I was writing an assignment for my English class this afternoon.
It should probably be noted that I find it almost impossibly difficult to take this class seriously.
Aside from that, I feel like I take the type of stance on most things that might be considered…askew.
So, it follows that when I’m posting something in an essay thread where twenty six other people have nearly word-for-word essays, within twenty six sub-threads that all heave the header “Article Response,” as if the same person were just posting the same thing twenty six times under different names, I get a little agitated.
When I get agitated, I tend to write things that, while fulfilling the bones of the assignment specifications, vent my frustrations.
Note: If you want good grades and teachers to like you, I do not recommend my approach.
That being said, I usually get fairly good grades…but teachers DO NOT like me.
This is the latest post in a series of those frustrated writings:
In the article It’s Not Theft, It’s Pastiche writer Christine Rosen does her best to both embrace the concepts that book writer Susan Blum puts forth in her book, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, and also point out where she thinks that Blum has given too much grace where responsibility must exist.
As one of the “Digital Natives” that the book My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture speaks of, and Ms. Rosen brings up, I absolutely believe that my generation, and the generation coming along behind me, has been raised in a culture of speed and efficiency, no matter what. Not only is plagiarism not a guilt inducing practice for us, but in fact, to take someone else’s words and use them to create something new that works in a new way, or for our specific purpose, where before they did nothing for us, is actually something that we take pride in. We have taken something relatively useless and created something useful, to our minds. When you combine attitudes like that with the “byzantine” standards which the majority of us perceive to be held by almost anyone in authority over us, and then ice the concoction with the attitude of entitlement prevalent in the culture, it’s easy to see how we would view plagiarism as a non-issue.
I think really though, that the issues of cheating and plagiarism can be summed up fairly easily as being one of cultural influence when you consider this: while I was reading the article It’s Not Theft, It’s Pastiche, which chronicles the idea that plagiarism is a necessity in a results oriented culture; then again while I was reading the article To stop cheats, colleges learn their secrets, which talks about the massive amount of students who cheat and even no longer see it as anything bad; then AGAIN while I was reading the article Why Students Who Plagiarize Get Away With Nothing which preaches the idea that students who plagiarize or cheat really gain nothing in the long term, but are simply hurting themselves by being so quick to work towards acceptance by any means they can find…this article link popped up.
Every. Single. Time.
“Study Seeks To Determine What Makes PRE-KINDERGARTENERS Successful.”
:: Drops proverbial mic ::