Plagiarism and Student Responsibility

Posted by Kari Lomanno Sep 26, 2009

As a high school English teacher, I discover incidents of plagiarism every single year. And every year, it breaks my heart. How do you explain to your students that cheating not only hurts the offender but the entire educational process? Students think it's no big deal to buy an essay off the Internet or cut and paste entire passages into their paper.

This cavalier attitude students have about plagiarism speaks to a larger error in thinking that I believe many students share. They think their actions don't matter in the larger scheme of things. They don't believe what they do has a ripple effect on the rest of the world.

This week, students at the University of Alabama got an education on plagiarism and student responsibility from anthropology professor Susan D. Blum of the University of Notre Dame.

What does plagiarism have to do with anthropology, you might ask?

A great deal, according to Blum. She has written a book called My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture

She told students that they have a responsibility to use the knowledge they discover from others in a respectful way and share their own knowledge with the rest of society.

"Respect your predecessors," Blum said. "But also consider yourself a contributor to knowledge and not just a consumer."

Today's students have been raised to consume. They crave gadgets and snack food and fashion. They have been trained to want things, not substance. Blum reminded them that each paper they write contributes to a larger academic conversation.

"One of the things about academic writing is that it's a conversation," Blum said. "[It's a] a dialogue between the past, you and the future."

It was refreshing to hear that I am not the only one frustrated by the problem of plagiarism in today's educational environment. I hope the students at the University of Alabama got the message.

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