I couldn’t come up with a better title myself, so I stole this one…
“Astrophil and Stella 3: Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine”
Let dainty wits cry on the sisters nine,
That, bravely mask’d, their fancies may be told;
Or, Pindar’s apes, flaunt they in phrases fine,
Enam’ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold.
Or else let them in statelier glory shine,
Ennobling newfound tropes with problems old;
Or with strange similes enrich each line,
Of herbs or beasts which Ind or Afric hold.
For me, in sooth, no Muse but one I know;
Phrases and problems from my reach do grow,
And strange things cost too dear for my poor sprites.
How then? even thus: in Stella’s face I read
What love and beauty be; then all my deed
But copying is, what in her Nature writes.
When Sir Philip Sidney wrote in the 16th century about his poem being easy to write because all he had to do was copy the love and beauty in his beloved’s face, he wasn’t exactly thinking of plagiarism. But plagiarism has been on my mind a lot given how much of it my colleagues and I come across as English teachers at Melbourne High School.
It’s a dispiriting experience as a teacher to discover that what you thought was good work, produced from inspiration and hard work on the part of the student is actually copied, or that the only ‘work’ that has gone into it has been to change a few words in each sentence to mask the fact that it has been copied. Each year that I’ve taught here at least one Year 12 student has received no marks for a SAC because he has been caught cheating. Each year a number of students at lower year levels submit work that is not their own and find themselves in a world of trouble when they get caught. Each year, I’m quite sure, students plagiarise work and ‘get away with it’ (that is, they don’t get caught, although, in a more important sense, I believe they don’t get away with it).
So what exactly is plagiarism? You should familiarise yourself with the school policy on plagiarism, but the essence of it is misrepresenting your work, making an implicit claim that the work you are submitting is yours when you have actually taken the words and/or ideas from somebody else. This is clearly a kind of lying or misrepresentation, but while teachers consider this a serious ethical breach, many students seem to see it otherwise.
The other day, my son, who is in Year 7, had a friend ask if he could copy his homework. He declined and the following day had a debate with his friend about the issue. His friend claimed that it wasn’t hurting anybody and just as he would feel comfortable breaking the speed limit on an open road if he was in a hurry, he also had no problem with copying work if he felt pressed for time or if he found it tedious or difficult; according to him, it was essentially a victimless crime. I think this is the way a lot of students see the issue, recognising that it might be a school rule, but breaking it is not much different from wearing uniform incorrectly or something. Who is really being hurt by it? Sure, it might be lying, but we tell white lies all the time, don’t we? It’s kind of like telling a lie to keep the teacher happy, because they’ll be upset if they see that you didn’t do a good job with your work. You’re really doing the teacher a favour, if you look at it that way…
It’s not just students, either. The father of a Year 12 student who memorised the introduction to an essay that his tutor had written and used it in a SAC was mystified by our decision to award the student no marks because he had plagiarised. He wrote an email defending him, saying that memorising things was exactly what students were supposed to do; it was the whole point of education.
Plagiarism has made the news outside the world of school a number of times as well. It has caused scandals in the world of poetry, both overseas and here in Australia. Plagiarism has cost people jobs in the White House, German ministers have been forced to resign, musicians have been caught copying songs from others and there are many other instances where plagiarism has had serious consequences in public life. Maybe when it happens outside of school it starts to seem a bit more serious?
So here’s the problem with plagiarism as I see it. It’s one thing to talk about the consequences if you get caught, which is certainly a factor in stopping some students from plagiarising, but I don’t think that’s enough. Most students do know the consequences but do it anyway, because they think they probably won’t get caught. It’s the same with people downloading illegal copies of movies and music. They know that it’s illegal and they could face serious fines, but they figure it’s incredibly unlikely they’ll get caught. And if you don’t personally see what you’re doing as ethically wrong and you gain something from it (whether it’s the latest Avengers movie or a good grade) then why wouldn’t you do it?
I think that viewpoint stems from a mistaken view of what you’re ‘gaining’ when it comes to plagiarism. If all you care about is collecting good grades and that’s disconnected from anything that you actually learn, then you’ve gained something by copying work that is better than you could produce yourself. But if the ‘good’ that you’re trying to obtain is an education, if you you want to develop your thinking and your skills, then it seems clear to me that plagiarism that goes undetected is actually detrimental to your learning. You’ve spurned the chance to develop your abilities by outsourcing the task to someone else. This is not an ethical argument against plagiarism, but a pragmatic one. Who do you think will do better in Year 12 exams? Someone who has worked hard to hone their skills in the preceding years, or someone who has copied their way to good grades in the preceding years?
Beyond school, we live in a rapidly changing technological landscape where the future of work will depend on creativity and the ability to think flexibly rather than possessing good memorisation skills or the ‘ability’ to look something up on Google. See, for example, this article:
Don’t want a robot to steal your job? Be creative
What are you doing to prepare yourself for this world? Being able to show you got good grades in school won’t be enough if you can’t perform the tasks that employers want you to, the ones that haven’t been lost to A.I. That good grade you got from the work you copied? Nobody actually cares. The grade is not what’s important, even if that’s what seems most important to you now. Part of the problem at this school is that we get a lot of students who have been taught to care deeply about grades as if they were the most important things in the world.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on plagiarism. Do you see it as a problem at this school or at your previous schools? What stops you from plagiarism (if anything)? Is it the fear of getting caught, or the thought that you shouldn’t do it because it’s ethically wrong, or the recognition that it’s detrimental to your learning? How about plagiarism in the wider world?
