Everybody Loves Education.

Everybody loves education. Hire more teachers! Spend more money on our schools! But what happens when the public discovers that their tax dollars are funding the repression of thought and opinion? What happens when a teacher berates a student for their political views? Does the student dress code insist that every t-shirt must be scrutinized and approved by the educational establishment? Should schools be breeding grounds of diverse opinions? Or merely an incubus of strictly patterned thought?  Philadelphia News Report FOX 29

“You can’t wear a Republican shirt in a Democratic school!”

Did you mean democracy exists here? Or facism? In Philadelphia, a 10^th grade student was verbally berated by a math teacher over her political views. She committed the grave sin of wearing a pink Romney t-shirt to school on ‘casual dress’ day. How unenlightened of her. Did she not understand that all in her school support the President and only the President in the upcoming election? And that the support included fascist repression of any and all expressions of dissent? Did she not understand, that since she is not old enough to vote, any teacher can simply tell her how she’s supposed to think, dress and act? What kind of America are we living in?

The Founding Fathers would be sickened by the actions of this “teacher.” It is a form of manipulative child abuse of the highest degree. Bullying needs to be stamped out of the schools, and should never come from a teacher to a student. And how will this teacher be ‘punished?’

Most likely, the teacher will be placed on paid ‘administrative leave.’ As an employee of the school district, she could continue to receive tax dollars for her ignorant and abusive presence in the school. She may even get a paid ‘vacation’ as the principal and district decide where exactly to ‘reassign’ her. This may come with some degree of sensitivity training, but most likely will not include an apology to the student or the student’s family. Truthfully, the district should be apologizing to America.

How could this sort of abuse happen in one of the most historic cities of America? Philadelphia!! How could the ‘city of brotherly love’ become a den of criticism and derision of our youngest and most vulnerable population? The entire city ought to hold candlelight vigil for the death of democratic principles. But instead, it will be ignored and accepted, just like another crack in the Liberty Bell.

How should the school respond? Maybe all political clothing should be banned so that no one gets offended. Well, where do you draw the line? Does that mean no more catchy Obama slogans and t-shirts? You know, the ones that appeal to the masses and even small children because they are colorful and inspire hope? What about historical slogans: ‘Don’t tread on me’? The Tea Party flag? The American flag? Anything with an elephant or donkey on it? What happens if the child of a politician sends their child to school with a campaign button? Should they be equally ostracized for supporting their political family? Did the Kennedys endure such ridicule? Somehow, I think not.

Americans, what country do you want your children to grow up in? One where teachers berate their students because they do not share their political leanings? Or one where all viewpoints are valued, even if one ends up on the losing end? A synthesis of ideas and thoughts rolled up into a nice neat zombie-like student ready to enter the world with a one-thought ideology, where oppression of thought is celebrated, free speech is ignored, and where all students shackle themselves with the chains of institutional slavery.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Zombies On the Beat - Journalistic Integrity Lost

 “Two quite opposite qualities equally bias our minds - habits and novelty.” –Jean de la Bruyere

Have you ever wondered why your local paper, nightly news or online media outlets all have the same news reports? Have you ever wondered why they never have anything new, or fresh to report? Of course, it all is made to seem like the latest, greatest scoop, but it is generally repackaged opinion and the same stale diatribe they have been peddling for years. Has your favorite reporter seemed to have gone rogue about politics, the economy, or even about local issues? Well you're not alone in your dismay over how the news media chooses to report information. The reason is: they have become nothing more than Zombies with a pen.

"The advertisements are the most truthful part of a newspaper." - Thomas Jefferson

One has to wonder why, all of a sudden, journalists have lost all perspective of their craft. Is it because their editors are driving them to repeat the same information found in other stations’ reports? Or is it because they have lost the ability to dissect issues and find the truth for their viewers? Or have they just become too lazy to do their investigative journalistic homework? Is it because they've become complacent and so hungry for work that they have succumbed to the evils within the industry that will pay anything for a hastily constructed piece merely designed to help them promote their original mission statement? The actual answer is all of the above.

We have all seen the evidence of journalists who have lost their integrity. As we sit down to read the paper, or watch our evening news, these soul-less journalists who went through the academic mill and graduated with like minded political ideologies ready to hit the streets looking for that perfect story end up telling us precisely what the higher-ups want us to hear. Do today’s social investigators follow the money trail to find who really benefits? Often, they settle for the money that flows their way while placing the blinders on themselves and their consumers. How can we detect the journalists with no integrity? Just Google any issue they're writing about, and you'll find close to fifty articles with the same content as theirs. If a writer uses the same information produced from another article, they are plagiarists with no integrity who have no regard for the other writer. In the university system, they are chewed up and spit out with an eternal black mark on their record and character. But in the halls of today’s journalism, they are celebrated as ‘out-of-the-box thinkers.’ This is what the media claims is true journalism. To us, it is blatant laziness which is perpetuated by the news media because they continue to accept shabby work from college graduates claiming to be journalists. There is nothing new about the news today, it was all repeated and repackaged from an hour ago.

