The Los Angeles Times has an interesting educators’ blog, The Homeroom, allowing teachers to raise and discuss the issues they face in the classroom. As an example, I’m posting the strand about the plagiarism problem a young teacher published and a few of the comments from other teachers. The anonymous comment telling her to “get over it” is puzzling and demonstrates not all comments are thoughtful, but many provided perspective and good advice. I agree and practice giving a “0”, major goose egg, for plagiarized papers.
Lauren McCabe writes:
As I sat at the airport last weekend, grading my students’ summer reading essays and waiting to take off, I was angry. Not because of the tardiness of my flight, but because I was looking at 15 plagiarized essays from my seniors, seniors who knew better. They had all summer to read a book and write this five-paragraph essay on any topic they wanted. After I read over two essays and saw the exact same words, sentences and paragraphs, it wasn't hard to figure out that these papers had been copied.
After talking with some of my colleagues over the weekend, I learned that plagiarism wasn’t a new concept at my school, Environmental Charter High School, and that most of the students on my list had turned in plagiarized work in the past. I began to wonder why students plagiarize. Could it really be that they were just too lazy to write their own papers? And the essay they turned in and tried to pass as their own was of very low quality. Didn’t they have respect for themselves and their abilities?
While I was venting my frustration to an administrator at my school, he offered a bit of insight into the community I teach in and he grew up in. He explained that the major battle these students are fighting every day does not necessarily come from an external source, but from within. The inferiority complex is a constant war within our students. They “dumbed down” their essays to a level so far below their actual writing abilities because they thought it would be more believable to me that way. They ran away from this challenge because they didn’t believe they could achieve on their own.
This is not to say “poor babies” or to give excuses for blatant plagiarism, but I think it is important to understand the mindsets with which our students walk into the classroom every day and ways by which we can expand those views. Pure laziness is only one possibility of many for explaining why students plagiarize, as is the inferiority complex. But until we consider all of the possibilities and stop labeling students, we will never solve the issue. Malleable intelligence, the concept of intelligence not being fixed, will be the first topic of discussion that I start off with in my next class.
Comments
This is simply immaturity, laziness and seeing if they could get away with it....
Here is what I do...I don't make a big deal about it. I just put a 0 on their papers and write, " Same as Julie's paper; 0 same as David's paper" I don't moralize, I don't lecture, I don't call their parents. It takes me 10 seconds to write it on the paper. I usually never have a plagiarism issue again.
I'm sure you gave your students the option to contact you should they run into difficulty and provided an email or phone number, so there really are no excuses for the plagiarism.
Again, in high school ,students must pass a class to move on to the next grade level , not like in middle school, which is another reason they are turning in poor quality work.
One practical thing you can do and you may already be doing this for students who have trouble structuring an essay is to write out five to seven sample topic sentences for each essay: The background sentence, thesis sentence and 3 to 5 supporting topic sentences and a concluding sentences and have them "build" the essay. This way they have a template to begin using. Santa Monica High School has a website with a paper called the "Sweet Sixteens of Good Writing" It is a helpful handout with sixteen boxes that offer tips on good writing.
Another hint, don't leave the topic wide open but give them five or six options. They still have choice but also have something concrete about which to write. Did you connect the essay to the book they were reading? This way they have to read the book to write about it in the essay.
Great job giving a summer assigment as you are way ahead of the game in knowing a little about each student and their work ethic. It also gives you information that allows you to adjust and correct what you want in your upcoming reading and essay assignments which puts you way ahead of the game. Keep it up!
Posted by: evelyn
Posted by: Anonymous
This is not your fault. It is a break down in the system. This is learned behavior that has most likely happened in the past without consequence.
In any serious academic institution, plagiarism is a serious offense. I hear you saying that the administrator, in sentiment, excused the behavior. Why didn't the administrator offer to come to your class and deal with this problem so you can focus your mind and energy on curricular and instructional issues?
I don't want to be too cynical, but I can guess at the answer. First, the system emphasizes attendance and seat time. Any serious discipline must have the possibility of suspension as its ultimate consequence. Administrators hate suspensions because it takes away from attendance and makes the school's discipline statistics look bad.
I like the advice of evelyn. Don't moralize on the issue, but absolutely don't accept plagiarism. The students will figure it out for themselves. You can focus on being the best English teacher you can be, and model professionalism to the students. Too many teachers stray the academic path in an attempt to be life coaches.
Posted by: David
The pattern of plagiarism that I've heard about is that in this internet age, the kids often have really bad process for their writing. So, you'll see a lone plagiarized sentence in a single paragraph, or you'll find that the student's work is a strange hybrid of original and plagiarized work, even when hunting down the material to plagiarize and weaving it into a coherent text must actually have been more work. They need extremely explicit instruction in how to write and how to include citations. You might want to explain to them that using citations impresses the teacher, because it demonstrates that you've done a lot of research.
Posted by: Amy P
