Teachers from the US and the UK have gone wild thanking Melania Trump for being such a shining example of what plagiarism is and why the would-be First Lady’s plagiarism is oh-so-wrong. Donald Trump’s campaign set up his wife on an other-worldly lit stage to set the mood for the RNC Convention. And did she ever!

One arm of the Trump’s campaign blames the plagiarism on Hillary Clinton. Another arm blames it on “coincidence.” A third arm says the media is trying to distort the would-be First Lady’s image. Each arm is doing something different, and if the campaign is not careful, it will strangle itself.

Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort said:

‘There’s no cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech.’ ‘I mean, this is, once again, an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, how she seeks out to demean her and take her down.’

Three teachers spoke to BBC about this beautiful example of plagiarism. Begin with English teacher at Davis Middle School in Evanston, Wyoming Brad Evans. He tweeted that he was “‘jazzed” to have a “perfect video to teach my 8th graders students about plagiarism:”

‘Melania’s speech is probably the most blatant example that I have ever seen. Eighth grade students need very literal examples, and her speech is basically verbatim to Michelle Obama’s. It will help them learn absolutely what not to do in their writing. ‘I have students who try to copy and paste material from the internet all the time to pass it off as their own. ‘That speech was Michelle Obama’s intellectual property.’

Thanks, #MelaniaTrump, for giving me new material to discuss with students when we talk about plagiarism! https://t.co/BNsqc9bF7c — Bok Bok Bish (@bzbodyelectric) July 19, 2016

Then there is Dr. Declan Kavanagh, Director of Centre for Gender, Sexuality & Writing at the University of Kent, in England. He explained to BBC why Melania’s speech was such a problem:

‘It completely undercut everything else she was saying and it means people don’t trust or believe her words. ‘The proper thing to do would have been to reference Michelle’s speech and build upon it, but plagiarising is very embarrassing. ‘Part of academic practice is referencing. Students are encouraged to use other people’s ideas but to then reference them and interrogate them. ‘It would have been fine for Melania to reference Michelle’s speech and advance on her ideas. ‘But if you pass other sources off as your own you come across as robotic. You don’t want to come across as a ventriloquist’s dummy for other people’s ideas.’

https://twitter.com/Gail_Adams/status/755476367223980032

Finally, Alex Goodall of UCL’s [London, England] Chair of the Board of Examiners’ History Department told BBC Melania Trump provided:

‘[A] service for all people out there who have to teach students about the dangers of plagiarism. ‘This is a fantastic “teachable moment”. Students at university normally get caught up in academic misconduct procedures because they don’t properly understand what plagiarism is. ‘Melania’s speech offers us a graphic example of plagiarism in action, from the highest levels of American politics. ‘Melania has responded by saying that her speech came from “fragments that reflected her own thinking” which made it a success. ‘In today’s cut-and-paste digital culture, students often struggle to distinguish between citing other peoples words when they agree with them, and passing those words off as their own. ‘This case offers an intuitive demonstration of the difference. ‘Plagiarism is typically the result of stupid decisions made under intense time pressures. ‘Writing a speech for the Republican National Convention puts a bog-standard undergraduate “essay crisis” somewhat into the shade, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the choices taken by Melania’s speechwriters were not all that dissimilar to those of a panic-stricken undergrad.’

No one has cared this much about plagiarism in the history of forever. English teachers everywhere are rejoicing. — Kirsten (@kirstcobb) July 19, 2016

Look at this way, Melania Trump will go down in history, just not the way she intended.

Featured Image: Youtube Screengrab.

H/T: BBC News.