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there anything of which one can say, ‘Look! This is something new’? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.” –King Solomon, Ecclesiastes 1:9-10

Today, we have journalists who would rather see their name in bold print under the title of their piece as often as they can. They write short articles with little to no analysis, rather than do the hard research to uncover the real evidence of danger, corruption, political intrigue, or criminal activity. Instead of becoming a hero to society, they are complicit in allowing social ills to thrive without detection or attention. They often regurgitate the same information found in another writer's article, or they fail to check their sources altogether. As we pointed out in our last piece, "GuiltDetermined by Robots," a writer for the University of Phoenix online newspaper didn't do effective research on their chosen subject matter. Instead, the writer used material sources provided by the very company she was writing about. That is not journalism, that's propaganda perpetuated by an institution trying to promote a single company. Our question to the University of Phoenix is simple: Did you pay this “journalist” to write that piece, or did the money come directly from iParadigm, LLC to protect their business interest? When journalists resort to bias reporting, the idyllic utopia of free speech has just been garroted.  This is not only dangerous to the realm of journalism, it is effectively being promoted into all aspects of society and discourse through this blemished medium. Does this sound familiar? It should, because it all boils down to what is taught in college: regurgitate information, regurgitate opinion, regurgitate thought. Just be sure not to plagiarize when you regurgitate.

"Franklin is one of the first American publishers to understand that freedom of the press and tolerance are part of what it is to be a newspaper editor, and what it is to be a printer. And part of the genius of America is that we're open in our discourse."  - Walter Issacson

Unfortunately, today's journalists have lost their integrity as writers. The blame should be shared by the editors and media moguls alike. Instead of reporting the news, today’s media regurgitates what others have written. Instead of using real journalists as inspiration, such as John Zenger and Ben Franklin (1700s); Elijah Lovejoy, Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Nellie Bly (1800s-1900s); Winchell (1940-70), Morrow (1950-70), Woodward & Bernstein (1970s), Katherine Graham (1938-2001), Tim Russert (1990-2008), and so many others from the past, they follow the footsteps of media conglomerates more interested in the ‘quick fix’ than true investigative reporting. They understand that the ‘quick fix’ of social conjecture will leave the consumer craving more, knowing there was more implied in the promo than delivered in the actual piece, yet wholly unaware that today’s media will never satisfy the consumer’s true hunger for reasoned thought and accurate information.

"One should perform his deeds for the benefit of mankind with an unbiased approach because bias gives birth to evil, which creates thousands of obstacles in our path." –Rig Veda

All media is bias, just as all facets of our lives exist with some stain of bias. But to leave the American consumer ill fed and malnourished in thought is just as much an affront to freedom as overt tyranny can be. American media consumers deserve better. It is time that they demand better. Those attracted to the media world generally assert their benefits to society. It is time that they live up to the promises of their profession, and stop being Zombies with a pen. 

Guilt Determined by Robots

A student found guilty of plagiarism by a school’s review board is left with feelings of frustration, stress and dissatisfaction. Even if computer forensic evidence shows they never went to the alleged site they are accused of plagiarizing from, they are still found guilty by incompetent individuals who suffer from incompetency.

This past week, the University of Phoenix found a student guilty of plagiarism based on a false result from TurnItIn software. The student was not allowed a fair trial with adequate legal representation, which is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. The accused student was allowed to speak for five minutes before three people – an IT person representing the school, a student advisor representing the school and a moderator – compensated for their time by the school (either financially or with experience on their resumes). These three highly biased individuals essentially represented judge and jury and rendered a decision based on the result of a computer software product over the word of the student. Despite computer forensic evidence to the contrary, the false positive data result compared to their own database holdings was enough to condemn the student. These three representatives of the school didn't even consider that the software, itself, could have had a glitch in the system; instead they just sided with the software and found the student guilty as charged by an incompetent instructor. Remember these holdings were obtained and retained within the TurnItIn database without the full permission or consent of the originator of the original work, when you consider that the program circumvents copyright law by stripping the author name for the company’s own financial gain and use.

The charge is upheld and these actions were found to be in violation of the Student Code of

Academic Integrity Article(s):

a. Plagiarism - Intentional or unintentional representation of another's words or ideas as one's

own in an academic exercise.

The definition of plagiarism is as follows:

1. stealing somebody's work or idea: the process of copying another person's idea or written work and claiming it as original 

2. something plagiarized: a piece of written work or an idea that somebody has copied and claimed as his or her own

Plagiarism, for those who don't know or understand the definition of the word is simple - utilizing another person's published work without disregard to the other persons work. To claim that the English Language is owned by one person and can only be used by that same person is absolutely absurd. To accuse someone who comes to the same conclusion as another based on the same material, text and syllabus used and read by over 10,000 schools, each having a minimum of 1000 students in their school is preposterous. Lazy teachers and school administrators are branding their valued students with the proverbial flaming "P" way too often. And, for what purpose? To help a private company exceed in their efforts of branding more and more people with plagiarism based on their faulty software conclusion of stolen information contained within their own database. 

When a student is working on an assignment and in their final conclusion regurgitates the essence of the body of their work into a short summary of three or four sentences to bring the paper to a close, should they be flagged as a plagiarist for coming to the same conclusion as someone else before them?  It is absurd to assume the person flagrantly went out, found the same passage and said to themselves, "I'm going to use this line or that line" in my final paper.  Would they subject themselves to all sorts of frustration, stress and dishonor over a 200 word assignment? We hardly think they would be so stupid.

How can someone be accused of plagiarism when they never read another person's work? How could they have stolen an idea or written work, when they've never reviewed it, visited a site to which it is listed, or knew about said work?  In a case where computer forensic evidence proves the person being charged has never been to the alleged site, they are still found guilty based on the opinions of a biased panel unwilling to weigh the evidence properly.  Students beware! You may be found guilty no matter what you say, or whatever expense you lay out to have your computer checked out by a computer forensic expert. You will not be allowed legal representation – you must play by the rules of a corrupt power system who has already determined to take the word of their client’s software program over the testimony of the students they are supposed to be serving.

