At the end of the semester, Timothy had a 70 average, C-, the barest minimum to get credit for the class. We had two assignments to go: an online literature discussion that required students to post answers that their colleagues could see and respond to, and the final exam. Timothy posted two typically mediocre answers, but his third was insightful, full of sophisticated vocabulary and sharp, clear sentences. This post was so unlike his other work that I immediately uploaded it at Turnitin.com. "Timothy's" answer, I discovered, was a paragraph plagiarized from a review of Smooth Talk, the screen adaptation of the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"
I gave Timothy a generous 46 for his contribution to the lit discussion: 23 points [70 percent of 33 possible points] for his first banal post, 23 points for his second, equally trite answer, and 0 points for the plagiarized review. Many of my colleagues would argue that I should have given the boy 0 points for the entire assignment, but the big research project was complete, and I wasn't going to fail someone who had stolen one paragraph [of 6,000 words each student must write for this course], especially for an assignment that I didn't consider the real focus of the semester. I believed that the 46, an F, punished the plagiarism, would make Timothy sweat the final exam, but didn't get in his way of completing a class where he had met all other—in my opinion, more important—requirements. The 46 dropped Timothy's average to a 68, but he still had the final exam where, if he just read the damn directions before beginning to answer, he could maintain his C-. I sent this email:
From: sparky.lightbulb@_____cc.eduLet me say again I thought that I had been fair; many of my colleagues would argue that I had been too forgiving, too lenient, a real pushover. Timothy, on the other hand, thought I was being a hardass and had the aplomb to confront me by email:
To: timothy.longman@_____cc.edu
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 9:34 AM
Subject: Online discussion grade
Timothy:
When you receive your online discussion grade, you will see that you have earned a 46 for your participation. The grade is so low because when I ran your third post at Turnitin.com, I learned that you had plagiarized your answer for "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" That's really inexcusable at this point in the semester, especially after everything that you should have learned about using Internet sources and documenting things carefully.
S. L.
From: timothy.longman@_____cc.eduNever as a student would I have sent such an email. At first, I thought that, yes, students really have changed since "back in the day" when I was an undergrad. In that "golden time," I sweated getting the right page numbers in footnotes; never in my wildest dreams would I have copied someone else's words and turned them in as my own—not if I were deathly ill, never for a headache! When I was a student, I lived the honor code. Yes, my colleagues were correct in bemoaning the poor preparedness of the students in their classes. "I have filing cabinets full of materials I no longer use," a senior faculty member once told me. "They can't handle those assignments any longer." Today's students, I was starting to agree, were not able to achieve the same level of academic success as I had in their place 25 years earlier.
To: sparky.lightbulb@_____cc.edu
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 11:28 AM
Subject: RE: Online discussion grade
Well I admit it, I plagarized the third question only because I had a terrible headach and I had to get some sleep and I could not bare to keep my eyes open one minute more. I did most of the assignment on my own, I think a 46 is really harsh. Could you give me the points that I earned from my other posts? I really can't live with a 46 on this assignment. I must have a C or higher in this class and if I don't make that, then I'm really screwed because I have taken the research class 2 other times and if I have to register for a 4th time, I have to pay out of state tuition and I don't have that kind of money. I hope you will consider my honesty. I'm willing to write a new answer for the story if that will make any difference.
Timothy
The statistics that we constantly hear would seem to support this observation. At my institution, faculty are regularly reminded that 90 percent of our entering freshman test into at least one semester of preparatory work before they can begin college-level courses. Many of them must complete prep courses in all areas: mathematics, reading, and writing—this despite the state's attempt at guaranteeing their readiness with FCAT. This fact is no surprise when the state grades most of our feeder high schools as C, D, and F. Moreover, SAT scores, the College Board reveals, are lower; students in 1972 achieved on average a combined score or 1039; in 2004, the score is 1026. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, eighth graders rank fifteenth among 45 participating countries in their knowledge of math, eighth in science.
I don't remain exasperated for long about student preparedness, despite the numbers above or students like Timothy. I have realized that when faculty are bitching about lower standards and dumber students, they are allowing hasty generalizations to influence their perceptions. Most faculty tend to look outward instead of inward, to the present at the expense of the past, when they attempt to answer the question, Are students less prepared today?
Instead of remembering the sun-lit glory days of their college experience, faculty need to remember what utter dolts they were themselves. I can already hear my colleagues protesting: "I had a 4.0!" "Well, I graduated summa cum laude!" "Yes, but I was the favorite of the professors in my discipline!" What I would ask everyone is this: Can I see all of your freshman composition essays? All of your calculus exams? All of the quizzes that you took in biology and all of the blue book answers you produced in Western Civilization? Can I see what you wrote like, how deeply and accurately you understood the material, how well you handled details like footnoting or remembering a negative sign? Care to share the poems, songs, short stories, and paintings you produced, the ones that might have been printed in your school's literary magazine but wouldn't have a chance in The New Yorker? Because what we would find in these artifacts is that we all demonstrated naive, Jeopardy!-level appreciation of the material, all, really, that our instructors wanted back then.
I remember what I was really like at the same age most of my students are now. I was bright but naive, ill read though convinced I was close to intellectually polished, with the most superficial grasp of many subjects. When I want to be reminded of this, I dig out my own freshman compositions. I received an A in that class [at an institution that ranks yearly in the top 5 according to US News and World Report], but I will hand them over only if my colleagues are willing to do the same. My freshman compositions make me cringe at how little I knew and how poorly I could express it. When my own students demonstrate their own superficial, unoriginal thinking, I remember that I was no better. And when I have dolts like Timothy, students who are lacking considerably more than I was at that age, I realize that my own professors must have had their share. I don't remember those students because I was basking in the positive attention of my revered teachers, but when my professors went back to their offices, they had to deal with their own Timothys, and like me and my colleagues today, might have forgotten in those moments of frustration the eager and enthusiastic students who didn't give them reason to complain.
