Academic Honesty

ACADEMIC HONESTY

By Chelsea Gee

February 6, 2013

When you attend school whether it be college or elementary school, at one point or another you will have to acknowledge the school policies. In all school policies there is something relating to academic honesty. Normally, you will have to sign a piece a paper saying you read over the academic policy and agree by the school terms. However, most students just sign and never actually take time to read what academic honestly truly means.

A lot of students would actually be surprised to know that academic honesty means more than just cheating. However, cheating is a big part of school policy so I will go over the definition for that first. Cheating is not doing your own work. Like copying friends’ answers or even helping someone by giving them your answers. When we think cheating, we think it’s copying someone else’s work, but actually it can be considered cheating if you are the one giving the answers. Even if you are just trying to be nice and help out another classmate, its wrong and you could get punished if you get caught. If you really want to help, then help them brainstorm and come up with their own ideas.

Another big subject under the academic policy is plagiarism. Although it is talked about a lot in school, usually not everyone knows what it means and you would be surprised to know that more people plagiarize than you think. Some people plagiarize and don’t even know they are doing it. The definition for plagiarism is taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as your own. A lot of students when writing a paper will research the subject they are writing about and see a line or even a paragraph out of an article they like and will copy word for word. That’s plagiarism and it is not allowed unless you put quotations around the section you copied. However, you could reword the section that you like so that it is your own work but if you got an idea or copied someone else’s work then you...