In this day in age of technology, schools such as University of Phoenix claim "These programs are designed to give honest students an opportunity to check their work prior to submission and before incidentally risking reprimands from higher-education officials."  So when a student uses the software and it produces a ‘Zero’ result, that student feels confident the paper is cleared to submit to their instructor. But when their instructor receives a different result using additional elements of the same system, where is the flaw? Not on the part of the student, because they received a zero percent on their so called 'originality report' produced by said software.

"Published reports show iParadigm LLC’s Turnitin.com software series is a favorite among many universities—from Harvard University to University of Phoenix." University of Phoenix writer Marissa Yaremich, (UOPX Writer Network) didn't do her homework properly before writing her article in 2010. The truth of the matter is, according to Harvard University, "In 2006, the FAS Instructional Computing Group conducted a pilot of Turnitin for one course.  Subsequently, the university decided not to subscribe."  What does that tell you Ms. Yaremich? Yaremich didn't do her investigation properly to verify her claims. Harvard University, the highest Ivy League College in America, neither uses this software nor would come close to consider it their ‘favorite.’ Yaremich didn't do her homework properly. The reports she quotes from claims TurnItIn is the cream of the crop in plagiarism software – was she not aware that most major colleges refused their software because of copyright infringements, and alleged theft of intellectual property? Was this journalistic negligence on her part? Or manipulative propaganda perpetuated by academia to substantiate their use of the software by helping this company to better advertise their services? The legal ramifications associated with this software far outweigh a student not understanding how to cite a source. Instructors need to learn to teach their courses and stop being lazy by using software to determine a person's credibility or honesty over their own relationships with their students.

Instructors would rather you believe information sponsored by a university who claims to be a legitimate accredited college, quoting from a report produced by the very program we have been exposing as commercial fraud for the last two weeks. It is as if the very nature of academia is to keep people in the dark, rather than expose bias reporting and claims that are only disseminated to help a for-profit company gain more clients. We have lost the mere notion of what is truth.

In order to help protect the copyright of your original creative work, now and in the future, if you are a student who attends any school, whether it be high school or college, especially if its University of Phoenix, make sure you have the following disclaimer on your paper before submitting it to your teacher:

Copyright (C) 2012, YOUR NAME.  Unlawful submission of this, or any paper produced, written and submitted by this author to the YOUR SCHOOL NAME, its instructors or representatives to the TurnItIn.com system will be subjected to legal action for copyright infringement.  It is by direction of legal counsel that I place this statement on all papers written by this author.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

NEXT:  Zombie's With A Pen - Journalistic Integrity Lost

The END of Free Thinking (as we know it)

"Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, made nothing?"

                                                            D.H. Lawrence - the Phoenix

What are you willing to become? Lawrence wrote the poem "Phoenix" at the turn of the century, when the world seemed to be tilting toward collectivism and he feared individual thinking was being erased from the conscience mind. Was he right? Have we become a society where free thinking has been thrown out the window for something else?

In today's world, students no longer trust their teachers or instructors because they no longer effectively guide them through the minefield of accusation that is public education. The lack of trust goes both ways.

Teachers who no longer trust their students utilize a plagiarism detection system, known as TurnItIn.com, to further humiliate their students into obedience. Each student is required to submit each essay, term paper, and original work to this growing parasite of copyright violation and career vulnerability database. Maybe if the teacher taught the proper way to write a paper, the need for such a program would not exist. As we have pointed out, throughout this series, when a student is falsely accused, that student’s only recourse is to drop the class, avoid the professor, or appeal to be exempt from having to submit their work to a system that is dangerous to their security at worst, and infringes on their original thought at best.

There is more concern given the 1% of students who are gaming the system, using the work and words of others to advance their grade, and pulling the wool over the teacher’s eyes. The teacher, mired in pride of not being duped, would rather tell 100% of their students of their blatant lack of trust in the hopes of scaring the 1% of rogue students onto the path of the straight and narrow. As seen in this series, the implications of an expectation of a potential student violation is often more violating to teacher-student trust than the mere existence of plagiarism  in the first place.

 Chris Lloyd '06, chairman of the Honor Committee, said the implementation of anti-plagiarizing software at Princeton would not violate students' rights.

"We don't have an Honor Code in which professors trust students blindly," Lloyd said. "Professors trust students to proctor each other. If professors don't have oversight over what a student is doing in their room, it seems a reasonable means to see if work is a student's own.” 

There seems to be so much anxiety over what may be produced in the student’s bedroom, that little attention or concern is given their future capability of what will be produced in the boardroom. The ultimate goal of any university is to release upon the business world a person who has the ability to think and make proper decisions that will help keep our economic engine running. But in reality, the only product being produced in today's schools and universities is a human monkey-wrench that will be thrown into an already effective and efficient machine.  

The ability to think freely has been stymied by the very institution to which is required to teach creative thinking - our school system. With the use of TurnItIn, we are producing the very thing we disdain: a nation of non-thinking, mindless automatons capable of producing exactly what the professor (or boss) wants them to produce, requiring countless hours of oversight and hand-holding. The student is no longer capable of individual thought, for exercising thought brings risk. These risks require a student to feel emotion, compassion or even love. These risks are not acceptable in a world filled with distrust, hate and a lack of compassion for another human being – what we call ‘the real world.’ 

When a student leaves school and enters the business world, they mirror what their boss wants in order to gain favor with said boss – even if the boss might be wrong in his or her thinking, resulting in the company being shut down, job losses, economic destruction of the community, etc. Like the boss who doesn't know how to think for themselves, the professors, having already determined their own brilliance of thought and mind, are only capable of arriving at a specific point. They then expect each student to arrive at that same point or theory merely to feed the overinflated ego of said professor! The teacher no longer wants to see what the student may think, but wants their own thinking confirmed by a multitude of “good students,” each arriving at the same conclusion and analysis, but somehow doing do in a way that doesn’t flag the plagiarism detector. Is this free thinking, or is it a pattern of group thinking?

