Plagiarism ha ha ha

My last blog was sad, so I promised the next one would be funny. Thus today I'm writing about plagiarism. HA HA HA! Here's why this is funny: The other day, a friend of mine sent me an email about her former boss, Fareed Zakaria, being suspended this week from CNN and Time Magazine because he was caught plagiarizing. She wrote, "I'm just sick!"  I felt so badly for her, because she had liked and admired Zakaria when she was an editor at Newsweek, and she truly felt sick at heart. She separated who he was to her - a very fine editor and friend who deserved her praise - - from his plagiarizing, which she found unforgivable.

But as for me, let me tell you, I just relished that he'd been caught. Hooray! What a bum! String him up! He had written an article about gun control, inserted the work of historian Jill Lapore, and never mentioned her name. He just stuck her stuff in his article with no attribution, as if he'd done the research and labored over the sentences. And really, wasn't that just piggish? Couldn't this big shot pundit have shared the spotlight just the tiniest bit by citing the name of the historian in his article? Her name is Jill with a J, Lapore (not "poor" as in poor, but "pore" as in you get it). Not so difficult to spell. And omitting her name was not merely piggish and unseemly but also absolutely unethical and absolutely wrong and something for which, at Andover, we punish students all the time.

But the reason all of this is funny is that any time I hear of plagiarism, I'm reminded of my nadir as a teacher when, ten years ago, I accused a student we'll call Samuel of plagiarizing.

Samuel was in my 10th grade English class, so he was 15 or 16 years old at the time. He was handsome, and he wore big diamond earrings, and he was a wild ride in the classroom, with ideas all over the place - insightful, funny, reckless, sometimes completely brilliant. He lit up the room a lot, but he didn't really have study skills, so my job all year was to tie him to the chair and make him discipline his thoughts. During class discussion, I had him reel in his ideas when they swam away from the literature or the conversation at hand. With his writing, the same thing: he took off splashing, and for me that meant rough waters. I had to read his sentences several times before I could work out his meaning. I could grade his papers only in the morning when I was ON, fresh and alert. Able to struggle through. So Samuel and I had many, many writing conferences. Tell me what you mean, clearly and simply, I'd say. His paper would be on the desk in front of us, riddled with my turquoise ink, and he'd start to "correct" it right there. I'd say no, stop, don't write any more on this piece of paper. Just tell me, in words, what you mean, clearly and simply.

So this is how I taught him, which is a method I call: Bludgeoning the beauty right out of him. But it needed to be done - it wasn't going to help anyone if Samuel's most sparkling ideas fizzled in the muck of confusing syntax.

Thus, when in spring term the class attacked their final big essays, on Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth ("Lily's Demise - Suicide or Accident?". "Wharton's Male Characters - Does the Novel Have a Hero?". "Anti-Semitism in the House of Mirth"--  and by the way what was I thinking assigning these topics to 10th graders? Never mind, they pulled the essays off  - ) in any event, here came Samuel's, which I stuck at the back of the pile to grade in the morning, in the quiet of our empty classroom, with a fresh cup of burning hot caffeine.

The essay was so beautiful I felt nauseous by page 2.  The argument was compelling, written in fine, strong prose enlivened here and there by stunning little turns of phrase so lucid and elegant they honored Wharton. There was no way Samuel wrote this thing. I stood up and walked in circles. I think literally I was shaking my head. I went back and underlined the gorgeous phrases. Then I called Samuel's dormitory across campus. In 6 minutes he was in the classroom. A little breathless from jogging over, and clearly wary.

I said, "Samuel, I have to say something. This essay is extraordinary. It's very, very, well done. It is not, AT ALL, consistent with your usual work, and I'm so sorry, but I have to tell you I'm worried that it's plagiarized. So now, please, be honest with me about it."

Samuel smiled. His eyes filled with tears.  "Do you really think so?" he said.

"What do you mean?" I said. "Do I really think you plagiarized? Yes. I'm sorry, but I do."

"Do you really think the essay is extraordinary?" he cried. "I'm so happy!! I worked so hard on it!"

Okay what the hell? He was overwhelmed with pride, not with shame at all. He hadn't even registered that I'd accused him of plagiarism. But there was NO WAY he could have written this essay. And now, in the face of his reaction, how could I possibly ask him to prove that he had? What kind of a monster was I?

"Samuel," I said. "I'm so proud of you, too. (Oh, ugh. But I was not coping well.) Now I need you to go back to the dorm and bring me the early drafts of the essay. Okay? Can you run on back there and bring me the drafts? I need to see them."

I think Samuel ran back to the dorm to retrieve the essay's early drafts, while I sat in sickening suspended animation awaiting proof that he'd plagiarized or that I'd wrongly accused him. But it MAY have been that Samuel actually had the drafts with him, in which case I didn't sit in suspended animation while he ran back to the dorm, and it's only been in the decade since that I've mulled, a million times, that hideous moment of my own creation in which I waited for only bad news....

He was thrilled and excited to show me the drafts, so together we read them, starting with the first. My heart sank as I read the opening incoherent thesis statement, followed by long, winding paragraphs emphasizing who knew what, which in typical Samuel fashion were a charming hurly burly  of sentences containing lovely little turns of phrase ... and there they were. There were the gorgeous phrases I'd underlined in the final draft. He hadn't plagiarized them at all. They were the marks of his artistry. In the succeeding drafts, he whittled away the surrounding confusion until his points were strong and clear and his essay was beautiful. HIS essay.

Samuel didn't demand an apology from me. He THANKED me for working him so hard in our writing conferences. I, meanwhile, was a blubbering mess: So sorry to have questioned you but I just had to check because really nothing you'd done in the past and how absolutely wonderful after all and blah blah blah. I could have crawled beneath the building.

Every year, a few of my students plagiarize. Sometimes they haven't worked on an essay, they panic the night before it's due, and quite on purpose they cheat. Usually, though, they plagiarize by mistake - they forget they're not supposed to go on the internet AT ALL; they forget to put quotes around the material they find there, or forget to add the footnote. They're not well-paid, famous journalists writing for CNN. They are young; they're just learning.

And I am just learning, too, all the time, from my students. From Samuel I learned to NEVER call a kid in for plagiarizing unless I already have proof, so there's no chance of a mistake, and the kid and I can just face the music and figure out together what went wrong.

I also learned that if my house starts burning down, what I'll race inside to rescue is a basket that contains pictures of my kids and letters from my students, including a note I received this year from Samuel. I'm writing back to him: "No: Thank YOU for everything. Love, Ms. Scott."