sThe news has been full of stories of atheletes who cheat. Lance Armstrong goes on Oprah and admits that he's been lying when he was denying. Another PED scandal seems about to consume Alex Rodriguez. What's interesting is that one thread of the discourse says: in a competitive world, you do whatever you can to get ahead, or even survive. Supposedly, that's what's going to be happening even more today, given the shaky status of the middle class economy.
CQ Researcher just published a really comprehensive article on the state of cheating and plagiarism in secondary and higher education today. In the wake of so many academic scandals, questions arise as to how much cheating is done, how seriously is it taken, and what are the root causes of the "epidemic" of the past few decades. A lot of interesting opinions are offered in the piece, and while they might suggest more about those giving the opinions than anything else, the article should provoke some interesting discussions among those who care about things like integrity and honesty.
Where is the blame placed?
1. Technology. It's easier to cheat using one's smartphone, and it's easy to copy and paste other people's work found on the internet. A few issues come up with this, though. First of all, as I tell my students, if it's easy for you to find it on the internet, it's even easier for me. Not because I'm smarter than you, or more net-savvy (though at least one of these is probably true), but because I don't have to search for ideas to steal: all I have to do is type in a phrase I'm pretty sure you didn't really write, and there's the stuff you're trying to pass off as yours. Second, an interesting cultural dynamic is at work: the idea of "remixing" is such a key part of our popular culture that students in some cases think that this is what is meant by research. It's our job as educators to make them understand the difference between what a DJ does -- which includes in most cases paying royalties for song samples -- and what they do when they don't acknowledge where their "samples" come from.
2. No Child Left Behind. The laws that connected federal funding of public schools to student performance on standardized testing take a lot of flak for creating a system where teachers end up teaching to the test rather than teaching material to make sure students really understand it. The increased use of standardized testing also encourages schools to cheat, which they do. It's not just about the kids. When millions of dollars are at stake, some principals and adminstrators will do whatever it takes. And if they operate in the same kind of culture of fear that "everyone else" is doing it too, they pay the price for being honest just as minor league baseball players who never cheat but never make it to the pros are screwed out of opportunities by those who were willing to cheat in order to get into the Show. I certainly don't believe in teaching to the test, and I'm inclined to accept the current research that indicates that there are too many problems with using standardized testing to make their use as a measurement of student progress mandated by law. (To say nothing of the fact that there is one key group that benefits greatly from such laws: the publishers of the standardized tests and to a lesser degree private test-prep service companies.)
3. The overall "culture of greed" that many people tend to blame Reagan on. Now, I'm not a supporter of Reagan's policies, but I think there's a lot of truth in the classic Bob Goldthwait line that blaming Ronald Reagan for the problems of this country is like blaming Ronald McDonald when you get a bad cheeseburger. It's not simply the President, but the overall set of neocon values, the "greed is good" values that led to the savings and loan scandals of the late eighties and to the collapse of the US economy in 2008. With a utilitarian approach to education, students began to consider courses in terms of how they would help them secure a very well-paying job. The MBA became the most sought-after degree. Knowledge for the sake of learning has become frowned upon. (I can still recall my uncle, a nurse practitioner, rhetorically asking, what the hell do you do with a degree in Sociology? Learn a trade!) We must keep in mind that a Bachelor's degree is for this era what a high school diploma was before the boomers started going to college. Thus the value of that degree is decreased, even as costs have skyrocketed.
4. More specifically, the relatively lax response to cheating allows it to continue. While Harvard has sued students over plagiarism and dishonesty, not all schools or professors take the time to "bust" their students. As the article notes, professors don't necessarily have the incentive to do it. One professor states that he was turned down for a raise because his student evaluations were low. Why were they low? Because he was tough on cheaters and plagiarists. Students also have a pretty different undertstanding of what actually constitues plagiarism, but it's our job to teach them that defintion. It's one of the reasons I'm adamant about explaining this to my students.
There's a lot to chew on in the article; it discusses earlier cases of plagiarism, and of course, such a term is very historically specific. Are all my ideas mine and mine alone? Of course not, and the notion of an original author is also a fairly new development, with copyright laws following suit. But there's no question that we must continue to engage the students and faculty AND administrators AND public officials AND parents (where applicable -- college students are supposedly adults) in order to reduce the cheating culture.
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