December 9, 2005
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The real lessons of plagiarism
By: Dan Lilienthal
Issue date: 12/9/05 Section: Forum
Re-printed (without permission) from StudLife, the student newspaper of Washington University in St. Louis…with additional commentary by the author at the end of this post.
As an alumnus who has had personal experience with plagiarism and its consequences while a student at Wash. U., I would like to offer this candid essay to readers. The lesson I learned from my experience is two-fold: if you’re planning on plagiarizing, don’t get caught, and if your decision is hanging on the possible consequences of getting caught, simply consider the time, money and explanations to friends and family your actions will cost you.
Of course, the lessons I was supposed to learn were that my actions had been dishonest, lacked integrity and deserved punishment by failure. It was also argued that through my actions I was cheating other students. Of course, this is only true if a school is promoting the competition of students against one another for grades, and that there should be no sense of shared responsibility for students to help educate one another. During my academic integrity board meeting, I challenged the board’s assertions and their accompanying punishment, explaining that there was indeed a great deal of academic dishonesty that needed to be corrected, however, it was the lack of academic integrity in the everyday classrooms, South 40 dorm rooms and off-campus apartments where the problems were occurring. What I was referring to at the time was the widespread intellectual apathy that is the culture of higher education at Wash. U. and throughout this country. It is this apathy that creates a breeding ground for academic misdeeds such as plagiarism.
It was no surprise to learn in the article “Cheaters ‘fess up” in Student Life, published this past Monday, that nearly 40 percent of Wash. U. students have admitted to plagiarizing. This enormous fact leads us directly to the real lessons of plagiarism. The lesson to be learned is not that students who plagiarize are dishonest and lazy. Rather, the lesson is that the story we tell ourselves – the story that students, particularly those at top-ranked schools like Wash. U., are serious about their own learning and intellectual development – is a myth. For those of us who truly care about academic integrity, it is this myth that needs to be critically examined, for only then might we hope to see young adults who love to learn and who learn what they love.
By highlighting the misdeed of cheating, we should be shining an equal, if not brighter, spotlight on the conditions that are breeding apathy and acts of plagiarism in so many students. What we immediately find ourselves looking at is the central theme of education in society today. This theme is that school systems (not teachers) take away students’ natural desires to learn, creating in its place a game in which students will do whatever it takes, including cheating, to beat the system. Whereas a real education would involve students doing real work, engaging in deep discussions that are relevant to their lives and spending time developing relationships with other students and their professors that involve useful feedback, students find themselves in school systems where learning is mandated from the top down, where students are subjected to overcrowded classrooms, tested to death, made to believe grades are gods and where subjects are atomized and taught as independent from all other subjects.
An essay on this topic deserves to be concluded with solutions. The solutions, however, must come primarily from current students, and must involve a restructuring of school priorities. Faculty such as Dean Killen and researchers such as Professor McCabe will have to wait until students’ learning becomes as high a priority as things like applicant SAT scores, alumni donations, college rankings and professional research and publishing before they see the rates of plagiarism drop. In the meantime, individuals may use this essay as a conversation starter, or go ahead and put your name on top and take credit for it yourself.
Dan is an alumnus of the Class of 2003 and runs the Web site www.xanga.com/dansjournal. He can be contacted via e-mail at dan_lilienthal@yahoo.com.
For anyone interested in the type of school that would lead to students doing real and collaborative work, where they were learning what they wanted and had 0 incentive to cheat…please check out The Met Schools (click to follow the link).
Comments (6)
Thanks for your comments! I need to be reminded constantly that people are different. And what I felt today may not be what I will feel next week. Our thoughts evolve.
Very interesting article on plagarism. I also had my personal encounter with it. Next time.
I like the way you keep the discussions going. Keep up the good work! I wish I had more free time to check out the articles and websites you suggested.
very interesting post. i agree with you regarding the “widespread intellectual apathy that is the culture of higher education”–but it is everywhere, not just at Wash U. when i was both in undergrad and grad school, the culture that surrounded me was to get the grade–not the culture of learning. in essence plagiarism is that–there is not much to be learned when one is using someone elses work. i will admit that i too participated in that culture. i wanted the grade and the degree and didn’t have much time–i figure i can learn when the pressure to pass a class is not there. if is less focus placed on getting the grade in order to get into a good college, good grad school–and engaging students in matters that interest them or are relevant in their lives then maybe learning can occur. i think most of this is also an act of defiance in the students part because it is always “fun” to beat the system.
Speaking of plagerism, I saw a similar cartoon once in a National Lampoon magazine. Except there were more students copying off of one another, and the last person in the chain (from whom everyone else copied)was a boy with Downs Syndrome wearing a dress.
If I felt that scholastic apathy was a problem outside of the 18-25 demographic, I’d probably address it. But I don’t feel that it is a serious concern for most of the world. If students want to do mediocre classwork, that’s fine. They can look forward to mediocre jobs, lives, children, and funerals.
Fantastic article. I think I’ll copy it and take credit for it.
Talk to you soon. When are we going to your jazz bar?
I think that when you cheat, whether on a test in school or anyplace else, you really are just cheating yourself. At the end of the day, what matters is not the grade on the paper but whether you know that you did your best and got the most out of the experience. I honestly never understood why students would want to skip class-it’s an opportunity to learn, not just a chance to get ahead by doing the smallest amount of work possible.
I agree that our culture fosters a get ahead at whatever cost philosophy. Example being a student I heard of that didn’t want to study abroad because it might bring down her grades and keep her from future successes. Or my coworker who was convinced that someone she knew might hurt her chances for a good career by taking a couple years off to travel. Life is not just about getting ahead, people. Life is about living to the fullest. Do what you love and the money will follow, maybe not millions and millions of dollars, but isn’t being satisfied on a deeper level more important than that anyway.
As to how to promote that ideal in education…I’ll leave that to you.
~Bethany
in the next few months/years…i’ll be networking more and attempting to address your last point, how to promote that ideal in education. Outward Bound has begun to do this with Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound (http://www.elob.org)
i only half agree with the idea that cheaters are cheating themselves. I say this because many cheaters are people who are still spending a lot of their time learning. They may even be writing tons of papers, only, the learning they do and the writing they do isn’t for school or for a grade. It may just be for their own learning, or writing for a club or newspaper. Many students skip class because they don’t see class as an opportunity to learn. And while people love to bash tv, you can learn pleanty from a day at home watching the news, discovery channel, history channel, etc. And not just that…because if a person wants a career in sports or entertainment, then they can benefit from spending an entire day watching ESPN or MTV. We tend to discriminate against learning things that aren’t intellectual on the surface. One common criticism of “liberal-minded” people, is that they’re quick to close their minds to anything that isn’t “intellectual.” That’s one major criticism I have of Noam Chomsky, who is considered one of the most important “intellectuals” alive, writing and talking extensively about US foreign policy and the media, also is anti-sports. He is right to note that if people can memorize stats like they do, they are fully capable of being passionate and intelligent about politics…however, by not embracing sports for what it is, (a healthy form of entertainment and a fun way to stay in shape), he is essentially closing his mind and isolating himself from reaching out and understanding non-intellectuals.
i think people in our culture get a lot of mixed messages, which makes life difficult. i think your examples of people who passed on travelling are common. sometimes, staying put is practical, but not travelling because it might bring down grades, that’s simply a case of people being fooled by man-made illusions (see my last post for my thoughts on how human beings create illusions, some of which are pleasant, some of which lead us the wrong way).
-dan