Sunday, March 22, 2009

Schooling, creativity, and .... plagiarism?

I was absolutely intrigued by the caption of a column in The Hindu--Creativity and Education: Contradictory Impulses? So, I started reading it, given my own interests in this topic.

Well, the overall tone there seemed to be less original, and more of a convenient paraphrasing of Sir Ken Robinson's much viewed and discussed 20-minute Ted.com talk. (I have embedded it at the end of this post.)

The only "new" idea in Rajivan's column is right at the beginning about cows and amoebae.

When I reached the end, I was simply taken aback that Rajivan would outrightly use Sir Ken's anecdote about a child drawing a picture of god, without attributing the source!

I wonder if the author thought this was kosher; not in the definitions of plagiarism that I tell my students.

The author fails outrightly in trying to convey the argument about creativity and education, and instead comes across as having no original idea--perhaps an example of a lack of creativity on the author's part, on top of the plagiarism ....

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