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"They Won’t Write The Songs
And they won’t design the products. Or author the books. Or develop significant new ideas. Not when the culture in which they’re living thinks it’s okay to copy. And that’s the cultural issue/problem being reported over on the BBC today (Link) and it’s something about which I’ve also expressed concern. From the short report:
Many of the new generation of students raised on the internet see nothing wrong with copying other people’s work, says Professor Sally Brown.
If I had to guess I’d say we’ll have a creativity peek in the short term as artists/musicians/writers/designers use the tools now available to them to do some interesting things. But after that, if there’s no change in the Copy Culture, I expect a long slide into Boring. So stock up on exciting, innovative stuff now." (Link to post)
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This is from a designer, a techno-savvy artist who has an eye for social change -- and he seems to me, usually, to be a fairly optimistic guy. And he's expecting a "long slide into Boring" if things go on as they are in regards to the "copy culture"??
Who's to blame if our students don't understand plagiarism? You've got one guess.
I see instructors gloss over this all the time -- passing out an 'academic ethical standards agreement' and having their students sign that they 'get it' without ever explaining what the hell it means. In my library we push the importance of citing sources constantly -- but it isn't enough. If this is a 'copy-paste' cultural problem, we've got a real challenge on our hands -- even as such noble causes as Creative Commons encourages borrowing and sharing (without explicit cautions?). I heard one student tell a teacher "but it isn't like stealing, it's just words." Just words, but valueless words? How can anyone born after 1975 not understand the importance of giving props to those you sample from?
What am I missing here? I want to read the reBang post as a knee-jerk, reactionary response -- and I don't agree that we're on the long slide, ultimately, toward Boring Culture... but I do think he makes a good point. We've just gotta work harder to impress the importance of originality in arts and in scholarship.
That, or we have to be willing to let our current academic values go through a serious mutation, if not an extinction.
{{But, hey, wait a minute... Look at this post. The interpretation of this story is my own, but the links are the citations. This medium is teaching us to use props and samples, citations and references in new ways altogther -- and just because it's new doesn't mean it's not legit. 2 legit 2 quit!}}
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By the by, check out some of Sven's (of reBang) ideas in a previous post (link).
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Weather: a moderate "5" on the UV index.
6 comments:
You're right. It's a pain to figure out whether something's actually been plagiarized, but it's the teacher's responsibility to address it, starting in the second grade. I used to literally check my students' research paper bibliograhies, and if it didn't match up or make any sense, they failed. That said, I ACTIVELY helped them learn how to do research beforehand and how to outline, make notes, etc., so plagiarism didn't result from (as it might in some instances) the students simply not knowing what they were doing.
And it's not like plagiarism hasn't been around for hundreds of years. Major artists have always been copied by minor ones. People still set up easels in museums and try to make paintings that look like whatever painting they're copying, saying it's how you "learn." And passers-by just ooh and ah at how well the thing's been reproduced. Talk about boring. But people still make are, good and bad, as it's always been. Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting.
Liz
"Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting."
I think the upsetting bit is the rate at which a copy-culture attitude is developing, and the ease with which it can make use of copy copy paste tools. Or, to put it another way:
"Anonymous said...
You're right. It's a pain to figure out whether something's actually been plagiarized, but it's the teacher's responsibility to address it, starting in the second grade. I used to literally check my students' research paper bibliograhies, and if it didn't match up or make any sense, they failed. That said, I ACTIVELY helped them learn how to do research beforehand and how to outline, make notes, etc., so plagiarism didn't result from (as it might in some instances) the students simply not knowing what they were doing.
And it's not like plagiarism hasn't been around for hundreds of years. Major artists have always been copied by minor ones. People still set up easels in museums and try to make paintings that look like whatever painting they're copying, saying it's how you "learn." And passers-by just ooh and ah at how well the thing's been reproduced. Talk about boring. But people still make are, good and bad, as it's always been. Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting.
You're right. It's a pain to figure out whether something's actually been plagiarized, but it's the teacher's responsibility to address it, starting in the second grade. I used to literally check my students' research paper bibliograhies, and if it didn't match up or make any sense, they failed. That said, I ACTIVELY helped them learn how to do research beforehand and how to outline, make notes, etc., so plagiarism didn't result from (as it might in some instances) the students simply not knowing what they were doing.
And it's not like plagiarism hasn't been around for hundreds of years. Major artists have always been copied by minor ones. People still set up easels in museums and try to make paintings that look like whatever painting they're copying, saying it's how you "learn." And passers-by just ooh and ah at how well the thing's been reproduced. Talk about boring. But people still make are, good and bad, as it's always been. Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting.
You're right. It's a pain to figure out whether something's actually been plagiarized, but it's the teacher's responsibility to address it, starting in the second grade. I used to literally check my students' research paper bibliograhies, and if it didn't match up or make any sense, they failed. That said, I ACTIVELY helped them learn how to do research beforehand and how to outline, make notes, etc., so plagiarism didn't result from (as it might in some instances) the students simply not knowing what they were doing.
And it's not like plagiarism hasn't been around for hundreds of years. Major artists have always been copied by minor ones. People still set up easels in museums and try to make paintings that look like whatever painting they're copying, saying it's how you "learn." And passers-by just ooh and ah at how well the thing's been reproduced. Talk about boring. But people still make are, good and bad, as it's always been. Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting.
You're right. It's a pain to figure out whether something's actually been plagiarized, but it's the teacher's responsibility to address it, starting in the second grade. I used to literally check my students' research paper bibliograhies, and if it didn't match up or make any sense, they failed. That said, I ACTIVELY helped them learn how to do research beforehand and how to outline, make notes, etc., so plagiarism didn't result from (as it might in some instances) the students simply not knowing what they were doing.
And it's not like plagiarism hasn't been around for hundreds of years. Major artists have always been copied by minor ones. People still set up easels in museums and try to make paintings that look like whatever painting they're copying, saying it's how you "learn." And passers-by just ooh and ah at how well the thing's been reproduced. Talk about boring. But people still make are, good and bad, as it's always been. Unoriginal thought has co-existed with original thought since, well, people have been thinking. That ain't nothing new, or even that upsetting."
Even if it's not a sea-change (which it is), it's going to get peskier than ever b4 -- especially on the 'academic' side more than the 'art' side.
WE
Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that it wasn't a problem. Just that it's not a *new* problem and there are more people responsible for it than the people doing it.
Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that it wasn't a problem. Just that it's not a *new* problem and there are more people responsible for it than the people doing the copying. Still, though, I think probably people who have a copy-paste attitude are hurting themselves, and, if they keep on after they've been exposed to the "right" way of doing things, that's a choice, and they've chosen not to think. They know it as well as we do. It's hard to imagine anything real they'll gain by doing it, when it comes to fending for themselves after school is out. People either want to think or they don't. Know what I'm saying?
Good Wednesdays.
-eliz.
oops, sorry for the double-posting thing there...
Sven Johnson has a similar view to yours (I think) -- you might check his post about this at ReBang.
I'm not so sure anymore that this copy-culture attitude represents a real threat to "society" -- and I agree with you that the folks living in a copy-culture mindset are doing the most harm to themselves. Naturally I still wonder what we (educators) can do to help a less-copy-and-more-create culture come up in our schools. I don't think it's a good idea to throw the whole thing away (to just throw out the attitude and tools affiliated with the p2p / sampling / copy-left / etc. set)... but finding positive ways to turn it so that our students learn the value of Thinking for Themselves is going to be tough... Don't you think?
W
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