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Geckoman
Joined: 07 Jun 2007
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 Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 7:44 pm Post subject: Korea Times Plagiarism Scandal Thread? |
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What happened to the thread about The Korea Times plagiarism scandal?
That was the most interesting discussion in a while. Most of the stuff on Dave�s is just lame.
A co-worker just told me that the author of the piece that was plagiarized posted a message on that thread and that I should check it out, but I can�t find the thread.
What happened?
Are the commemorators part of the cover-up?
Did The Korea Times bribe them into deleting the thread?
If one of you commentators deleted that thread just because, I must say, stop abusing your censorship power. Way too often a commentator will delete an interesting and engaging discussion because of some dumb reason.
Stop abusing your power!
Last edited by Geckoman on Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:15 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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RACETRAITOR
Joined: 24 Oct 2005
Location: Seoul, South Korea
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NoExplode
Joined: 15 Oct 2008
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| Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 12:52 am Post subject: |
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The first thread was deleted, the second one is locked.
Interestingly, this is all the talk among the Korean Professors at my University, and rather than it being a thing "making Korea look bad," the Professors at my school love this story, as we are a competitor to SNU.
Their thinking is that the more play this story gets, the worse SNU looks, damaging it's reputation because it has lazy, cheating students. They are of the opinion that one or two more news stories making SNU look bad will probably cause them to get downgraded from being the top University in Korea. They mentioned some other unrelated things I wasn't sure about that SNU has been screwing up lately. |
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pkang0202
Joined: 09 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 2:32 am Post subject: |
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Mr. Asad Zaman wrote me an email and asked me to post this. He is the original author of the plagiarized article.
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Someone from this group informed me about the plagiarism and also gave me a link to this discussion. It feels a bit awkward to step into a conversation between ESL teachers within a culture alien to me, even if the conversation is indirectly about me. Nonetheless, I thought I might be able to contribute some insight into some of the issues under discussion.
Mostly the conversation has been about plagiarism (although I was pleased by some direct and indirect praise of my writing). Values are relative to culture; in some, you can sit and smoke hashish all day but will get locked up if you take out a bottle of alcohol, while the reverse is true in others. Smiling at a woman is a compliment in some, but an insult in others. People who assume, either through ignorance or through an assumption of superiority, that their cultural values are absolute, are quite common. I have met many who see no conflict between a strong intolerance for polygamy in other cultures and tolerance bordering on approval for playboy type morality and marital infidelity in ones own.
Having spent the vast portion of my life in USA, I was imbued with Western academic values, and felt very strongly about the rampant cheating I saw upon my return to Pakistan --
see however
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-11-30-students-dishonesty_N.htm
for how things have changed for the worse in USA
At our university (LUMS, Lahore) many teachers from abroad felt the same way, and there was discussion of a "zero tolerance" policy, with severe and harsh punishments. Upon deeper exploration, I learned that students were imbued with an ethic of "cooperation" which overrode the no-cheating ethic. One is supposed to help others, especially those who ask for help, even if it is at personal cost. Students were prepared to risk failure, to avoid being (or appearing to be) unsympathetic. In this situation, a simple reward-punishment approach does not work.
I had several long discussions with students in which I reframed the problem in terms of the moral framework they were working in. I explained that if they helped another student understand how to solve problems (mine was a mathematical course) they were helping me do my job, and also actually helping their fellow student. However, if they gave her/him their paper to copy from, they were actually hurting by preventing him from learning the way to solve the problem. They also prevent me from accurately assessing the learning progress of my students, and interfered with effective teaching.
After this percolated through, I was able to do something which was generally considered impossible -- I gave a take home exam and there was no cheating on it. However, this is a long and painful task; one lecture on morality is not enough. Indeed, to begin such a discussion, one must first convince the students that we are on their side -- we take pride in their accomplishments and are saddened by failures. For some strange reason, students seem to think of teachers as being indifferent or hostile.
I do not mean to say that this is the solution to plagiarism in Korea. Overhead costs for implementing this solution are high, and not often feasible. Furthermore, I have no idea as to what plagiarism means, and how it could be re-engineered within the Korean cultural matrix of values. However, viewing matters in this light may help increase tolerance and compassion for others.
I had also meant to address the "anti-West" issue raised by some, but that will have to wait for another day. Briefly, my essay was originally written for a nearly 100% Muslim audience in Pakistan, and has a clear subtext, easily understood by my intended audience: traditional Islamic values are strongly family oriented, and these are under direct attack these days with promotion of hedonistic lifestyles via many media. It is clear that this subtext is changed (but I dont know to what) within a Korean context. If I was writing to a Western audience, I would state the same issues in a very different way. In some other writings, I have done so, but most of my efforts are directed towards Muslim audiences. |
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tzechuk
Joined: 20 Dec 2004
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| Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 3:18 am Post subject: |
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| pkang0202 wrote: |
Mr. Asad Zaman wrote me an email and asked me to post this. He is the original author of the plagiarized article.
| Quote: |
Someone from this group informed me about the plagiarism and also gave me a link to this discussion. It feels a bit awkward to step into a conversation between ESL teachers within a culture alien to me, even if the conversation is indirectly about me. Nonetheless, I thought I might be able to contribute some insight into some of the issues under discussion.