This pattern simply cannot sustain itself.

With the use of a program, such as how TurnItIn will continue to grow and grow with additional papers and products, all coming to similar conclusions with different words, the ability to think freely will diminish in just a few years. Future students will try and try to phrase words together to attain the goals of the same patterned syllabi, yet without effectively being able to avoid correlation. Students are already growing discouraged, as there is no way to re-pattern the same thought without using words and phrases that have been previously recorded somewhere. There is no way for the student to glean through millions of entries, but the computer program can. And students will increasing become victims to the very mechanism that is designed to protect them and allow them to grow in thought and mind – they will either stand before ethics committees decrying their innocence, or simply choose to avoid the system that produces more plagiarists than poets. The future looks bleak, does it not?

Students are trying, but are increasingly having to do more explanation of character than defense of original research. Their purposes and goals are suspect, when they are merely trying to navigate the minefield set up by an untrusting populace. When the professor has already abdicated their role of instructing the student to greater academic relevance, even when the student plagiarized for convenience or by malicious intent, the end of free thinking has permeated its will to the highest level - shirking academic protection and inspiration to excellence.

What do you expect? It is not permitted us neither to write, nor to speak, nor even to think.  If we speak, it is easy to interpret our words, and still easier our writings. In sum, since no one can condemn us to an auto da fé for our secret thoughts, they threaten us with eternal burning by the order of God Himself, if we don't think like the Jacobins. They have persuaded the government that if we were to have common sense, the whole state would be in flames, and that the nation would become the most miserable on earth. –Voltaire, ‘Freedom of Thought’

A government or school thrives by forcing all its denizens into the prescribed pattern of thought. Is this not Communism at its best? But who can really regulate thought? Isn’t the mere attempt at regulating thought rife with failure from the start? And what would the business climate think of an army of mindless automatons about to be released, resumes in hand, unto their shores of innovation and creativity? How can a citizenry be innovative and creative when their schools have cut funding to all creative classes such as music, art and creative writing? These very classes teach a student to use their creative mind to think outside the box and eventually solve complex problems in an individualized way.

Enter GroupThink.

Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

Our schools have also been transformed by the New Groupthink. Today, elementary school classrooms are commonly arranged in pods of desks, the better to foster group learning. Even subjects like math and creative writing are often taught as committee projects. In one fourth-grade classroom I visited in New York City, students engaged in group work were forbidden to ask a question unless every member of the group had the very same question.  

When free thinking is erased, cancelled and made nothing, as Lawrence said, what will we have left? Like-minded individuals who are replicable in the business world who are not capable of thinking for themselves, coming up with great ideas or writing prose worthy of a noble peace prize? Instead, we are left with mindless zombies ready to follow the word of every pundit, irresponsible journalist, politician or leader who says what they have been programmed to follow.  Automated zombies coming to a place near you. You reap what you sow!

 Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

NEXT: Critical Thinking Disappears

The New Generation We No Longer Trust

Are we creating a generation who cannot be trusted, or are we setting them up for failure? That is the major question everyone should be asking themselves. The concept of this series is twofold: we admit plagiarism is a problem, however, the tool in which academia is using to combat this problem is more a detriment to society than a student simply forgetting to cite a source.

Back in high school, we all had to read Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" wherein the main character, Hester Prynne, had a child conceived from an adulterous affair and was branded with the letter "A". Throughout the story, Hester tries to repent but no one will accept her.  She is shunned by society and forced to live a life of despair while trying to raise her child. In today's society, a student who is accused of plagiarism is essentially branded for life with the letter "P" in their permanent academic record. Their punishment is simple - no longer trustworthy on any level. Their future is slim, and thrown off the track they were meant to travel, all because of an academic tool used by a lazy teacher that flags a paper produced by a student who forgot to cite a source, or who uses the same English Language in constructing points or phrases that are too similar to ones used before in a vast, expansive database.

This past week, we have brought to your attention many issues regarding the new black plague – plagiarism – and the detection tool a majority of high schools and colleges are using, called TurnItIn.  As a result of the use of such a tool, we have now created a generation that is considered guilty before they start to write one sentence. Every teacher in every classroom who uses this academic tool believes the tool will help them do their job more effectively. Instead, TurnItIn creates a sense of distrust of inspired students who wish to graduate with a good grade to experience all that the learning environment can offer them.

The classroom is supposed to be a place where a child learns history, science, math and English, along with the creative aspects of music, art and literature. Instead, it has become a breeding ground for stress, dishonor and distrust by the very individuals who wished to become a teacher and inspiration to the next generation.

A student strives to gain good marks, but makes a clerical mistake and is now suspected of being a liar, a cheater, and grouped in with those who are lazy usurpers of the ideas of others within the classroom. Could their mistake be a cry for help with their academic work, which deserves attention and consideration? Not in our society where everyone is looking for an easy way out of doing homework, life and politics. Society is breeding liars and cheaters, therefore, everyone must be guilty, at least to some degree.

Isn’t the quintessential role of public education to meet each student where they are and inspire them to rise above? Shouldn’t the plagiarist who is actually a defeatist be given another chance at academic relevance? Do they not deserve the opportunity to learn? Mistakes are made every day. Therefore, learning from those mistakes is the key to learning wisdom as we get older. To be accused of dishonesty at an early age, by their teacher, their school, and even their parents is detrimental to a young mind. But to be accused, based on a computer program, raises the bar of destroying a student's creative juices and locking them in a box of distrust they can never crawl out of in the future.

