Many students have trouble grasping the concept of plagiarism. I think the
problem is generated in elementary school where students are asked to do
"projects" which often entail nothing more than going to the nearest
library and copying/photocopying/tearing out the perhaps relevant passages
from an encyclopedia or magazine, or pulling it off the web, then
presenting it (according to Calvin, "in a clear plastic folder"), decorated
with cut-outs and drawings. I remember my son's grade 5 catechism course
for an entire year consisted of doing a project on Alexander Graham Bell.
Now if had been Thomas Aquinas...
When I taught in an inner city high school, the difficulty was to get many
of our students to do any homework at all, and it was painful to give the
same zero to the child who had done nothing and to the one who had
laboriously copied out a certain no. of pages from the encyclopedia (let
alone the scholarly one who had plagiarized from more than one source). One
had to get them at least to "put it in your own words" so to be able to
give them some marks. This is hardly a preparation for independent thought
and research. Of course, the same kind of plagiarism happens in high
schools in better-off areas as well. The difference is that many parents
there are militant in demanding that their children's "efforts" be rewarded
no matter what, while school boards and school administrations - and
sometimes teachers too - are often more interested in turning out good
results (that is, high marks and a large %age of graduates)than in an
accurate representation of what students have learned and achieved.
Bernadette Filotas
At 10:46 AM 10/27/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I too assumed this thread to be about student plagiarism which was certainly
>a serious problem before I retired, and had been for many years. My own
>solution was to ask so many questions in the assignment that the student
>would, with any luck, be priced out of the racket by needing a
>custom-written paper to answer them.
>
>Despite those efforts, I sometimes had the feeling that for many students
>the problem was that no one had ever explained the rules to them.
>
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