"Whole idea of trust but verify". To what extent do you agree with this "idea" as a feasible solution to curb academic dishonesty in your country?

Honour codes and plagiarism-detection softwares work in 2 ways. Honour codes teach students the importance of not plagiarising and encourage them to act when they see or hear about cheating. It is a softer approach compared to plagiarism-detection softwares where students are required to submit their work for checking. However, as mentioned, students "will always be 2 generations ahead of teachers" in terms of the use of such technology, hence the use of both methods will make it more feasible to curb academic dishonesty in Singapore. In addition, students are tech-savvy and getting around such softwares might not be a problem for them, therefore the importance of adopting both methods.

On the contrary, the idea of the human aspect works only when it touches the heart of the students. For instance, students may feel that they are being trusted to not plagiarise, hence by doing so they'll be betraying the establishment's trust, instilling in the student a sense of guilt. However, by checking their work for plagiarism, the most important aspect of trust is gone. Thus, the "verify" defeats the whole purpose of "trust". In Singapore, many students avoid plagiarism due to the fear of plagiarism checks. Some, as mentioned in the passage, use their superior technological knowledge to find ways to cheat the system. Thus, when the "trust but verify" system is used, its effect is essentially the same as just implementing a pure "verify" system.

In conclusion, the whole idea of “trust but verify” should be scrapped. Since verification softwares are still used to conduct checks on the students’ assignments on the pretence of “trust”, the point of “trust” is basically non-existent. Checks are still on-going despite the agreement of “trust”, so what’s the purpose of such an idea? We might as well just use “verify”.

Tu Guang, Jasmine, Amanda, Wenyu 09S06H