by Donna Swagerty Shreve
I am typing up my aunt’s memoir and certain sections are reaching out to me as they remind me of similar incidents in my life. Probably we have had this happen to us or know someone who was unfortunate enough to experience it. Below is Elsie’s story:
During the sixth grade, an unfortunate incident occurred. For some reason our regular teacher was away, we had a young substitute teacher. For English we were to write poems. Somehow that intrigued me. I became very excited and started right in. The words just came to me as though someone were dictating, the verses just rolled out. It was a very strange experience. It was in some sort of Edgar A. Guest style. That was the only style I knew. Instinctively I just knew it was well done. We turned the work in on Friday. I had to wait over the weekend to see what my grade would be. On Monday each person’s work was passed out to the rightful owner, except mine. I was asked to come to her desk. She said, “You copied that.” I was not prepared for that. There was no way to disprove her accusation and she wouldn’t accept the poem as mine. I was so outraged, humiliated and discouraged. The poems had been written in class so I had not had an opportunity to share it with my parents. Now when I needed to share my predicament with them, for some reason, which I cannot remember, they were occupied with some other matter. By the time they were free, I didn’t care to go into it. Instead I destroyed the poem that had caused me so much pain. I just wanted the cause of my extreme disappointment out of the way. Many times since I have wished that I had not been so rash because I have no way of knowing if it was so good that one should have accused me of copying it.
My incident happened my first year in college in Freshman English. The topic for our composition was “What is Truth.” I felt rather smug as I had had a similar type of essay in my high school English taught by Richard Dokey. He had taught us that topic was really an opinion rather than a hard truth. I fired up and wrote quite an essay about the opinions of various philosophers on the essence of truth. I handed my work of art in and waited for the expected praise. When the papers were returned, I had received a grade of D. I was horrified. I waited until after class and went up to the professor. I questioned my grade and he said plagiarism would not be tolerated. I asked if I could bring my sources that I had used to write my essay. He agreed to meet with me the following week.
I gathered up Marcus Aurelius, Socrates and several other well- known philosophers that I just happened to have at my disposal. I had asked Johnathan Pearce, my high school senior English teacher for a summer reading list and he gave me quite a challenging group of suggested readings. I took my essay to Mr. Pearce and asked for his opinion before I returned to my college professor. He carefully read through my writing and found several grammatical errors and awkward wordings. He concentrated on my writing but not so much on what I thought as my brilliant points on the subject of “Truth.”
I was no longer so righteous about my misinterpreted work. I returned to the college professor with a stack of paperback books that I had used as a reference. He went through them a bit and then changed my grade to a B-. I was still not happy but at least he was no longer accusing me of cheating. I had to admit I had a ways to go on improving my writing in general.
Years later I now was in the position of being the teacher. I remembered my own experience of being accused of plagiarism and wanted to be so careful not to repeat the mistake that was done to me. When plagiarism became rampant during the writing of a required seventh grade research paper, I decided I needed to really teach what plagiarism was and how to avoid it. The internet was becoming more available and I informed the class that there were five known sites, at that time, that helped a teacher or reader prove plagiarism. Supposedly one could type in a paragraph and this site would give the source. I saw that this shared tidbit sobered up a few students but more buy-in was needed by more students.
I realized the concept of plagiarism was vague to most. I have a feeling many thought if they just change a few words a piece was now theirs. I handed out a paragraph on some topic straight from the World Book Encyclopedia which most every classroom contained. Now you cannot even give them away. I had each student go through the passage and underline every word that was not familiar to them. Then they were to circle every word that they might know but would not usually use on their own. As a class we went through a few words that were not well known and gave definitions and came up with synonyms. After we had done enough vocabulary, everyone was then to take turns telling a classmate, sitting next to them, what was in the information in that paragraph using their own words. Once that was done, the information was theirs and they could rewrite the information in their own words. The process was long and more involved than most students would be willing to do but hopefully it got across what plagiarism was and how to get around it.
I do remember a time when a student was suspected of blatantly copying some piece of work. He readily admitted it and the discussion became one about the loss of trust and how it takes extra effort to come back from someone losing trust in other person. I do so hope I never accused a student of cheating when it was not the case. I tried to use a more indirect approach for something the student might consider if cheating was a possibility. I can now appreciate both sides of this dilemma but I so hope I caused no intended harm in all of my years of teaching.
1090 words
8/11/2020
Swagerty-Aldrich Family Web Site 