Skier wrote:
"Anyone else have some ideas on how too much information can be damaging to a child's growth?"
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that the huge volume of available information makes it much easier for a student to plagiarise when writing an essay, especially from those websites dedicated to just this.
When I was studying, there was no web and all of our work was researched in the library. It was much trickier to plagiarise as the lecturers knew the lit pretty well and could spot it a mile away, and in the event that one was caught, it meant instant failure for that subject. One time, my girlfriend was looking through one of my draughts and picked up a new word, which she went on to use in her essay. Sure enough, when the essays were being marked, my lecturer pulled me up and made a few polite enquiries about how much I had contributed to my girlfriend's work. Serious shit for one word.
These days, I am a teacher (private), and I am just sickened how casually my students plagiarise from the web or 'essay resources' for their schoolwork. It's like, 'The information's there, why shouldn't I use it?' Absolutely no thinking required.
Who knows, maybe it's because of the collapse of the Russian educational system, which used to be so strong (in certain ways). How are things in this regard in the West?
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