Is it not the role of the teacher, or the administration, to help them correct their course in life, and help them get back on track to trusting in their own abilities of producing favorable work that taps into their own creativity? Where is the trust placed in each student to do better, aim higher, produce work without making mistakes the next time? Where is the trust in each teacher to be able to guide a student to greater educational awareness of their own abilities? The student is placed with each individual teacher for a year or a semester at a time. Should it not be the goal of each instructor to guide each student to dig deep into their creative minds to produce their own work, instead of relying on other people’s efforts out of laziness, lack of confidence, or blatant dishonesty?  

$$$Instead, we run student's through the wringer when a computer program flags them for plagiarism. The TurnItIn system flags a positive result of cheating. The student is then put on trial, without the benefit of a lawyer to defend them and where their integrity is suspect. The opinion of the system, in this case an uncaring algorithm in a database far far away, gives the final verdict on whether that student may continue their academic or professional career. TurnItIn is defined as plagiarism detection software, but somewhere along the line it has been elevated to judge, jury, and executioner. The student is no longer welcomed or trusted in his future academic career. Business careers that depend on integrity won’t give this student a second look. The very system that was supposed to help catch mistakes in student essays has as a substitute, discouraged original thought. Therefore, instead of teaching, the system has failed the student through a ‘one-strike, you’re out’ philosophy of intellectual scrutiny and ad-hoc justice. It represents a sort of “shoot first, ask questions later” mentality when it comes to academic dishonesty.

How did we get here? Where did we go wrong? And what are the implications on the next generation of learners, educators and workers? It all starts with a highly illogical and inaccurate pattern of thought that we will call the ‘Snowflake Theory’. TurnItIn works off the basic premise that every student is capable of completely original thought. Correlations to works that have come before are highlighted and broadcast for all to see. It comes from the thought that every student has a writing style and mastery over words like an FBI fingerprint database – no two are alike. This is simply not the case:

The student’s admissions essay for Boston University’s MBA program was about persevering in the business world. “I have worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships.”

Another applicant’s essay for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management was about his father. He “worked for organizations in which the culture has been open and nurturing, and for others that have been elitist. In the latter case, arrogance becomes pervasive, straining external partnerships.”

Sound familiar? The Boston University student’s essay was written in 2003 and had been posted at businessweek.com. The UCLA applicant was rejected this year—for plagiarism. –January 30, 2012  

In the above example, could the UCLA admissions board really suspect the student of analyzing and gleaning information from every published student essay over the past eight years? What if that student’s computer was analyzed and proved the student had no awareness of the prior published essay in Boston? Or what if that prospective student, aware or unaware, still decided that the words used in his essay were the best words to use to get his point across, regardless of whether those words were used and published before? Does he not have access to the same mastery of the English language or business buzz-words that others have used before him?

In combating the sin of plagiarism, have we created an academic TSA-like industry of intrusion and distrust of every student, even the 90-95% likely never to plagiarize? Just what type of message are we hoping to send to this generation of students? What is the goal of academia? Is it to produce a generation of fear-mongers, reticent to trust their bosses, their spouses, and their elected leaders because of the mass scrutiny given to the small percentage of those not worthy of trust? Or is this one act of academic indiscretion a forgivable offense? Can they ever be trusted again? Or is it, like in love, “Once a cheater, always a cheater”? The professor essentially tells each bright-eyed student upon entry to this wasteland of trust that each student is designed to eventually cheat, so we've put up safeguards to ensure those that do will be caught and prosecuted to the highest degree. Is this not setting our students up for failure? Or worse, has this mistrust ultimately created an academic environment of failure before a student has a chance to graduate? The line of distrust goes both ways, lazy students are the result of lazy teachers!

Academia on all levels don’t question the system, they question the student. The burden of proof is on the student, even if the student is completely innocent. Correlation does not mean malicious intent on part of the student. But because a paper has been flagged under the TurnItIn system, submitted by the teacher or admissions board as cheating, and the student is left with the responsibility and burden of fighting for their innocence. And TurnItIn will hide behind the integrity of the academic environment, which has much more experience in producing original work than the individual student, in this manner. Students are left with little options, little resources or credibility, and may find themselves fighting an uphill battle against academia – road kill on the information superhighway.

Distrust breeds an ‘Idiocracy’ of Students

Much has been debated over a seemingly altruistic piece of legislation known as the ‘No Child Left Behind’ Act of 2001. The goal of this legislation was to encourage every state to assess the basic skills through standardized testing to ensure a student or a school is meeting the standard. However, the actual achievement of that goal, based on the consequences set out for failing schools, will only be realized by measuring over time. The same can be said for TurnItIn. We do not know the full academic ramifications of turning teachers and administrators against their students. We cannot fully realize the intellectual capital that is lost by shutting the doors of the academic environment to those with a past based on a mistake flagged by a piece of technology. We may never know if academia has turned away the next Einstein, or Copernicus, due to a false positive made by a database system that works on fuzzy logic. We may never understand that the very mechanism we employ to combat plagiarism is discouraging original thought and academic excellence out of a student’s fear of classification as a cheater.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” – Walt Kelly

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Next: The End of Free Thinking – What do we Get when we Brand our Students?

Cyber Threat & Vulnerability: The Security Risks - A Visual Presentation

In order to better understand the "Cyber Threat & Vulnerability Series," we have prepared the following visual presentation to help you gain perspective in how vulnerable your children are when using TurnItIn.com. As Parents, educators and guardians of our future leaders, you must understand how this one system can not only compromise you, but the children you have brought into this world, or are responsible for on a daily basis as educators. This series is to alert you to the seriousness and potential harm it could put your child in, through no fault of your own. 

