The Sacramento Bee runs a series of articles on Fridays for and by teens called sidetracks (www.myspace.com/sacbeesidetracks). In April, three teens commented on plagiarism and how much easier and more prevalent it has become with the Internet. The focus was on writing assignments where something was due and the student either copied information verbatim from someplace or did not quote or provide a reference that the writing (ideas) were influenced by an external source. I have a couple of reactions to the things said in the article.
First, let me be clear that plagiarism is not a good thing, but there is a formality to what is being suggested that may not really be necessary in this day and age. My thought is that almost everything that is to be written as opinion has been influenced by some external source or party. If you take the time to del.icio.us your bookmarks you are providing anyone with the energy to do so the capability to see where you are being influenced on the Internet. For items of fact, I do understand why it is a good thing for a reader to know where you are getting your facts. Otherwise, the words being written should just be considered opinion. For example, I may provide some references in my blog from time to time, but I think that everyone reading this should consider what I write to be opinion for the most part.
Second, let me talk a little about a service called turnitin. (www.turnitin.com). This is a service that schools (or individuals I suppose) can sign up for that will rate any paper submitted as to the level of influence that the paper has had from external sources. So, for kids who simply cut and paste text from a website and do not attribute the text to the website, they will be “caught” by the school. I am not sure what the consequence will be in all cases, but I find myself disliking the idea. I am sure it is very attractive to many schools and teachers. it allows them to exert control over a situation which is difficult to control. However, I don’t believe that the assessment of the information provided by the paper should be colored so much by where the information came from, but more along the lines of whether it is good information. Should students in this generation be rated on “how they think” or on “how they get the job done”? I think at some point, all humans come to the realization that they have transitioned from being uninformed about something, to being informed about something. When they are informed, no matter how it happened, they can be expected to have an opinion that is valuable to someone who is uninformed.
Again, if you treat most information as opinion, then the respect you give an opinion will correlate to the respect you have for the individual who provided the information. Let me consider the information in the Sacramento Bee that I am speaking about. If I met the teenage author of part of the article in a social context and she volunteered the same information I read in the Bee, would I give the information more or less merit? Something about being printed in a newspaper provides the information (and thus the individual) with more credibility. Personally, if the teenager seemed “mature” to me, I would probably have equal respect for the information if she were just telling me about it. However, if she appeared “immature” then i would have less respect for the information. I suppose this is just natural.
Let me bring this back to the service provided by turnitin. So, if the information was plagiarized, I would fully expect a school to slap the kid on the wrist and give he or she a poor grade. However, if I were the student, I would be annoyed by this. Is the information correct, credible, etc. or not? Was it just a “mistake” of forgetting to list a source, or was i trying to pass the information off as original thought or worse, original data? Schools do not have time to consider the motivation of the student, so in this case it would not matter to them. The consequence is still the same. If the paper is a 100% copy of another paper, then it is clear that this is a case of being lazy. However, most of the other cases are likely as not to be something that should be evaluated on the merits of the information. Of course, this is “just my opinion”.
