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    35 views1 page

    CRL 2

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    api-438548093

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 1

    Plagiarism has become ever more controversial and blurred through the years.

    Contradicting definitions of what constitutes original work creates a problem for


    good-intentioned students trying to learn as illustrated by the article ​Students Accused
    of Cheating Return Awkwardly to a Changed Harvard​. The article helps put into context
    the ongoing debate of whether plagiarism is analogous to academic dishonesty that
    Rebecca Howard’s ​Plagiarisms, Authorships, and the Academic Death Penalty​ presents
    more in depth. She starts by highlighting the unjust assumption that plagiarism is bad by
    pointing out educational institution’s bias in accusing “an absence- of either ethics or
    knowledge- in the plagiarist” (Howard 1). The immediate association towards immorality
    and dogmatic actions taken by schools deprive an ignorant student from what she refers
    to as a “pedagogical opportunity” and oppresses a willing professor from helping. The
    pedagogical opportunity she emphasizes throughout her essay refers to a discussion
    that can be made with the student in which their motives can be addressed and their
    writing improved. This chance to understand the reasons plagiarism occurred is skipped
    altogether when an institution defaults to immediate disciplinary action. Thus, Howard
    points out the equivocation of the school itself in not acknowledging that a subset of
    plagiarism, most notably what is known as “patchwriting”, can be fundamental in the
    writing development of a student. Since it is possible that a student might not have
    intentionally plagiarized, their consequences should be measured according to their
    reasons for doing so rather than automatically follow the misconstruct that “plagiarism is
    plagiarism even if the writer is ignorant of its prohibition” (10). For example, with
    patchwriting, the intent of the student tends to be to include the knowledge of the source
    they were required by the professor to include and they fail to understand, resulting in a
    rephrasing that is too similar to the original to be counted as the student’s own work.
    The problem with the concept of “original authorship” is that all the knowledge a person
    possesses is the accumulation of all the ideas of others they have heard or read, and
    thus, the conclusions they are able to reach are by no means truly all their own in a pure
    literal sense. Howard goes on to prove how this idea has been present since
    postmodern times in which writers explained their contributions to the amount of
    knowledge available to humanity as an extended metaphor of dwarfs having a better
    view of the world when they are riding on the shoulders of giants. She adds that it was
    only in postmodern times that the inclusion of other’s work in yours became
    controversial as people wanting recognition started claiming the intellectual property of
    their own contributions and thus seeked recognition. In the end, a consensus on the
    originality of worked has been unable to be reached and she predicts the problem will
    only exacerbate with the advent of computational technology. This is why she concludes
    by offering an example of plagiarism policies that “acknowledges the complexities of the
    issue and offers guidelines for negotiating” (11). Though the example is a temporary
    solution, the imminent problem cannot remain unaddressed.

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