Plagarism is culture not morality?

[Michael]

What if everything you learned about fighting plagiarism was doomed to failure? Computer software, threats on the syllabus, pledges of zero tolerance, honor codes — what if all the popular strategies don’t much matter? And what if all of that anger you feel — as you catch students clearly submitting work they didn’t write — is clouding your judgment and making it more difficult to promote academic integrity?

These are some of the questions raised in My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture, in which Susan D. Blum, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, considers why students so frequently violate norms that seem clear and just to their professors. The book, about to appear from Cornell University Press, is sure to be controversial because it challenges the strategies used by colleges and professors nationwide. In many ways, Blum is arguing that the current approach of higher education to plagiarism is a shock and awe strategy — dazzle students with technology and make them afraid, very afraid, of what could happen to them.

But since there isn’t a Guantanamo Bay large enough for the population that plagiarizes, Blum wants higher education to embrace more of a hearts and minds strategy in which academics consider why their students turn in papers as they do, and the logic behind those choices.

It's Culture, Not Morality (http://insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/03/myword)

This issue is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, I've always been interested in issues of 'deteriorating' standards in academia. I well remember many horror stories from my time at university - faced with the incredible ignorance, lack of education, lack of any effort, interest or self-discipline and matched by an over-riding sense of self-entitlement and a constant complaint that "the world/school isn't fair" displayed by other students. Apparently this trend has only gotten stronger over time.

Secondly, the blurring issue between "culture" and "morality" is also very interesting from a philosophical point of view. I find it interesting the way the author draws a sharp distinction here - and essentially defines "morality" as law or rule abiding, but then defines the 'problem' as one of "culture" - and offers a solution as a 'cultural' approach to teaching about the rules and how to follow them (how to act moral).

This essentially suggests that culture itself is an agency of morality and/or immorality. Any thoughts on that?

[bug]

That's interesting. I remember the big shocker of going to the first college classes and getting a syllabus with a few ways to contact the teacher, the breakdown of the grading scale, and a shockingly disproportionate page and a half of an all-caps description of the various torture methods to be used on anyone caught plagarising. I didn't know people actually even really did that--I just assumed it was a few blowers who had enough money to pay an egghead to pass the class for him while he dealt with the more important issue of the unswallowed Coronas in the mini-fridge. It put the fear of god in me when I opened up an essay about Dickens's life with "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and my teacher told me I was plagarising. I just assumed people would know that I wouldn't have claimed to be the author of that. I agree with the author of this book in the article when it comes to needing to change the punishment scale. I also don't really think it's a matter of morality. I'm sure there are arguments that it is theft, but I see it more of a pesonality defect. Al Gore and the internet...We all just kind of laugh about that--noone points and says "HALT, THIEF!" It's a sign of a personality defect. Apathy vs pride. Was that what the article was really about, creating a culture of pride in ones own achivements? I'd be more for that than a legalitstic, pinkie-removal-by exacto-knife-after-class approach. Systems of punishment seem to be less effective than systems of reward, but if you don't have any pride in what you do anyway, I suppose it's not much of a reward to hand in a paper you did yourself. My thought is that there should be less insanity and headless chicken running over plagarism in colleges, because each one of these people eventually reap what they sow. They have a character flaw, and the world does not reward people who don't care or try. Well.....ususally not.