I refer to your news report entitled "Pakatan MPs want plagiarist judge removed", but plagiarism is not limited and confined to the judiciary.

In fact plagiarism is deeply entrenched in our schools, universities and finally carries over into professional life.

By unearthing this particular case of a plagiarist judge, Pakatan MPs have done a good job but they should not stop here.

That a senior judge from the court of appeal is allegedly involved would bear testimony to the rotten state of affairs among the average Malaysians.

If the said allegation of plagiarism is proven true, it must have come all the way through his career path.

By extended probability he would have done it all the way from school, to university and in his professional life.

There is no sense of guilt whatsoever because it is accepted and adopted by everybody in the educational system.

Indeed there is much more internal decay than meets the eye, as many students in local institutions of higher learning are constantly guilty of plagiarism.

By adopting the semester system, where coursework and assignments take the centre stage under the pretext of "continuous assessment", students are invariably involved in copying and pirating from online sources as well as from coursemates.

This is where the decay in morals set in. Furthermore, as continuous assessments, tests and quizzes are conducted within the classroom environment with students sitting side by side, copying thrives.

All the student needs to do is to sit closer to a slightly smarter student to score beyond his own ability. The assessment is a mockery but this scenario happens everywhere.

Semester and continuous assessment sounds very sophisticated, but it is just eyewash. The copycat culture prevails over the honesty and integrity in this system.

There is a lot of noise over the revamp of the educational system, covering very broad issues. But we can do a simple test to see what our students are doing all this while.

The higher education minister could simply go to any public and private college and university and get somebody to install a hidden camera in the examination or assessment hall before quizzes and tests are conducted.

During one of those tests and quizzes session, get the lecturer to distribute the questions and walk out of the hall for say 20 minutes.

Get a recording of the behavior of the students under examination conditions without supervision.

This is where you can witness for yourself how students start copying from one another without the slightest regard for honesty or morals.

This is also where you can safely conclude that why honesty campaigns and anti-corruption drives lead to nowhere because the moral decay starts from schooldays.

The allegation against the plagiarist judge, whether proven true or not, is just the tip of the iceberg.

When all is said and done, this particular judge is just happens to be unlucky.

He may be or may not be penalised but what about the those plagiarists who have made it into the high positions and offices?