My Word!: Plagiarism and College Culture (Hardcover)

~ Susan D. Blum (Author)
Key Phrases: bean pole, free culture, performance selves, College Bubble, United States, Observing the Performance Self (more...)

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Product Description

"Classroom Cheats Turn to Computers." "Student Essays on Internet Offer Challenge to Teachers." "Faking the Grade." Headlines such as these have been blaring the alarming news of an epidemic of plagiarism and cheating in American colleges: more than 75 percent of students admit to having cheated; 68 percent admit to cutting and pasting material from the Internet without citation.

Professors are reminded almost daily that many of today's college students operate under an entirely new set of assumptions about originality and ethics. Practices that even a decade ago would have been regarded almost universally as academically dishonest are now commonplace. Is this development an indication of dramatic shifts in education and the larger culture? In a book that dismisses hand-wringing in favor of a rich account of how students actually think and act, Susan D. Blum discovers two cultures that exist, often uneasily, side by side in the classroom.

Relying extensively on interviews conducted by students with students, My Word! presents the voices of today's young adults as they muse about their daily activities, their challenges, and the meanings of their college lives. Outcomes-based secondary education, the steeply rising cost of college tuition, and an economic climate in which higher education is valued for its effect on future earnings above all else: These factors each have a role to play in explaining why students might pursue good grades by any means necessary. These incentives have arisen in the same era as easily accessible ways to cheat electronically and with almost intolerable pressures that result in many students being diagnosed as clinically depressed during their transition from childhood to adulthood.

However, Blum suggests, the real problem of academic dishonesty arises primarily from a lack of communication between two distinct cultures within the university setting. On one hand, professors and administrators regard plagiarism as a serious academic crime, an ethical transgression, even a sin against an ethos of individualism and originality. Students, on the other hand, revel in sharing, in multiplicity, in accomplishment at any cost. Although this book is unlikely to reassure readers who hope that increasing rates of plagiarism can be reversed with strongly worded warnings on the first day of class, My Word! opens a dialogue between professors and their students that may lead to true mutual comprehension and serve as the basis for an alignment between student practices and their professors' expectations.

From the Back Cover

"Susan D. Blum is genuinely interested in understanding her students and brings great care and compassion to her discussion of plagiarism. She generously draws on student interview segments throughout My Word! to illuminate today's campus climate. I especially like that Blum locates acts of cheating within the wider sociocultural context rather than regarding them simply as failures of personal morality."-Cathy Small, Northern Arizona University, author of My Freshman Year

"The prevalence of plagiarism among American college students affects all members of the university community in negative ways. The very phrase 'university community' implies a set of shared values; the existence of a culture of plagiarism among undergraduates undercuts that comfortable belief. And equally bad, finding ways to prevent plagiarism unproductively consumes instructors' and administrators' time and energy. To solve these problems, it is essential to understand what student plagiarism is: why they do it, why all our remedies fail, and why we need to care about it. This is the task undertaken by Susan D. Blum in My Word! Everyone who is a member of a university community will find insights here: Students will come to better understand why faculty and administrators are asking these impossible things of them; faculty and administrators will learn why their demands--simple enough to them--don't work for many students. Engagingly and clearly written and persuasively argued, My Word! is a book that raises and answers some of the most vexing questions addressed by members of modern academic communities."--Robin Lakoff, University of California, Berkeley

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 229 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press; 1 edition (March 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801447631
• ISBN-13: 978-0801447631
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #422,066 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars No Excuses--for Plagiarism or this Apologist's Approach, October 19, 2009

By	Eilonwy - See all my reviews

Blum begins with a superficial overview of the history of "owning" ideas, but quickly moves to explanations of why today's college students don't see anything wrong with taking materials not their own. These ideas would be a lot more compelling if Blum weren't so one-sided in her selection of evidence. For example, although she produces lots of quotations from students who admit to falsifying college application materials in order to win a spot at the prestigious institution they feel they deserve to join, she also labels them as a generation committed to sharing, due to their prefence for "performative" selves rather than "authentic" selves. She misses the irony that these students don't feel impelled to "share" what they think they deserve--high grades, college entrance, prestigious careers, high salaries. They only feel other people should "share" with them. Blum has somehow mistaken a sense of entitlement for a sense of communalism. Extending the study beyond the walls of a single privileged university might have been useful too (though Blum is very upfront about this limitation to the study).

Later chapters explore the pressures students face as they apply to high profile colleges. The evidence this section includes is accurate but well presented elsewhere. What it has to do with plagiarism is never well explained. The likelihood, however, that readers will stick with her through all the pablum to her useful concluding pages seems slim.

The final short chapter outlines the obvious argument that convincing people to comply with a rule, also entails explaining the rule--in this case the rule against plagiarism. Blum seems to think she is saying something relevatory. She isn't. Composition and Rhetoric and English professionals have been making this claim for years.

Despite the annoyingly apologist argument she "performs," if the book convinces anyone from disciplines outside of English to pay attention to plagiarism and how to educate students to value the practice of crediting sources, it is probably a worthwhile endeavor.