Plagiarism: Do We Need New Eyes?

In reading Rebecca Moore Howard’s Understanding “Internet Plagiarism” I couldn’t help but think that, although she raises some new and interesting viewpoints on how to handle and possibly control student plagiarism with the increasing availability to information in the form of Itext and online papers, that we still may be looking at this issue with old ideas. The expansive availability of information available to students does even more to blur the line further between plagiarism and information gathering. But if we look at this in another context, it may turn the idea of every student being a potential “criminal” out to steal every idea they get their hands on, which the present policies seem to say to us as students. We spend out entire semester, as a group, discussing themes and ideas presented by our instructors about certain authors relative to the courses we are studying. At some point, the line between what we have absorbed that is the authors words and the way we think we understand that authors words has to blur. Can we discuss, even Howard’s ideas on plagiarism, without absorbing it into our own thinking? And, doesn’t this create a sort of mini public domain within the discourse community that we have created in our classroom? Isn’t the whole idea behind the types of academic essays that our grades are based on, to simply tell the instructor that we have retained some of the ideas that we have covered? The present system of handing out plagiarism policies on the first day of every class that we take in college for four years, just reinforces to the student a mistrust that has developed between instructor and students. We feel that our instructors “assume” we are going to cheat and before we even hand in one assignment, we are going on the premise that our work is not going to be scrutinized for our absorption, but on the assumption that we have “cheated.” We have, in effect, already been accused and are trying to prove something that many students do not intentionally participate in. If we have, for instance, discussed David Jay Bolter’s ideas on writing spaces all semester, at one point, we have all agreed that this has become common knowledge within our classroom discourse community. Wouldn’t it make more sense, since we are writing papers for one reason alone, to get a grade, to worry about plagiarism if we publish? This would solve the whole “errors in citation” area that Howard discusses. Or, tack on a copywrite fee to our already ridiculous amount of student fees that would cover any misplaced or unaccounted for citations. These types of fees work for public use of music, play productions, movie theaters, etc. Why not find a system that allows our students to worry about the work instead of worrying about every thought they put onto paper? Why not create an environment that induces learning and a free exchange of ideas on all levels, including internet sources, without the mistrust and need for preemptive defensive maneuvers that the present system continues to reinforce?

~ by hannaj30 on April 19, 2008.