April 2, 2008.  It's one of those situations that comes up more often than I would like – an obvious, clear-cut case of plagiarism by one of my students.  The essay was better than anything this student could write; it was better than any of my students could produce, containing phrases with which few of them would even be familiar.  Does the student think I am too dumb to notice?

Though lacking quotation marks, the essay had footnotes that referenced websites.  I decided to start by checking how much the student had copied from these sources.  To my surprise, nothing in her paper was from these sources.  That was because the footnotes themselves had been copied from the article that she cut and pasted and then delivered as her own work.  Now, who is dumb?

Furthermore, the existence of the plagiarized footnotes made tracking the copied article easier.  I googled a reference to a legal case cited in a footnote and – presto – I was looking at what the student had lifted, word for word, from a website.  It was no longer a question of how much of the paper the student had written.  She hadn't written any of it.

I do not take plagiarism in the classroom lightly, even when students rephrase sources and fail to acknowledge that the they got the ideas from someplace else.  Since they all get a handout and a short lecture on their obligation to give credit for ideas as well as words, they know better.  When plagiarism is as blatant as this case, it is obviously intentional – as dishonest as copying answers on a test.  As I tell my students, plagiarism is a triple offense:  it is a combination of theft, fraud, and lying.

Last night after class, I confronted the student with the evidence.  She did not – most likely only because she could not, given what I had collected as proof – deny either the fact of plagiarism or her intention.  I informed her that she would fail the course and that, in accordance with college policy, I would file a report of the incident with the Academic Integrity Committee.  Of course, she has the right to appeal, but she probably won't, given that it's an open-and-shut case.

I'll probably never see this student again.  However, I sent her on her way with this comment:  "I never like having to deal with cases such as this because they depress me.  I look upon the teacher-student relationship as one of trust.  Students trust me to be fair, to give them my best efforts, to tell them the truth – and I try very hard to keep my side of the bargain.  I, in turn, trust students to do their own work and not to lie to me or try to deceive me.  It hurts when students betray that trust.  You've hurt yourself, but you hurt me too."  I could have added that she hurts other students as well because every such incident eats away at the atmosphere of openness and honesty that should prevail in an academic community.  However, I didn't bother.  I could tell from her expression and her manner that she didn't care.

I suspect that she learned nothing from this experience.  She thinks only of herself – and will continue to lie and cheat and deceive to get where she wants to go.  She may even get there, but, deep down inside, she will have no pride of accomplishment if she does.  In the final analysis, I feel more pity than anger toward such individuals.

April 6, 2008.  In connection with the above, the latest issue of The Week magazine reports that students at the University of Texas have drawn up an honor code in which the pledge not to plagiarize.  The code was copied from one prepared by Brigham Young University, which itself was copied from one at Clemson University.  Good grief!

On another topic:  I'm beginning to learn that some of my friends have opinions that are almost directly opposite to my own.  We usually don't discuss current events, but I've been talking with them lately about ideas for my Grumbles book, and that has brought up some controversial issues.  I suppose I'm more open-minded than people think I am because I still consider these people friends and honorable individuals, even though I'm beginning to suspect that they arrived here from some other planet.

I'll give just one example, though it's more a pattern than a specific issue.  One of these fellows defends everything on the grounds that he looks at the "big picture."  This is his method of refuting all views about a particular present situation.  For example, when I expressed my view that Bush has been a bad president, he declared that Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Truman suffered from periods of immense unpopularity during their presidencies but have been judged by history to have been good presidents.  He surmises that history will judge Bush favorably, and he meets any argument to the contrary with the assertion that we cannot know until we see the "big picture" historically – say, fifty years from now.

He has a similar response to my assertion that the economy is in dire straits.  The argument is essentially that the economy will get better eventually because it always has.  He points to times that were worse than now and again asserts that we can't assess the current situation until we see the "big picture," which won't come into focus for five or ten years.  I've tried this argument:  "Suppose your kids are constantly in trouble and are driving you crazy.  Does it help to know that 'historically' kids have always gotten into trouble and that some have gotten into worse trouble than your kids are in?  Does it relieve you any to know that, twenty years from now, these kids will be grown up, will have moved out if the house, and will – with any kind of luck – have straightened themselves out?"

