvian students always are trying to create new ways to do plagiarism, and it is perceived as a wise way to get a good grade, one friend told me one time that why should he study if he can get a perfect score in the test just by doing plagiarism. Homework in colleges such as papers, essays and other sorts of writing tasks are often checked by the professor in order to detect plagiarism but in Peru I remember using Wikipedia as my source and just copy and pasting what was there without even read it and the professor is not going to say nothing about it, but here it will have bad consequences. 

What really makes the difference here is the ideology of being original and not steal the work of other but creating something really unique with our effort and skills, in Peru most of the time we are surrounded by the idea of the one who is the most cunny  will be the only one who will get the most benefits and avoiding the rules of the system is a way to get it, that is one of the reasons why to do plagiarism in Peru is not such a bad thing.

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1 comment:

  1. Very interesting comparison, Manuel. Thank you! It is easy to see how quickly a student from another country could make a mistake and violate the anti-plagiarism rules when in the U.S. Great job raising the awareness of the differences!

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