This semester, more than ever, I am dealing with a
plague—plagiarism. This rampant disease is infecting educational institutions
all over the country. So far this semester alone, I have had to report
seven students to Academic Affairs due to the blatant plagiarism they have
committed in their work. The lack of academic integrity is
disheartening. While the Internet does make it all so tempting, the
students should have enough integrity and enough value in their education that
they would want to do their own work—to learn something and to show that
they are capable. It’s easy to blame the Internet, but this has been
happening for years. I remember when I was completing my student teaching
experience in a small town in Indiana over twelve years ago, my eighth-grade
students were completing a little research project to do on an explorer.
One student’s paper was 100% copied from Encarta, back when CD-ROMs were
the bees’ knees for finding information. The student denied it, of
course, and his mother supported the lie. She shouted at me saying, “I
stayed up all night working with my son on this!” But when we showed her
that the Encarta entry matched her son’s paper word-for-word, I said, “It
doesn’t take that long to copy and paste, you should have gotten more
sleep.” Snarky, I know, but we both felt she deserved it, as does anyone
else wasting our time with forged papers when we have plenty of legitimate ones
to grade.
One of the students I confronted this week
regarding her plagiarized paper denied it right up until I showed her the
123helpme.com paper, from which she got 67% of her copied and pasted text.
The irony was that this didn't actually "help her" in the end
since she got caught. Given that she now has to start all over and write
a new piece, while also being put on a “watch list” of sorts for cheaters, the
student acknowledged that “No, it didn’t help.” Lesson learned…or is it?
As another student mentioned, if she hadn't gotten caught, it would have
helped after all. Every day, students try to find a way to beat the system,
seeking out creative ways to cheat and just not get caught. Some students
work harder at cheating than they would if they were to actually do the work on
their own. Talk about irony.
On a brighter note, my students who are
doing their own work are learning so much. They are growing by leaps and
bounds as readers, writers, critical thinkers, as students, and as human
beings. Those are the students I am proud of. Any old Joe Schmoe
can copy and paste from the Internet; a real student does his or her own work,
looking for true success. Whichever path a student chooses—that of
cheater or champion—it becomes clear what that student is made of.
I had a fulfilling moment just today with one of
these students who chooses champion. Her work is getting so good that it
could easily be misconstrued as too sophisticated and the product of
plagiarism, but it isn’t. I’ve seen this girl grow as a writer and
critical analyst over the last several weeks, and it is evident that she is
applying what she has learned to better her work. I decided to pull her
aside to let her know how proud and impressed I am at her improvement.
She thanked me and actually said that it was nice that someone acknowledged
it. She said that another professor had questioned her writing not long
ago, assuming she had cheated because it was good. I’m glad that I could
give this student the validation she was apparently looking for, but in the end
it was I who thanked her, because I so appreciate an honest,
hard-working student who has integrity and cares for what we teachers are
trying to do—help them!
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