Opus 2016-268: Discernment Watch: “...but Some Are More Equal Than Others”

In my eighth grade history class I try to introduce students to the skills involved in research.  I force them to write a term paper.  That involves bibliography, taking notes, outlining and actually writing.  One of the biggest sections of my assignment sheet deals with plagiarism.  It is a problem from the wives of presidential candidates, civil rights icons, preachers, politicians and eighth graders.

It also seems to be a problem for school administrators. 

Each week we get a cute little online production that is supposed to be a high tech substitute for the weekly bulletin.  Usually I skip over the fluff and nonsense and get down to the actual schedule that I need to know about.  I don’t need to be reminded every week that I am awesome and that every student has built in greatness.  I already know about the tooth fairy and unicorns.

For some reason I actually read a paragraph this week and it seemed a little too polished to have been written at 5:00 A.M. before it was e-mailed to all the teachers.  So I did what I do when I have a student report that seems to good to be true.  I copied a sentence, pasted it into my Google search bar and hit the return.

It seems that what I was reading came from a study done by Harvard University.  Not only did it come from them but was being used all over the internet.  The sites I checked gave reference to Harvard.  Well and good.  Not our fearless leaders.  Not so good.  I could find no attribution to say that this was not the original work of our staff.  To mis-paraphrase Shakespeare, “Plagiarism by any other name, be it O so sweet, is still plagiarism.”

Do the students know?  Of course not.  They never see this.  Does the faculty know?  I doubt it.  I, the eternal cynic, have been ignoring these tomes for months.  Why should I expect them to pay attention?  My questions is, “How can I teach ethical behavior when my leaders refuse to follow the same standard?”  I have the same issue with teachers wearing hats in class, drinking coffee in class, chewing gum in class, using their phones in class, etc, when students are not allowed to do the same.

Call me an idealist.

How can you expect your children to be educated by people who lead in this way?

homo unius libri