Attribution

Ken, I had always seen that little bit of doggerel attributed to Nash, and several of the sites about his life list it as being by him. But I suppose Parker could have said it first. (She's still the one to whom the "Men don't make passes/at girls who wear glasses" line is attributed. [and I would add? Those men who don't make passes because of the glasses? They're dumbasses.])

Anyway. That's not a bad segue (and, no, it is NOT "segway," as I have seen some people spell it) into my minirant of the day.

I assign short papers in one of my classes. I give fairly detailed instructions, including, "Don't plagiarize."

I still had two partially-plagiarized papers, and is my habit, those papers received a 0. One of the chaps (because in this case, it was - two guys) accepted his zero without comment. The other one wasn't present to get his paper back on the day I handed them back, and he came to me wondering why the online grade posting had a "0" for him. As I looked for his paper (I have far too many stacks of papers left over from students who skip class on the days I hand papers back), I explained to him my policy.

"But I cited the works I got that stuff from!" he protested. Yes, I responded, but you copied the stuff directly. You need to put it in your own words.

"I didn't know that" he complained. I reiterated my policy, including a recount of the official university policy.

Eventually he accepted the 0 - but honestly, how many college juniors don't know that directly quoting paragraphs and paragraphs out of a work - even if you attribute it - is plagiarism?

(He's not one of "our" majors, I hasten to add. "Our" majors would have been disabused of the notion that that behavior was OK by one of the other faculty they had before me.)

Really, I think more and more that learning how to do research - and how to do it correctly - is becoming a lost art. One of our graduates, who worked briefly as office-help, complained that in her son's elementary grade school, the kids were doing "reports" by copying articles word for word out of an encyclopedia. She said: "They're teaching them to do something that's wrong! I explained to my son why he shouldn't do that and he said, 'but the teachers tell us we have to do it that way.'" She went and complained to the superintendent but I don't know if anything came of it.