Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for January 25, 2013

Lazy because she did not even try to be smart and cheat with effort. Like so many kids her age. Bring back the flogging in public schools.

Pretty sure it was stupid. If she wasn’t just lazy and made sure to modify it just enough to make it look like she wrote it, that wouldn’t be stupid? When you’re cheating, you’re really only cheating yourself.

Successful cheating is probably much more work than just doing the work in the first place. And doing the work now, Holly, will help you do it better and faster in the future, when you’ll be called on to do other research work.

It’s not just kids her age, it is college students, too. Take a read at this essay on the US Naval Academy.http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2013/01/diversity-thursday_24.html

My take is they cheat out of anger more than laziness. They resent much of it as pointless make work. But it’s the perfect training for the corporate world.

Was Ms. Wingit a Holly in school?

Cheating IS getting easier at the college level due to so many classes being online. Even though the teachers must put time limits on the tests, they are generous enough that there is plenty of time to look most answers up. And then there are the teachers that figure that it’s just easier to go through the test the week before and let everyone write down the topic for each question on the test for them to study from (aka give the answers the week before the test). I think this is a symptom of the teachers being too overworked/not comp’d for their invested time, they’re more likely to continue getting more people signing up for classes if they pass a higher amount of people.

Hey, if Alex Haley could get away with it, why shouldn’t she?

Ms Wingit you were doing fine until your last sentence, now Holly has hope of more plagiarism. Holly all you need to do is change the wording of the author but still cite the author.

oh no Holly you don’t get to use that ruse!!!

On a second look at this comic, I realize Ms. WIngit probably IS used to Holly’s attitude, and has been trying to instill better attitudes and work ethics in some of her students for as long as she has been teaching.

Stupid? Lazy? How about just plain WRONG!

Holly has never done anything smart in this comic. What makes the teacher think she is smart?

@BartJ385 & Comicsssfan: I had the delight of learning from the incomparable Judy Wenger who is the inspiration for Ms Wingit and I can say that she really IS there for the kids and she did talk that way. Admittedly she is an exceptional instructor, but certainly not the only one.

Holly, quit while you’re ahead.

I think a fitting outcome would be to send Holly up against someone, for instance the real author, to discuss the implications of the paper.