I cannot grasp the motives behind the "big picture" approach.  It seems to me that cockeyed optimism based on the premise that everything will eventually come out OK is either an attempt to escape from unpleasant specific realities in the present or a rationalization for not doing anything.  It's a variation on fatalism:  "No matter what we do, what is going to happen will happen."

Even though the premises are true, the logic of the "big picture" argument are false.  Yes, other presidents have been unpopular, and public opinion has turned out to be wrong.  That is not proof that public opinion is wrong this time, if only because Bush is not Lincoln or Roosevelt or Truman.  I say, "Refute my evidence if you can, but don't try to wriggle out of it with false analogies."  It's also true that eventually the economy always does bounce back after economic crises, but that doesn't prove that there's no reason to be concerned now or that we can just sit around waiting for it to get better (presumably all by itself).

I'm finding a lot of people who are justifying errant nonsense on the basis of the historical/big picture hypothesis.  They argue:  There's no need to be concerned about dirty politics because politics has always been a dirty game.  There's no justification for criticizing anything that the younger generation does because the older gerneration has always complained about the younger generation.  We shouldn't be concerned about symptoms of moral decline because morality goes in historical cycles.  We should shrug off any abuses of technology because, overall, technology has always improved our lives.  Are these logical reasons to accept and ignore dirty politics, youthful follow, immorality, and technological abuse?

I need to do an essay on this topic.

April 11, 2008.  Is it time to put away the red pens and shift from purposeful sloth to full-time sloth?  As the semester winds down, I have 14 students left out of 30, two of these have virtually put themselves on inactive status (having fallen far behind on assignments), and half of the remaining dozen are at risk of getting a "D" or "F."  Although I've done everything short of throwing a temper tantrum, they still cannot distinguish its/it's, than/then, their/there, and other common words that one would think they would have mastered back in eighth grade.  One individual persists in writing thier, no matter how often I correct it.  They cannot recognize or write sentences; they either write fragments or go to the opposite extreme and run thoughts together.  It isn't just grammar; it's that they seem to have no idea of what constitutes a complete thought or where one thought stops and another begins.  Essay structure and development?  Forget it.  I might as well be trying to teach them quantum physics.  One cannot convey the logic of of essay development to people whose logic circuits are unplugged.  One sometimes wonders whether they have logic curcuits at all.

I don't blame myself.  I'm not a perfect teacher, but I've been more successful in the past – and I'm not senile yet.  I'm still able to muster the old enthusiasm in the classroom, even with this singularly unmotivated group.  I know that they are the problem.

I cannot figure out why, and all the answers are depressing when I try to do so.  Is it that our educational system has slipped even further and faster than I thought so that these high school graduates are unprepared to do even eighth-grade work.  Are they merely lazy and spoiled?  Do they expect to be given a college degree just as they were given a high school diploma, with little or no effort?  Do they care?  Or are they just going through the motions in the hope that someday somebody will hand them the piece of paper that everyone tells them they need to get a decent job?  Is it all of the above in a toxic combination of ignorance, indifference, and laziness?

Since I have always grumbled about my students, friends have often asked me in the past why I voluntarily continue to teach part-time for negligible pay, which I don't need and which I could easily match, if I had to, by putting in a few hours a week at a less-demanding part-time job.  I have replied that there are always a few students who are worth the effort – not brilliant individuals who probably don't need my help anyway but people who are determined to learn as much as they can grasp.  They may be severely challenged, may even have learning disabilities, but they are at least rising to meet the challenge.  It is immensely gratifying to help them, even when I know that it is only one small step and that many more challenges lie ahead.

Their numbers are diminishing.  More and more, I sense that my classroom is being populated by sloths who want neither to learn nor to work.  They want to be given the tools for work and life on the proverbial silver platter.  I'm tired of delivering the bad news, by flunking them, that life doesn't work that way.  Indeed, I don't fail them; they fail themselves.  I'm a teacher, so I'm fulfilled when my students show that they are learning something; in fact, it's almost enough to know that they are willing to learn.  When they fail because they they are too apathetic to even want to learn, I begin not to care – and then it's time to step aside, to let someone or something else shake them into reality.