My freshmen are currently reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and my coworker - I’ll call her Melissa - and I decided to try to make it a bit more fun this year (read: less blatantly obvious test preparation). We recently gave students an assignment to write two diary entries from Boo Radley’s perspective.
I graded mine over the weekend, and found one student who cheated (we use turnitin.com, an online plagiarism checker). My student and one of her students had, word-for-word, one of the same diary entries. These entries (or, this entry, if I’m being snarky), also came from an Internet source. For the record, this Internet source is the very top result on Google if I search “Boo Radley diary entries.”
My first response was anger. Are some students so narcissistic that they think they can shirk this software specifically designed to detect this type of plagiarism? Or are they incapable of recognizing this risk and thinking about consequences?
My second response was condescending negativity. I mean, really? Melissa and I gave students this assignment so they could be creative and not have to strictly adhere to the rigorous confines of the structured paragraph they so loathe. And, really? They can’t even do THIS?
My third response was laughter. I think, if students are going to be crappy students, they should at least try harder to get away with it. I mean, the first result on Google? Come on. Dig a little.
My struggle was not a solo struggle.
This morning, during my prep period, Melissa walked into my room and asked me to come over to her room because she had “uncovered a cheating ring.”
She had post-its strewn across her desk. She motioned to them.
“So these post-its have students who cheated off each other. These ones have students who plagiarized from a web site.”
There were 14 names between the post-it notes.
And I began to wonder: Is the fact that information is so readily available to our students at fault for rendering them incapable of thinking for themselves?
I’ve long suspected this. And here is a perfectly plated piece of support for my hypothesis.
Melissa thinks it’s laziness that sparks students to cheat. This might be true, but I’d be more apt to believe it if this were a more difficult assignment that spanned more class periods and days. Like, say, a research project.
But this is an assignment that should, conceivably, take less than 30 minutes to complete. All students had to do was choose two events from the first 13 chapters and rewrite them from Boo’s perspective. It should have been an easy 30 points.
One of my coworkers - let’s call her Carrie - recently took a poll of her 10th grade English students. When asked what might motivate students to NOT cheat, 52% said stricter consequences. This is from a sample size of 75 sophomores, or 51% of her sophomores.
What would stricter consequences for plagiarism in a high school setting look like? And how could we possibly get an agreed-upon policy in place, when other subject-area teachers refuse to acknowledge this as a problem, and some even think this is an example of students cleverly “using their resources”?
My school does not have a strict policy regarding plagiarism. In fact, there is little in the student handbook that even mentions plagiarism.
More often, many student handbooks will lump plagiarism in the category of “academic integrity” without the benefit of a definition, examples, or a list of consequences.
For some students, the threat of if-you-do-this-in-college-you’ll-be-kicked-out-and-they’ll-keep-your-money-too falls on deaf ears. Giving them numerous examples of people who have been fired for cheating or plagiarizing meets the same fate. Because they are not in college. And many do not yet have jobs. The threat is too distant.
But if we aren’t going to recognize plagiarism as a major problem, especially in this digital age, then we will, as a result, also discourage students from thinking for themselves.
And that is a scary thought.
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