the future of plagiarism

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Wed Jun 26 10:53:03 PDT 2002


At 12:37 PM 06/26/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>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

Nah. In the same situation, after offering to help the student write his own assignments, I did the same thing.

I'm just saying that what these students do stupidly and awkwardly is pretty much what much of the "professionals" do in a much slicker way and for a different kind of reward. I'm also saying that the whole idea of originality/imitation is specific to an ideology of orginality/imitation, engendered by a specific economic system, and that the solution is not to flunk students, but to educate them about these issues. The current "definition" of plagiarism trumpeted in most college catalogues is silly, and obscures for more than it explains.

Joanna



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