Is The Term Paper Dead?

Reader gyges writes in to tell us that the Washington Post has picked up a piece he wrote about cut-and-paste plagiarism: "Plagiarism today is heavily invested with morality surrounding intellectual honesty. That is laudable. But truly distinguishing plagiarism is a matter of intent. Did I mean to copy, was it accidental (a trick of memory), was it polygenesis[?] ... Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers." The author argues that in the era we're entering, schools need to rely far less on term papers in assessing students.

Comments

Re:I find opinions like this sad

[aitikin]

RTFA. It points out how, as essays keep getting added and added, eventually every sentence talking about George Washington will have been used in one paper or another, therefore, no paper will ever be non-plagiarized by TurnItIn.com's standards.

For example if I were to write a paper about Lincoln freeing the slaves, it might go something like "Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation which freed the slaves." Googling that exact phrase gives off 7 hits. Now did I plagiarize that, or was it my own work? If you go with TurnItIn's standards, I'm pretty sure that would be marked as a plagiarized phrase. Does that sound right?

Furthermore, if they know how to use Google, they could easily search that in quotes and find that exact phrase as well. Thus, term papers need to die, or at the very least become less crucial. I know I have yet to have a paper that counted for my entire grade. I would like one, but only because my university doesn't use TurnItIn or anything of the sort...yet.