What the article doesn't include is Premier Klein's reaction, which was
"Big deal!" The University of Athabasca, the distance learning facility
where he is enrolled, claims to have investigated and determined that
the plagiarism was inadvertant and no further action will be taken.
Klein was a reporter in Calgary for many years before he became involved
in politics. What reporter doesn't understand the need for
attribution!!! Further, this was not the first university level course
he's ever taken and certainly not the first time he's heard that one has
to cite sources.
Local reaction is divided between outrage at both the act and the
reaction, and dismissiveness which says that we should be lauding his
efforts to upgrade and not being such nitpickers. It's probably not
hard to tell from this message which side I come down on, but I find
this profoundly frustrating. I spend many hours, year after year,
developing and teaching lessons to address this issue, and then the
students see this sort of high profile example and say, "See, Mrs.
Bedry, in the real world no one really cares if we just copy and paste."
If I were a student at that unversity, I think I might be tempted to
see if they were as tolerant of an average student, who doesn't hold the
purse strings to the province's education dollars, who "accidentally"
plagiarised 5 out of 12 pages of a course paper.
Whew! I feel better already for getting that off my chest. Forgive the
rant.
Donna Bedry
Librarian, MLIS
Highwood High School
High River, AB T1V 1S1
403-652-55500 x309
bedryd@fsd38.ab.ca
>>> Laura Pearle <lpearle@PCS-NYC.ORG> 6/4/2004 9:50:21 AM >>>
If you haven't heard about this "scandal" by now, check out
http://tinyurl.com/ys7at. Alberta's Premier, Ralph Klein, plagiarized
part
of an essay for his masters degree. It's a good object lesson for our
students that no matter how important/successful they are, they still
need
to cite their sources.
Laura Pearle
Head Librarian
Gladys Brooks Library
Professional Children's School
lpearle@pcs-nyc.org
"I must judge for myself, but how can I judge, how can any man judge,
unless his mind has been opened and enlarged by reading?"- John Adams
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