I was reading the editorial page of the New York Times the other day (on my iPhone for free…for now…) and ran across a few letters to the editor commenting upon a previous newspaper article about the problems which teachers and academics are having with plagiarism. In this new world with almost infinite access to everything that everyone has written, being able to catch violators of what are school ethics codes are becoming difficult to deal with.
I see this is an ongoing ethical problem for teachers and students to deal with. Consequently I gave the article and letters to the editor a cursory scan. What did get my attention was the following editorial from Stanley Fish (Stanley Fish is a professor of humanities and law at Florida International University, in Miami, and dean emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago). Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal.
Considering the fact that he is an editorial blogger for the NYT and an influential member of academia, his thesis (as far as I can gather), is that since plagiarism is so rampant it must not be a ‘real’ problem (e.g. a moral or ethical issue worthy of dealing with). I urge you to read this article (and much more importantly, read the comments to the article!). Here is an excerpt:
And if you’re a student, plagiarism will seem to be an annoying guild imposition without a persuasive rationale (who cares?); for students, learning the rules of plagiarism is worse than learning the irregular conjugations of a foreign language. It takes years, and while a knowledge of irregular verbs might conceivably come in handy if you travel, knowledge of what is and is not plagiarism in this or that professional practice is not something that will be of very much use to you unless you end up becoming a member of the profession yourself. It follows that students who never quite get the concept right are by and large not committing a crime; they are just failing to become acclimated to the conventions of the little insular world they have, often through no choice of their own, wandered into. It’s no big moral deal; which doesn’t mean, I hasten to add, that plagiarism shouldn’t be punished — if you’re in our house, you’ve got to play by our rules — just that what you’re punishing is a breach of disciplinary decorum, not a breach of the moral universe.
This article is replete with a lot of undefended assertions about the nature of plagiarism, and even in this regard, this is a sloppy article (notwithstanding the topics and how he dealt with it).
I found that most of the commenter’s had thoughtful and cogent perspectives to bring to bear with his thesis. The thing which amazed me was that all of the commenter’s (along with the author, Mr. Fish) looked at this solely from the perspective of life in academia. Nobody considered for an instant that these sorts of sloppy and unethical actions have real consequences in the ‘real world’. I thought that this was the paramount perspective if only because all of the students being alluded to (as ‘not getting’ plagiarism as a ‘real’ problem) are being set up by the academic institutions to fall mightily with the notion that the ‘real world’ is that relativistic.
As a net result, this little experience considering the viewpoints of academics reminded me of my last bout of college (only a few years ago) where as a 50-something adult, I was quite surprised by the arrogance of some of them (certainly not all, there are some teachers and professors I had the chance to meet and study under who I actually revere!).
If only as a joke, I was considering copying Mr. Fish’s whole piece in toto. Unfortunately I am too old to subscribe to these sorts of relativist, post-modern attitudes…
To those students who are so inclined- plagerize all you want. The rest of us will have the last laugh when you absolutely have to come up with something on your own. This topic came up at an appropriate time for me.
Back in Jr. High School I was considered one of the better writers in school. But I worked really hard at it. We had a book that was published every year called "Red Feather Writings" and the best stories, poems etc were selected for publication. The best of these recieved some kind of award.
I was dumbfounded when a couple of incredible poems knocked me out of first place. One of them was written by a very studious and focused girl whom I had a lot of respect for and pegged as having a lot of integrity (even though she would have nothing to do with me). Her writing acumen seemed to come out of the blue and for the longest time I assumed that because I worked so hard at this and this girl could just pull something like this out of thin air when she needed it I must not be very talented. This kind of haunted me for a long time.
Fast forward to a few months ago. I'm cleaning out the attic and run across a box of school stuff my mom saved and returned to me not long ago. In it was a copy of "Red Feather Writings". And reading it was fascinating. And then I ran across that "incredible" piece of work. And realized it was plagerized! I can't say for sure but it seems likely a few of the other pieces probably ended up there the same way. Fortunately my self doubt about my writing skills had evaporated by the time I left high school (thank you Mr. Phillips!). But plagerism does have implications for school kids.
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