why plagiarism is bad

Long ago, when I was teaching, one of the things that frustrated me the most was my students' inability to understand why plagiarism was bad. (And, yes, I came across that frequently. I never had to initiate formal proceedings, although I came close a couple times, but it was something I had to be vigilant for, and had to deal with on several separate occasions.) Some of them didn't understand what plagiarism was, and I said many bad and probably libelous things about the educational system o...