Re: Plagiarism

[Diane Durbin <dianed@TENET.EDU>]

With my third posting on this subject I think I am finally spelling it
correctly.  Anyhow, I got a private message from Mel Roseman regarding my
first posting and I hope he won't mind if I share a comment he made.  He
pointed out that kids are surrounded by "plagiarism" and possibly don't
connect it with wrongdoing.  How many parents and teachers illegally copy
videotapes, audiotapes, etc?  I don't know about you, but when I point
out copyright violations to teachers they get really mad at me.

Also, some of my heavy researchers are teachers doing research for papers
their kids have to do.  Sometimes they even ask me to find the material
for them.  The other day I walked in from lunch to find a teacher
printing indiscriminately.  He had a pile of SIRS articles at least two
inches thick.  He wasn't reading the articles before printing and some of
them had nothing to do with the topic he was researching.  Also, he
failed to read any directions at the bottom of the screen and was hitting
keys fairly violently - said it was because he was in a hurry because he
was at lunch and had a class in 5 minutes.  Also, he didn't read
directions on printing (3 workstations on a printer, and it takes a
minute or so to start printing) and we had one long article printed
several times because he kept hitting print.  I asked him why he was
doing his kid's research.  He said it was because she is afraid of
computers.  The usual answer is that the kid doesn't have time.  I will
say that this is often true, especially when it is a top kid who takes
lots of honors classes and is involved in lots of activities.  And I
would submit that there is something wrong with priorities or planning or
something when students are asked to do research and literally are not
given time to do it.  I am aware of teachers who give assignments and
purposely don't allow time - they expect the kids to go to the public
library at night.  Those are kids whose parents do the work.  I had a
teacher friend whose elementary age daughter was up til midnight every
night doing her honors work - and the mother was always in the library
pulling the books.  Now is that hogwash or what?