Elitist? I didn't say students were stupid, I said they were for the most part incapable of original work as undergraduates. I do not think this is a fatal condition -- just the normal condition of post-secondary consciousness in the U.S. The point of college is to make them aware of their shortcomings and to help them overcome it. Whether that can happen has a lot to do with why students attend college and what kind of instruction they run into. My son, for example, took a freshman composition class in which every assignment consisted of summarizing a piece of work. This, I suppose, avoids the problem of plagiarism AND originality.
If she has concrete arguments to make about "intellectual property" outside of capitalism, I'd be interested in hearing them.
>I question whether this woman has ever run into a student who has
>intellectually impoverished him or herself by plagiarizing.
I have. A Chinese student who insisted on plagiarizing everything he turned in to me. I took him aside and told him I would be glad to help him with each and every assignment if he would only try to work through his fear/difficulty with English. He declined and he failed the class.
> Instead,
>she
>makes the term encompass so much that she erases very important
>distinctions between students and scholars who gratefully acknowledge
>that
>"the creation of new knowledge" is a collective endeavor and those few
>who
>cheat themselves (and coast by on the labor of others) by copying words
>they do not understand.
Sorry. 90% of normal research is plagiarism that is artfully disguised to look like learned commentary. Students just aren't quite "professional" enough to make that trick work.
>I thought that Marxists scholars were supposed
>to
>be committed to democratizing education, not to facilitating the
>superficial acquisition of the trappings of education without the
>accompanying understanding of what they have "learned."
>
>And, by the way, does she really believe that the banking model of
>education is the norm in 99% of the classrooms? I would like to see
>this
>imaginary "statistic" backed up with real evidence.
I am all for understanding and consciousness in education. I have seen very few examples of it either in my own education or in that of my children. I think that teaching students how to plagiarize--honestly--and pointing out how much of what passes for research and normative "thought" is nothing more than an example of plagiarism--can ultimately help them figure out the difference between professional scams and conscious critical thought.
I am also wondering why you sent this reply? Do you agree with this woman and find it more polite to use her words rather than your own?
Joanna