The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 13.0957  Friday, 5 April 2002

[1]     From:   Steve Roth <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 4 Apr 2002 10:00:57 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update

[2]     From:   Don Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 4 Apr 2002 13:12:40 -0600
        Subj:   Re: SHK 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update

[3]     From:   Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Thursday, 04 Apr 2002 19:34:15 -0500
        Subj:   Plagiarism and Update


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Steve Roth <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 4 Apr 2002 10:00:57 -0800
Subject: 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update

Somewhat on a tangent, one of the best articles I've read this year, on
the difference between writing "bull" and writing "cow." "Examsmanship
and the Liberal Arts: An Epistemological Inquiry" by Bill Perry. Very
entertaining and enlightening reading.

http://www.zoo.ufl.edu/bolker/eep-2000/readings/perry.html

Also a quite wonderful obituary of the author:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1999/05.27/mm.perry.html

Re: Gabriel:

>How about assessment by timed examination with no prior
>disclosure?

As a student, I always stared in amazement when fellow students would
ask the professor, "Is this going to be on the test?" And I was
constantly dumbfounded when professors deigned to answer that question.

Steve

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Don Bloom <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 4 Apr 2002 13:12:40 -0600
Subject: 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update
Comment:        Re: SHK 13.0937 Re: Plagiarism and Update

Martin Steward (responding a remark of mine about plagiarism and
system-beating) says:

> There's a lot to be said for learning how to beat systems. They are
> usually pernicious. To pretend that the systems promulgated by
> university English departments are any different is insufferably
> Ivory-Towerish. Discipline is for the unimaginative, mankind is
> something to be overcome!

If MS is involved in one of those leg-pulls that crop up on this list,
then my apologies for not catching the joke. If he means this seriously,
then I don't know what he means. He implies that it is (or may be)
virtuous (or something) to beat a system because a system is innately
evil. If we are in agreement about "beating a system" as meaning "to use
some combination of unscrupulous, deceitful, dishonest, or callous means
to obtain rewards you haven't earned," how could the evil of the system
turn the evil of the means into virtue?

(Up to the invasion of the Soviet Union, Adolph Hitler had the system
beaten. Moreover, it was a system with many flaws and even manifest
evils to it. Yet I can't bring myself to consider his accomplishments up
to 1942 as virtuous or admirable -- only successful.)

I have some problems with the rest of the remark, but this will do.
Perhaps a clarification of this matter will solve those other problems
as well.

Cheers,
don

[3]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Edmund Taft <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Thursday, 04 Apr 2002 19:34:15 -0500
Subject:        Plagiarism and Update

Richard Burt writes of Don Bloom's paper practice:

"At Umass a professor would get slammed for doing what Don does if a
student challenged the professor.  No proof, no plagiarism."

Same here at Marshall. In fact, if Don were here and demanded that a
student redo a paper, that demand would constitute an indirect charge of
plagiarism. If the student and the university decided to sue, Don would
be in debt for life and lose his ability to pay it off too because he
would be summarily fired for having falsely charged a tuition-paying
student with a crime that he could not prove the student committed.

Don apparently approves of such a policy; I do not.

--Ed Taft

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