Teaching Woes

Plagiarism:

I'm not really that concerned with intellectual property or even worried about the long-term educational value of the essays my students write for their freshman English classes. I think what gets me ultimately about cases of plagiarism is how they almost always start with students who believe they are simply too important to actually do their work.

Case in point: this is from an email a student wrote to me about a reading journal entry that was largely copied from a Publishers Weekly review, " I realize that I used the same "ugly, unwashed murdering rapist" but either way I would have had to put murdering rapist in the entry." Interestingly, the story the student was supposed to be writing about didn't include such a figure. She had copied from a review about an entirely different text (this one did have an ugly, unwashed murdering rapist) that the author published nearly a decade after the one she was assigned. That this student's defense revolves around the idea that the phrase "ugly, unwashed murdering rapist" is unavoidable because it so perfectly captures the spirit of the text, only reinforces my sense that she never read the assigned text in the first place.

The student ends her argument with, "and I really would hate to have to retake this whole course and possibly lose my scholarship for a misunderstanding on my part." Invoking the scholarship shows a good instinct and the final bit about "the misunderstanding" might have be a canny way to accept responsibility without necessarily admitting guilt, except that her earlier argument reveals too much. She seems to be asking me to agree to see her transgression as an honest failure to meet standards rather than a dishonest attempt to pass off someone else's work as her own. However, exposing that she hasn't even read the text while arguing a point of analysis reveals a strategy that wholly revolves around getting credit for work she did not do. This isn't a mistake or a misunderstanding, it is a conscious attempt to undermine the fundamental purpose of the class.

The sin here is not that she copied, it's that she acted in bad faith. She's cheating the people of the state, accepting the opportunity that their taxes provide, but squandering it in an arrogant attempt to avoid learning anything at all.


For an even better cheater story click here: Laura K. Krishna is a Plagiarist.