My cousin, a junior high science teacher, once had an Encarta article turned into him word for word. The student cut and pasted it into MS Word without even bothering to standardize the font or correct the spacing and in addition to being 10 x better than his usual writing he had cut and pasted the copyright information.
I’ve had two students who swore they didn’t know they were doing anything wrong. One actually said “but you told us we could use journal articles!” and when I explained that she was supposed to express her own opinions and views about the Fall of Rome (this was a 4 page paper for a History 101 class I taught as an adjunct) she stated “but I don’t have any opinions about it so I went with what others said!”. She was so stupid and pitiful that I raised the grade to a D- .
The other tried to bat her baby blues at me, wore a tanktop that showed both cleavage and nipples. and play the cute little deb; she evidently didn’t know that I’m gay (though if it had been Ricky Martin batting his eyes I’d still have flunked him). She appealed to the Department Head and to the Dean, both of whom upheld the “F”, and was denied further appeals. It was cut and dried- she was sneaky enough to have changed just enough of the wording to not be throw off a Google; she knew exactly what she was doing*). She was later expelled when she did the same thing in another class.
*I caught her using the software Eve 2.4 , which no school should be without. It ranked the paper as being 89% plagiarized.
“Teachers who give a lot of needless homework like term papers are not doing the students a service.”
I agree. What’s the use of developing good analytical and writing skills when you can just get really fat and sue McDonalds for discrimination instead? Self improvement is vastly overrated.
“A 14-15 year old kid needs to be outside enjoying life, not sitting inside a sterile library sweating over a paper for Ms. Anal Retentive.”
What’s that whimpering sound? Could it be the sound of a million 14-15 year olds working in Nike & Gap sweatshops in southeast Asia simultaneously weeping for you?
Research papers are an important part of learning, because they teach you how to research a subject efficiently and effectively. You learn where to look first, which information to disregard (aka - if it comes from thealienzionistjewsareputtingrightthinking americancitizensindeathcamps.com, it’s probably b.s.), and how to organize it into a cohesive format, which you could need for your future career, or maybe just posting here in your free time. Furthermore, plagiarism isn’t simply a way of getting out of doing your homework, and it isn’t just breaking a school rule. You’re stealing the fruits of someone else’s labor, and you’re breaking the law. It’s the same thing as posting a full article on the boards, which is why you can’t do it here, or taking snippets of other authors’ work for your latest book on WWII without giving the credit where it’s due. I’m glad you caught her, nineiron.
I think y’all are being too hard on Shep. After all, without students like him, where are we going to get the people to fill the roles of janitors, fry cooks, and all the other soul-killing, monotonous minimum wage jobs that keep the wheels of industry turning? I salute you, Shep Proudfoot, for valiently, nay, proudly proclaiming your intent to spend the rest of your life as a impoverished drone. Good on ya, laddie.
I was busted for plagiarizing once… in 7th grade. Boy did I feel terrible; I still do. Though back then I didn’t take things nearly as serious as I do now.
Well, thanks for posting this…I’m going to go into my basement and cry myself to sleep
Newscaster: Highschools across America were shut down by a nation wide student protest. Students left their classrooms shouting, “F. teachers! Can Google, too!” and went home for the day. Rumors abound that the protest was organized by an internet group known as the Straight Dope. Experts think it has something to do with drugs.
Such a student doesn’t deserve to enter the 10th grade. Our education system seems to graduate kids from one grade to another just because society won’t accept, say, an 18-year-old in 9th grade even if he belongs there.
High school isn’t very hard to pass. You can take a lot of advanced classes and be involved in a lot, but if you just want to scrape by, you don’t have to do an awful lot. People like this don’t try at all and don’t deserve to be seated alongside students who actually worked, if only a little, to get there.
Also, whether term papers are a good idea or not, once they have been set, it’s obviously unfair to people who have done the work to allow people to cheat.
I like the quote “This paper is both good and original. Unfortunately the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good.”
Shadez Imitation is the highest form of flattery What happened in your case?
If you have a souce you’ve lost, wouldn’t it make sense to say so? You might look like a muppet if you’ve got a lot of [Source lost, attribution in final draft]s after quotes, but surely it’s clear that would not be plagarism. Did leave quotes completely unattributed (albeit due to losing the source)? Is it clear that wouldn’t be plagarism?
Copying something verbatim, or changing the wording, is obviously plagarism. The gray areas come when copying ideas: if more essay can have one of a limited number of conclusions, it’s bound to agree with some major writer; what have you got to lose by copying the outline of his arguments… It’s a slippery slope.
As a teacher you should maintain some dignity for yourself and not express a “haha, you bastard kid, i caught you and now i’ll make you pay!” attitude by writing some immature caption like, “Teachers can Google, too.” Accept the fact that kids will cheat as part of your job and don’t get your jollies off making the kid feel like an ass on top of getting an F.
Christ on the cross, if a teacher did that to me, we’d have words with each other.
So CN you’d rather just get, what? A big red “F” and maybe “Don’t plagiarize” below it? Or just the “F”? What’s more dignified?
What exactly is wrong with letting a student feel like an ass when he’s behaved like an ass? After you explain that plagiarism will get "F"s, a student who doesn’t want to do the work and doesn’t want to behave like an ass will just not hand in a paper and take his lumps. But trying to trick a teacher into thinking he’s done the work is disrespectful to his teacher, to his classmates who did the work, to the whole idea of learning–why should he be shown far more respect than he’s showing others?
If you had words with me after I gave you an “F,” I don’t think you’d be pleased with the result of those words.
At my university, if you are caught for plagiarism, you will at a minimum fail the course (not just the paper). At a maximum, you can be placed on academic suspension or expulsion. The work that you have so easily copied and pasted into a document and placed your name on is something that another person has spent a substantial amount of time creating. I have no respect for people who choose to take the work of another and claim it as their own in an act of laziness and blatent dishonesty.
For those that plagiarize, let’s just hope I’m not the one who grades your paper!
It’s funny to joke about, but the teacher shouldn’t get really insulting with the student - doesn’t help anyone. At the same time, if he gives an F, there probably should be an explanation.
Oh, you’d have words, would you? What would those words be? “Professor, I don’t appreciate the snide comment you wrote on this term paper I stole.” Yeah, that’d go over real big.
I’d say that if you’re caught cheating in any capacity, it’s a foregone conclusion that you and your instructor are going to have “words.” If you think you can get away with copping an attitude in that situation, you are sadly deluded. I am not (currently) a teacher, but a student who tried to pull shit like that on me would not only find himself kicked out of my classroom, but I would go out of my way to see to it that said student was expelled from the school entirely.
I don’t have much respect for cheaters in general, but plagiarists are nothing miore than thieving scum, and no amount of scorn or humiliation is too great for them. I wouldn’t write anything on the paper, because I’d want the pleasure of looking them straight in the eye and saying it to their face.
What happened in your case?