So, J, you think that I should not have been bothered by the freshman who presented me, when I was teaching, with John Rawls' Two Concepts of Rules, offered as his own term paper? (I flunked him for class.) jks
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I am not sure I've written this before, but here it is again. I had terrible luck with English classes. After I took a freshman comp class at a community college, it turned out not to satisfy the state college requirement. So I took another one for state college. On this round half the grade depended on the term paper the other half on class writing assignments and the final. Okay, we were handed out a list of books to write the term paper on. I didn't like the look of any of them and tried to get the prof to okay a collection of plays (Theater of the Absurd). He said no, pick something on the list. So, I picked some foreign policy book on the cold war by Dennis Brogan (now evidently Sir Dennis, I think--maybe it was somebody else, can't remember).
I read it, and hated it as I knew I probably would, since it gave some ground to the USSR, and some criticism of the US, but not nearly enough in either direction for my taste. So, I set about ripping Sir Dennis a new asshole---or at least my very best effort at nineteen.
After the final essay was handed in, the prof handed back the term papers and mine had a note that said, `No grade! See me!'. So I went the next day and met with him. He accused me of plagiarizing the paper, on the basis that it was too good to be written by me. How do you prove you didn't plagiarize? We argued for about twenty minutes and I tried to demonstrate that I knew the paper and all the arguments and could defend it because I had written it. No good. He just didn't believe it. So instead of A or B, he gave me a C as a compromise since I had gotten an A on the final. In other words, he just threw it out anyway. Nice huh? I decided after that, English professors had their head up their asses.
Since I was in Art, plagiarism is pretty much an expected and necessary part of learning, and part of the work in general. On the other hand, in writing, especially on current events or on art in those days, I rarely read anything I liked as much as my own opinion, so I it never occurred to me to copy somebody else.
Anyway, the real problem is that there is no opportunity to write as a student without having the threat of failure over you're head, and that threat alone makes it almost impossible to learn how to write. So the solution is to have writing labs where any sort of practice goes, especially a loose sort of plagiarism---putting it in your own words. But then that sounds too elementary and easy so it is stigmatized as remedial. But writing takes practice. A huge amount of practice. In fact its like art, no amount of practice is enough.
Chuck Grimes