I can understand a 6 year old being confused. They (maybe) aren't old enough to grasp that actually composing something like a poem is the hard part. At that age, memorizing and writing it down can seem like an impressive feat all by itself, possibly even more impressive than the composing part. All the more true for a kid under the circumstances described (challenges with English due to immigrating, etc).
With an adult, though...I'd think they'd understand the concept of taking credit for someone else's work being not ok.
I'm not fan of the way intellectual property law works (in particular the way it is shoehorned into a free market system which only works efficiently on scarce goods with non-zero marginal cost, which IP is not), but still. This isn't really about intellectual property per se. It's still wrong to claim you came up with things for which the copyright is long expired or never existed. It is dishonest, and it is cheating.
This article presents an interesting childhood misunderstanding, and a misunderstanding by adults of how a child might think (I tend to think the teacher was rather cruel), and then spins it as if the child's point of view is sophisticated enough to be a valid adult view. But it obviously isn't.
As I understand the story, it wasn't really about "taking credit". The kid did not deny the poem was from a book, they just didn't understand it wasn't supposed to be.
It was probably more a case of misunderstanding expectations. Some tradition of education have a large emphasis on knowledge and memorization, while others have more emphasis on personal creativity.
With an adult, though...I'd think they'd understand the concept of taking credit for someone else's work being not ok.
I'm not fan of the way intellectual property law works (in particular the way it is shoehorned into a free market system which only works efficiently on scarce goods with non-zero marginal cost, which IP is not), but still. This isn't really about intellectual property per se. It's still wrong to claim you came up with things for which the copyright is long expired or never existed. It is dishonest, and it is cheating.
This article presents an interesting childhood misunderstanding, and a misunderstanding by adults of how a child might think (I tend to think the teacher was rather cruel), and then spins it as if the child's point of view is sophisticated enough to be a valid adult view. But it obviously isn't.