As depicted in this slide, when a student submits their application for college, they are required to include all personal information: name, address, phone number, social security number of both themselves and their parents. They are also required by the software to include parents’ occupational information and point of contact number for parents’ employers, along with financial information from tax returns.  Upon acceptance to college, they are required to submit all assignment papers to instructors and TurnItIn.com plagiarism system for comparison to all known documents on the web as well as Turnitin's own database system of held documents from previous students. Based on our investigation, the database held by this privately owned company based in Oakland, California, with international headquarters in Newcastle, England, has the potential vulnerability to be compromised in many ways. We will not disclose the capabilities to hack into this system for obvious reasons. However, the vulnerabilities of this system are plentiful. Accordingly, the risk of all users to include their information in this database affords hackers, and nefarious individuals the opportunity to steal identifying information of both the students and their parents – not to mention stalkers, sexual predators and other persons wishing to cause irreparable harm to students in any specific area.  See Scenario 1 and 2 for how easily it would be for a student to be harmed, and the potential security risks for our country to be harmed at the same time. 

With a unique sales staff who are trained to use covert tactics in selling their product, similar to the old car salesman tactics, any unsuspecting high school principle, dean or president of a junior college will fall prey to the opportunity to help their students succeed.

Outside of financial gains, let's look at the legal side of this investigation. 

How does any private business achieve such success without spending a dime on legal fees? They manipulate the legal system by hiding behind their customers. 

 

 What are the risks to academic institutions?

 What type of remedy does a parent or an academic institution have to stop this type of security risk?

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Cyber Threat & Vulnerability: Part 5: Forced Plagiarism

"Drawing Hands"   

by M. C. Escher:"ESCHER on ESCHER Exploring the Infinite", 

p. 59 Published in 1989 by HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., New York

Academia has a quandary. How does it effectively discourage plagiarism without discouraging effective inquiry and original thought? Are students frightened into believing that their professors are working against them when it comes to the efforts employed in regulating scholarly writing? Anti-plagiarism websites have grown in popularity and usage in recent years, from ‘college-bound’ high school curriculum to universities – the hopeful breeding ground of new ideas and concepts. But is the practice of intellectual scrutiny inhibiting intellectual exploration?

“Because of this program, the vast majority of you who do your own work and cite your sources of information properly will not have to compete with students who commit undetected plagiarism.” –Tom Fleming, University of Arizona coordinator for TurnItIn 

There are two inherent flaws with the approach above. First, there is the implication of competition within a system of accepting original thought. Secondly, Mr. Fleming fails to warn students that all creative works submitted to Turnitin will be placed in a database that will ultimately strip them of their copyright protection of their original creative work.

There is a third major flaw within Mr. Fleming's message to the University of Arizona faculty, one that implicates them in abdicating their proper authority to encourage student growth. He instructs the faculty to include the following statement in their syllabus:

"If you decide to take and continue in this course, you are agreeing to submit your papers online, when so instructed, to a plagiarism-prevention program called TurnItIn.com." - Tom Fleming

This one statement is an implied threat to every student who is required to take certain courses to finalize their degree. Instead of giving a student the option to use said software, they are demanding it as if it were the quintessential programs to stop plagiarism. The veiled threats and underhanded collection of intellectual assets must be stopped. 

Academia should encourage students to explore and expand their own horizons of learning, not worry about what the next student is producing. Colleges and universities should be sowing seeds of individual perspective on multiple streams of inquiry. The implication of competition assumes that all will eventually realize the same stream or pattern of thinking, that which is already fully realized by the professor and detailed in the course syllabus. A syllabus that guides areas of thought, cited resources, and supposed length will ultimately breed conformity of thought, which will ultimately be picked up by the algorithmic software as a plagiarism flag. The professor no longer encourages individual thought, but a group consensus on the handling of a particular issue. However, when the ultimate goal is consensus, the patterned thought of selecting some perspectives and rejecting others breeds unilateral agreement, or the same conclusion given by multiple hosts – which by definition is plagiarism. So the patterned syllabi encourage plagiarism of thought but hope to somehow sift and select those who plagiarize in words? Why is this celebrated in academia? It appears that science has infiltrated the humanities. The goal of the professor is to replicate the patterned thought to validate his perspective. When the syllabus is organized in such a way as to encourage specific steps of learning and limit perspectives, it becomes a self-fulfilling paradox of unoriginal thought.

“However, it is respectfully submitted that the operative fact is not whether the Turnitin system is foolproof, but whether it is contrary to the public interest because it actually encourages plagiarism.” –Appellants Petition for Rehearing, Robert Vanderhye, Esquire 

David E Harrington, in an article for the Economist, thinks the use of such software deters teachers from looking for plagiarism, thinking it will naturally be picked up by other sources. For the student who lacks literary skills, the professor has already determined to abandon them to an unfeeling, unwavering courtroom of computer opinion – one where the student is guilty until proven innocent. Just as Mike Smit objects to the presumption of guilt, the under skilled student has no recourse for their own lack, even though the public university is the very place that should be designed to help that student improve in all intellectual areas. Instead, that student is hung out to dry, left as collateral damage along the pathway to better academic conformity. Since when did the university become all about universal thinking?

Why is it so important that the professor not abdicate his role as reviewer? Look to another cultural example: How well has spell-check increased grammatical accuracy in the vernacular? Writers and bloggers no longer review their own work for error – that’s the job of the computer program (in this case, spell-check). It’s a way of using unproven science to shirk responsibility and lighten our workload. And it produces the very opposite of what it is intended to grow: an absence of original thought.

