Cheater Cheater

I read all of that. I have no idea why. The single paragraph on different types of plagiarism and great writers who have plagiarized was nearly though provoking, if I hadn't heard those examples before or been a student.

Pretty self-righteous article.

When I was teaching information security, I literally had more than half of my students turn in heavily plagiarized papers. It was pretty easy to spot suspicious phrases, and Googling would always turn up the sources quickly.

It was actually quite overwhelming figuring out how to deal with it all - the problem was if we gave no marks for that paper, or failed all the students, it would've been pretty disastrous for the university. In the end, we had to punish the most egregious plagiarism with no marks, and give partial marks for the rest, trying to identify and give credit for the original work.

I had not one, but several students come and argue they should get their full marks back, "for fulfilling the requirements of the assignment".

A friend of mine is in the same situation you describe. She teaches for a fairly well known for-profit online school, and is in a position where she has to ignore plagiarism or lose her job.

A huge percentage of her students turn in plagiarized papers; so many that, if she were to follow the school's guidelines on them all, would result in 1/2 to 3/4 of her students failing. The teacher's pass/fail percentage is one of the criteria used to determine whether a teacher gets any more classes, and does not take into account students failed for plagiarism.

So, if she were to fail those students, she would not get any more classes to teach, thus she'd be out of a job. She's forced to keep track of who she's failed what paper for, to spread the bad grades across as many of the plagiarizers as possible, to cut down on the number that outright fail (and thus impact her).

She has gotten absolutely no support from her superiors about this issue. However, another teacher I know at the same school has a slightly milder version of the same problem, but her superiors are more supportive of her, meaning she's not always worried about her position.

It's pretty fucked up, and kind of depressing.

Here is a modest proposal.

Take some examples of varying severity. In front of the class say,

I have identified many examples of plagairism on the last assignment. Let me show you some...

Then say, "I have identified more than X cases. If you think you may have been one of them, let me know by email, and I'll let you redo the paper and ignore your first submission.

Anyone that I have identified as a plaigairist who does not offer to redo your paper will be failed. If you think you may have quoted too liberally from an unacknowledged source, I would strongly recommend playing it safe and redoing your paper.

Then on the next class come in, pick a random name out of the list of people who have not reached you yet, call that person by name, and ask him or her if he or she wishes to fail the course. After the kid says no, say, "Then are you going to be redoing your paper?" Then to the rest of the class say, "If you should redo the paper and haven't talked with me yet, I suggest doing so soon."

I believe that once expectations are clearly enough set, most of the problem will disappear fairly easily. As for the rest? I have absolutely no problem with failing cheaters as fast as possible.

re: the plagiarism in king's thesis, it might be interesting to note that this often happens among those who are gifted with speech-making. lincoln echoes so clearly the ideas of pericles in thucydides' retelling of it -- perhaps the most famous speech in america, but also the most famous speech in athens. nor in his lifetime did he ever offer the connection as a basis. even obama a couple of months ago was making that wayne gretzky quote about skating to where the puck is going to be. did he or one of his speechwriters get this from steve jobs? i don't know. but it happens all the time. harold bloom argues that all great writers are essentially rewriting other great writers (a map of misreading, etc.).

that's what's so vexing about plagiarism, esp. in teaching essays which are mostly practices in rhetoric. on the one hand, yes, intellectual honesty is very, very important. the cornerstone of reason, etc. but it's also not the only cornerstone. and arguably, it isn't what's learned first.

in any type of broad stroke, it's much smarter to borrow from others' rhetoric, and even ideas. in a way, you're giving yourself more to the ideas. e.g., imagine if all metaphors were replaced with similes. similies are more correct, have more of a 'cited' feeling, but they're also more limiting; they give themselves less to the comparison.

and also some people are better at being synthetic with their thoughts rather than analytical, scientific and precise. and frankly, this soft massaging of sources is often more important in a leader, because they are leading a group of people with more than one idea.

the problem with intellectual dishonesty is that you can lose everything. your reputation, all of the energy in your work, etc. most people don't figure this out until experiencing it first hand at some point in school. but that is because, i think, we don't properly impress upon people what can happen. if they had a better sense of the risks, i think the majority of cases would disappear. as it is, it's usually touted in some boring handout or pamphlet about an 'honor code', etc., in comic sans.

though some schools get it. the thing is to teach a student that it is always better to never give up their honor in doing the right thing, no matter how tired, etc. most students are insecure, because they don't know anything yet, so they don't really think they have much to lose. so again, you have to build up their commitment to themselves first...