Mostly the conversation has been about plagiarism (although I was pleased by some direct and indirect praise of my writing). Values are relative to culture; in some, you can sit and smoke hashish all day but will get locked up if you take out a bottle of alcohol, while the reverse is true in others. Smiling at a woman is a compliment in some, but an insult in others. People who assume, either through ignorance or through an assumption of superiority, that their cultural values are absolute, are quite common. I have met many who see no conflict between a strong intolerance for polygamy in other cultures and tolerance bordering on approval for playboy type morality and marital infidelity in ones own.
Having spent the vast portion of my life in USA, I was imbued with Western academic values, and felt very strongly about the rampant cheating I saw upon my return to Pakistan --
see however
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-11-30-students-dishonesty_N.htm
for how things have changed for the worse in USA
At our university (LUMS, Lahore) many teachers from abroad felt the same way, and there was discussion of a "zero tolerance" policy, with severe and harsh punishments. Upon deeper exploration, I learned that students were imbued with an ethic of "cooperation" which overrode the no-cheating ethic. One is supposed to help others, especially those who ask for help, even if it is at personal cost. Students were prepared to risk failure, to avoid being (or appearing to be) unsympathetic. In this situation, a simple reward-punishment approach does not work.
I had several long discussions with students in which I reframed the problem in terms of the moral framework they were working in. I explained that if they helped another student understand how to solve problems (mine was a mathematical course) they were helping me do my job, and also actually helping their fellow student. However, if they gave her/him their paper to copy from, they were actually hurting by preventing him from learning the way to solve the problem. They also prevent me from accurately assessing the learning progress of my students, and interfered with effective teaching.
After this percolated through, I was able to do something which was generally considered impossible -- I gave a take home exam and there was no cheating on it. However, this is a long and painful task; one lecture on morality is not enough. Indeed, to begin such a discussion, one must first convince the students that we are on their side -- we take pride in their accomplishments and are saddened by failures. For some strange reason, students seem to think of teachers as being indifferent or hostile.
I do not mean to say that this is the solution to plagiarism in Korea. Overhead costs for implementing this solution are high, and not often feasible. Furthermore, I have no idea as to what plagiarism means, and how it could be re-engineered within the Korean cultural matrix of values. However, viewing matters in this light may help increase tolerance and compassion for others.
I had also meant to address the "anti-West" issue raised by some, but that will have to wait for another day. Briefly, my essay was originally written for a nearly 100% Muslim audience in Pakistan, and has a clear subtext, easily understood by my intended audience: traditional Islamic values are strongly family oriented, and these are under direct attack these days with promotion of hedonistic lifestyles via many media. It is clear that this subtext is changed (but I dont know to what) within a Korean context. If I was writing to a Western audience, I would state the same issues in a very different way. In some other writings, I have done so, but most of my efforts are directed towards Muslim audiences. |
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This guy is very wise. What he says is VERY TRUE, and infinitely wise.
I teach *Ethics in Communication* here and interesting, one part of their final examination was a panel discussion on this very topic - plagiarism.
I heard some very interesting viewpoints. Bear in mind that half my students in this class are from Singapore over here on exchange - it was quite an eye opener. A couple of my Korean students told me that within the Korean culture, plagiarism isn't seen as unethical.. etc. etc..
One student said that if you plagiarise, the key point to NOT consider it plagiarism is if you learn something from it. So basically, it's OK to copy other's work as long as you gain something from it.
Hmmm... I was merely the moderator, I wanted to hear them discuss this issue sensibly, throwing in a few theories here and there - consequentialist, deontonlogy, Kant, Mills, Aristotle etc. etc.. they did it beautifully. It was a great one hour discussion and much for me to learn!
Culture is a very powerful thing when it comes to giving people excuses. |
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canuckistan
Mod Team
Joined: 17 Jun 2003
Location: Training future GS competitors.....
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| Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 6:53 am Post subject: |
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This topic was initially pulled because it was not just a discussion, but began to be a witch hunt where certain posters were invading the real life of the young student with emails to her, the Korea Times, the original author, anything they could find etc etc etc and posting about it.
A high-school gang up.
This type of invasion into someone's life is harassive and completely unacceptable--we will NOT tolerate such a thing from these boards.
This topic will stay locked until everyone is very clear about the boundaries. |
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