What is wrong with the use of the scientific method here? There is no ‘control’.  There is no group of students who examine the same coursework and subject matter within a world where only the teacher is the ultimate judge of plagiarism. The honor code could be doing more to instill academic integrity and discourage plagiarism, but the college that enforces all students to submit work to TurnItIn has eliminated the control of that variable. When you eliminate the possibility of a control group coming to similar conclusions from varied sources, you undermine the scientific method. This undermining is seen as desirable, for what humanities professor wants to guide the patterns of student thought based on science? Yet the use of data driven solutions to a very real problem means that science has already forced its way in. Therefore, science in its entirety should be enforced to protect the rationality of the experiment.

The idea that we should be of one thought and one mind is not a synthesis of ideas, but a guided meditation on ideas already constructed. This is not freedom of thought, this is tyranny in the mental sphere. If students who offer varied perspective to the discussion are not welcomed, the result is a shared mind not unlike zombies. The professor is doing the thinking for you. The point you need to arrive at has already been scripted out. And the plagiarism software is a way of hiding the overall goal of patterned thinking by masking the universal thought with uncommon phrasing. All must arrive at the same point, but with different styles and approaches.

We quickly embrace what we can do that we don’t stop to think of what we should do. The response by the University of Arizona was to add a legal disclaimer to classes, rather than to examine the implications of whether they want to be tied to the controversial software and copyright infringement implications. Does an institute of higher education wish to purport the ideal that all student work is an extension of the university’s intellectual property? This is different from the private sector, or is it? Patents in the private sector fall back on the company that provided the research space, collaborative environment, and raw data that support the creative thought. Should every university, as part of admission requirements, stipulate that no intellectual property is totally belonging to the student? What about doctoral theses? A doctoral student has full rights to the usage of their intellectual property, as long as the doctoral board does not cut corners and hire a software algorithm to do the hard work for them? And would this policy attract the best and brightest? Or repel them?

“Ultimately, I want a policy that respects students, respects our intellectual copyright, and respects that many of us work hard at university.” – Mike Smit 

Students should be reassured that they will retain rights to the original and creative work. But could they also benefit from the future use of their work within a database created to catch plagiarists? How would it work to give money to those authors who submit to TurnItIn for copyrights? Each time a plagiarized work gets flagged, a few pennies go to the original author as a sort of ‘thank you’ for giving their work to TurnItIn? What about the pure coincidence factor? Where a work is not actually plagiarized, but closely correlates to a newly submitted work? And then there is potential for manipulation, where authors wishing to make a profit turn in multiple sources of work, only so future writings will be flagged and the author compensated for contributing to catching a plagiarizer – even the very same author himself? The software has not proven to be free from manipulation, either from the real plagiarists who wish to skirt the system (and will find ways how), and the self-interest of the user who simply wants another forum for their budding body of work. What about those who have already breached the system, and access previously submitted work to the database and submit it to various cheat sites for money? Isn't that considered as theft and plagiarism within a system that makes no promises to protect original work? TurnItIn is not encouraging original thought within the system it has devised. So it begs the question, are schools who use TurnItIn getting what they pay for?

The Dummy Science of TurnItIn – (Part 4)

The Dummy Science of TurnItIn – (Part 4)

Every day a student, the aspiring writer, creates a piece of prose, a short story or even a simple poem, and turns it in for a grade to a teacher. Unfortunately, in many schools around the world, they are forced to first submit their copyrighted work to a system that is supposed to ensure they did not steal it from another student. Teachers who utilize TurnItIn software do so at the peril of their students’ intellectual property rights. Yes, plagiarism is a problem in our world, but whose fault is it anyway, the writer or the educational environment?

In today's world we have advanced technology that is supposed to be more sophisticated and more advanced than the 1970s and 80s technology that we once used. TurnItIn software claims to be using advanced technology to show if a student has plagiarized another writer's work. Unfortunately, this software is not using advanced technology in their algorithm – instead, they are using old technology called "Fuzzy Logic".

What is "Fuzzy Logic" technology and how does it work?  Fuzzy Logic derives from

the Possibility theory which is an uncertainty theory devoted to the handling of incomplete information.  As such, it complements probability theory. It differs from the latter by the use of a pair of dual set-functions (possibility and necessity measures) instead of only one. This feature makes it easier to capture partial ignorance"(Dubois, Nguyen and Prade, 2000). 

For example, type in any word in Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other internet search engine and hit enter: your internet provider will produce millions of like-minded documents with that one word contained in those documents. Every search engine uses "Fuzzy Logic" technology to return like-minded words. This is the same archaic technology being used by TurnItIn software, with one exception: they are comparing a student's work with the entire Internet and returning a false positive result. This in turn creates confusion on the student’s part because they know they just created their prose, yet TurnItIn claims they stole a majority of it from another student. What is the end result? A talented and creative student is charged with plagiarism – even by a once favorite teacher.

When we allow old technology to rule the classroom and destroy the creative juices of our students, we have failed those students. The caring teacher who is actively engaged in the improvement of his or her students has just lost their student to depression, isolation and a potentially time-consuming scandal. Teachers are often overwhelmed with workloads meant for three or four teachers, so they use programs like TurnItIn in order to reduce their exposure. But in abdicating their oversight, those who really suffer are the students.

To use such a software at the expense of a child's creativity, is a slap in the face of the educational system that exists to encourage a child to rise above their circumstances, improve beyond their means, and truly reach for the highest heights through realization of their academic skill. These imposing tools are a simple shortcut that neither helps the individual student, nor the classroom environment at large. It merely represents an area defined by a few self-interested cowards who have damaged the integrity of student work for the majority of responsible scholars. We all know that plagiarism hurts effective teaching and learning, and ultimately destroys aspiring students from trying in a system that has burned them in the past.

