Learning to Learn

Learning to Learn

The most important feature of learning is making the basic effort to discover key facts on your own. The cutting and pasting that is becoming increasingly popular since the web has made it possible to find a wide range of material has little to do with learning. Monkeys could accomplish the same thing if banana oil were spread on the keys of a computer keyboard.

Even worse, much of the cutting and pasting done by students today involves theft of material from other people. It is dishonest or even illegal in many cases. Perhaps the saddest thing is that few instructors currently teach the limits of what constitutes acceptable use of other peoples? work. Students submit papers that are almost entirely stolen without even realizing that they are violating important rules.

However, the saddest thing is that people just don?t learn from this process. Even if you do a weak job on your own, you will learn more than if you steal someone else?s work. In the l...