Doug Johnson

Most of my Head for the Edge columns, updated and edited, can be found in my latest book. Buy it and I might be able to afford a nicer nursing home one day. Thank you.

The Other Side of Plagiarism

Head for the Edge, Library Media Connection, September 2004

Here I am! Lil’ Debbie, a senior at Big Kahuna High. I may be a little over-committed. I’m taking a full load of college-prep courses; I’m on the varsity surfing team; I’m president of the Future Teachers of America Club; I’m class treasurer; and I do volunteer work on the weekends, including teaching Sunday school to little blind children in their native Hmong language. Oh yeah, I work at Mickey D’s a few hours a week because I have these unreasonable parents who expect me to pay for my car insurance, save for college, and even buy my own tongue studs. Plus there is this really cute guy in my AP Trig class on whom I’d sure like to get a better angle.

So I come home Thursday night at seven, tired from a rugged surfing practice session and I’ve got about 4 hours before I need to crash. I have some choices about how to use this time. Let’s see I can…

• Spend hours researching and paraphrasing to write this paper assigned by Mr. Fuddy-Duddy on the causes of the Crimean War. (Wasn’t this like way back with Vietnam and Desert Storm?)
• Work on the assignments in my other 5 classes which are way more interesting and valuable.
• Revise my lesson for FTA on “How to Say the Pledge of Allegiance in a Really, Really Heartfelt Way.”
• Give that cute guy in Trig a call to see if he can explain the difference between a sine and cosine to me.
• Fill in at work for my best friend who needs the night of to help her mother who is just came home from the hospital.

One time at lunch, my g-friends and I were discussing some websites that let a person download term papers. Just log on, search, download and reformat. On some sites I can even say how good a writer I am so the paper doesn’t look too good for my writing abilities. I’m thinking this “short cut” on Fuddy-Duddy’s paper would allow me to do some things that actually, like, have meaning and value?

Student plagiarism is an oft discussed topic in our profession. And we are usually pretty hard core about it. A not unusual sentiment was recently eloquently expressed by library media specialist, Clete Schirra on LM_NET: “Let’s face facts, cheating is wrong, the person has no honor. It is not the fault of anyone else if a student copies, cut and pastes, misappropriates or just plain steals another’s information, ideas or work. The people stealing work and passing it off as their own are responsible. Let’s stop coddling students and make them accountable for THEIR actions. It is an ethics matter, pure and simple.”

Clete is right, of course. Extenuating circumstances should never justify an unethical action. Lil’ Debbie in the too common (but admittedly exaggerated) scenario above has choices other than to cheat. She could talk to her teacher about extending the deadline for her paper. She could figure out on her own how the topic relates to current politics. She could take the class online from an instructor more in tune with adolescent developmental needs. Or, regretfully, she could choose to spend less time on the other, more worthwhile parts of her busy life.

Perhaps I am too sympathetic with the Lil’ Debbies of the world. Many of our students,—rich, poor and in-between—lead lives nearly as hectic and stressful as our own. When I hear and see some of the assignments teachers give today – those that ask for no originality, require no higher-level thinking skills and make no attempt to be relevant to students’ lives, I would posit that teachers and library media specialists share a portion of the blame for plagiarism. Who moi?

As educators, this is our ethical failing if our assignments do not help student learn necessary academic skills and necessary life-long skills. Research assignments that only reach Bloom’s levels of knowledge and comprehension do neither.

Part of our professional mission should be to help classroom teachers improve the quality of their research assignments (whether they want to or not). Our training and experience give us a great working knowledge of what works and what doesn’t with kids in this area. We are leaders in moving kids away from “doing research” to kids using information in order to solve problems and answer questions.

My dad used to say, “A thing not worth doing is not worth doing well.” Plagiarism is wrong, but there are situations in which it is understandable. Here’s to less ethical self-righteousness, more human compassion, and better research questions that library media specialists can help teachers learn to develop.