But it begs the question: Just how big of a problem is plagiarism? Is it something that everybody does to some degree – some just more skilled and deliberate than others? Are we talking of a disease of pandemic proportions, a veritable academic plague that everyone suffers from at least partial symptoms? Or is it just a secret sin that affects only a small percentage of students?

Of 56,611 undergraduates surveyed in a 2005 study by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity, 37 percent admitted copying Internet material without attribution, compared with 10 percent in 1999. –Emily Sachar 

Plagiarism is a problem. But is it not the responsibility of the teacher to teach the right way to cite a copied material, versus accusing a student of plagiarism? Is it not the teacher’s job to point out mistakes in the classroom where the student can learn from their mistakes in a safe environment? Instead of teaching, many instructors take the word of a piece of software over doing their job properly. They neglect teaching students effective writing skills, which includes proper citations of others’ work. Isn’t that part of the college experience: growing, learning as well as teaching proper referencing?

TurnItIn software proponents admit their software benefits at best, “the vast majority.” But a further viewing of the Duke University study shows the vast majority of students cheat in some manner. So is the system helping to turn the tide of student cheating simply by its use? That is what TurnItIn would want you to believe. Yet their methods of detection are suspect at best, and libelous at worst.

In a plea to his university, Mike Smit encourages those who make the decisions to take a closer look at TurnItIn and its implications.

“I doubt the service's efficacy. In a series of test submissions, I found that even very, very minor alterations to text copied from a paper known to be in the database were sufficient to trick the system. TurnItIn.com has known properties. If it is so easily fooled, it loses both its deterrent value and its inherent value.” –Mike Smit [TurnItIn.com at Dalhousie - An Open Letter]

Smit goes on to state how a writer who publishes his own weblog, assuming that TurnItIn adds this internet content to its database, could end up plagiarizing themselves by testing positive for expanding on their own work! Since each entry in the TurnItIn database is allegedly stripped of authorship, a published author taking a university course could end up being flagged for using selections from their own published work.  “In this world of blogging and instant online publishing, it may be more common than you think.” [Smit] 

David E. Harrington goes further by conducting his own test:

I wanted to test TurnItIn but needed a suspicious manuscript. I had one in my hands—Shoplifting: A Social History. I suspected Kerry Segrave of plagiarism when I heard echoes of his book while reading New York Times articles he cites. He cites a lot of them—35 in the first 14 pages! To investigate my suspicions, I created a document containing the 14 pages stripped of direct quotations and another one containing the New York Times articles. I began by searching for identical phrases (of at least 6 words) in the two documents using the open source software Copyfind, which highlighted the matches it found in each document and produced the metric that 15 percent of the early pages of Shoplifting were taken verbatim from the New York Times. – David Harrington, the Economist 

But this 15% positive test did not tell the whole story:

This measure captures only the most flagrant form of plagiarism, where passages are copied from one document and pasted unchanged into another.  Just as shoplifters slip the goods they steal under coats or into pocketbooks, most plagiarists tinker with the passages they copy before claiming them as their own.  In other words, they cloak their thefts by scrambling the passages and right-clicking on words to find synonyms.  This isn’t writing; it is copying, cloaking and pasting; and it’s plagiarism. –[Harrington, same source]

Harrington notes that scrambling words, paraphrasing sentences, and re-wording by using an in-program thesaurus are ways to avoid honest detection of dishonest practices. After further analysis, he discovers that almost 33% of the work is actually plagiarized by the use of order changes and synonyms from the original articles cited. He even reached out to the TurnItIn support team, but was told the lack of subscriptions to certain online publications negated the full reach of their software. What good is a system that cannot access all works with potential to be plagiarized? The sample size of the database is not nearly extensive enough to fully protect the educational institution from unoriginal work.

In this case, knowledge of the methods used may be inherent to the problem.

By noting the use of certain software detection methods, are colleges merely informing the real cheaters of the tricks they’ll need to employ to avoid discovery? And do the law-abiding students really suffer without adequate restraint on the part of the law-breakers? If these cheaters are going to find ways to cheat regardless of software used, is the benefit of not competing with these cheaters lost in the wash? Leaving the well-meaning students with an intrusive and accusatory device that might trip them up at the expense of their time, money, and academic integrity?

What happens to the minority of users who do not intend to cheat yet must spend hours trying to revise and reword their original work simply because a piece of software warns them of potential plagiarism? What happens to the well-meaning student who lacks the skills necessary to synthesize the guided thoughts of others in producing a truly original work? TurnItIn only favors those who conform to its mold of academic inquiry. Its effectiveness has not been fully investigated. And its reach may not cover all possible sources of plagiaristic work.

 “According to iParadigms the only option available to a student no matter what iParadigms does to the student (including selling his or her personal information to spammers, criminals, or a “paper mill”) is to stop using the site.  In return for this it seems that neither the teachers nor students are guaranteed that the site will even work at all, or that information they submit to the site will not be stolen by hackers (see “Warranty Disclaimer” section).” –Fairfax County Public School Principal’s letter  

Those who are concerned about the security implications and intellectual abuses of this software are left with little to no recourse. They may file complaints or lawsuits, but at their own risk and expense. Per the contracts with educational institutions, TurnItIn is not even financially liable to cover the expense of the schools in such lawsuits. The legal cowardice and dummy science has to end. TurnItIn owes much more to an academic world that is increasingly trusting their company and their database to help their clients produce better scholars. And the security implications do not disappear for the dissatisfied, as their only legal recourse is to excuse themselves from future use of the software – their past submissions already deemed the legal property of the database. And these past submissions may expose the student’s information should the database ever be hacked. At best, TurnItIn leaves past, present and future clients exposed.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Part 4B:  Academia Plagiarizes its Students