Chats with the editor

Title

Language

English

Year

1940

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Fulltext

SUMMER with its heat is with us. The summer heat gives us a somnolent drowsiness conducive to loafing and indolence. And loaf The Young Citizen readers should after a long, hard grind in school. The teachers and students very well deserve a good, good rest. • • * We have noticed that . some manuscripts that have come to our· desk are not original contributions but are plagiarized works. Plagiarism is literary thievery and is punishable by law. An instance of a plagiarist contributor is Anacleto Moran of Dimasalang, Masbate, who sent us sometime ago a batch of poems, two of which were "The Clay of Youth" and "Service". These two poems are included in the Philippine High School Readers, Book One, a literature textbook for first ye a r students. Moran's sending the poems to us and signed as his own is nothing short of brazenness. Sometime ago our attention was called by one of our readers regarding the authorship of a poem "The Bamboo" which was published in The Young Citizen. From the plagiarized poems which Moran has sent us, we are inclined to doubt his a:uthorship of "The Bamboo" and of the THE YOUNG CITIZEN rest of his contributions. Moran is a thief-a literary thief. • • • Let us forget plagiarism for a while. Among the most original letters that we have received was one from Miss Sofia Ismael, a letter in the form of a poem, accompanying a bunch of poems! One of these, "Fairies in the Garden", we have featured because it is an exceptionally good piece. While we are still on the subject of letters, we would like to mention the many commendatory letters that we have received. These letters make us feel good. They should increase still more the circulation of The Young Citizen. Any one of these letters · has the soothing effect of an electic fan in our office which, without it these days, would be unbearably hot ·indeed. • • • We have received a good number of contributions for the primary graders from elementary pupils. The merit of these contriApril, 1940 butions shows that not only teachers can · write about interesting devices but pupils as well-pupils who are earnest and closely observant. These contributions also show the interest that our young readers have developed from reading The Young Citizen, and also that the material that have been published are within their grasp. This, of course, makes us happy, and we feel the more convinced that we are contributing something to the educational work in the Philippines. • * * While The Young Citizen readers loaf, perhaps bathing in cool s~reams or having joyous picnics in the sea or idling under shady bamboo groves, we perspire in the office, bothered by the summer heat. But we do not grumblen o t much, anyway-because we feel that we are doing something for the young citizens of the Commonwealth. You have our best wishes for a pleasant vacation. Goodbye.--Editor.

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