‘Kopya’

With the 40th anniversary of the declaration of martial law coming up, expect a flurry of events at the University of the Philippines to remind the nation of that era.  The College of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Diliman will have an exhibit and symposium, details of which I’ll share with you as soon as plans are finalized.

An early event is coming up on Aug. 16, 6:30 p.m., at the College of Music in Abelardo Hall with a concert featuring protest songs, to be sung by Lester Demetillo, Becky Abraham and Edru Abraham. Concert tickets are at P300 each, with a 20-percent discount for students and senior citizens with valid IDs. (I’m glad there will be that senior-citizen discount since many of those who were around during martial law are now members of the Club 20, i.e., seniors who are entitled to 20-percent discounts for various services.)

Today I’m discussing, not martial law itself, but the problem of plagiarism, which relates, albeit tangentially, to martial law. We think of those dark days as distant, associated with dictatorship, but we forget martial law was also a matter of national morality. Many Filipinos wanted martial law, thinking it was the best solution to the country’s problems, including “gobyerno” itself, a term that meant all kinds of maladies from inefficiency to corruption.

Forty years after martial law, we still gripe constantly about “gobyerno,” with some yearning for a ruler, or rulers, with an iron fist. We forget that so many of our problems are rooted in a culture that actually tolerates dishonesty, and that this starts in our schools. “Pakopya” used to mean asking to copy assignments or an exam. In this digital age, students do a bit of homework by surfing the Internet and then finding articles to cut, paste and submit.

Terrible mistake

The problem is not limited to the Philippines. Just last week popular CNN talk show host and Time magazine columnist Fareed Zakariah was suspended by Time for a month on charges of plagiarism. Zakariah admitted he had made a “terrible mistake” in a column he wrote on gun control for the magazine (8/1/12), with a passage that was very similar to that in an article by Jill Lepore in New Yorker magazine (4/23/12).

I thought it would be useful to look at the two passages to give a concrete example of what plagiarism is, and the high price one pays for such an offence. I’m quoting the two passages from the New York Times (8/10/12), in an article by Christine Haughney. (The article came in a section called Media Decoder, nicely subtitled “behind the screens, between the lines,” dedicated to monitoring the mass media.)

Zakariah wrote: “Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at UCLA, documents the actual history in ‘Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.’ Guns were regulated in the US from the earliest years of the Republic. Laws that banned the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813. Other states soon followed: Indiana in 1820, Tennessee and Virginia in 1838, Alabama in 1839 and Ohio in 1859. Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas (Texas!) explained in 1893, the ‘mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.’”

That passage was very similar to an excerpt from Lepore’s article: “As Adam Winkler, a constitutional-law scholar at UCLA, demonstrates in a remarkably nuanced new book, ‘Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,’ firearms have been regulated in the United States from the start. Laws banning the carrying of concealed weapons were passed in Kentucky and Louisiana in 1813, and other states soon followed: Indiana (1820), Tennessee and Virginia (1838), Alabama (1839), and Ohio (1859). Similar laws were passed in Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. As the governor of Texas explained in 1893, the ‘mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man.’”

Notice that Zakariah did not do a word-for-word rendition of Lepore’s article. One might even argue he was only paraphrasing. But the two passages are so similar. Not only that, there was no acknowledgement of Lepore’s article, so it was a clear case of plagiarism.

Yes, it would have helped if he acknowledged Lepore, but the problem is there was nothing original in his passage. Except for a few changes in words, it was really Lepore’s work.

There is an excellent Web resource on plagiarism produced by Purdue University, which I urge educators and students to read: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/1/. The link I gave is only to the first page. You should click on the right-hand corner, “Next Resource,” to move on to the next page. That first page does give very important information that gives the bottom line on plagiarism (for example, crediting others, using authorities or experts) but suggests going a step further—for example, by writing something original, by improving on or disagreeing with others’ opinion, and, mainly “writing with your own voice.”

Topics covered include when one should give credit, “common knowledge,” when to use direct quotations, doing a good paraphrase, and even an exercise to test you on your understanding of plagiarism.

Ritualized papers

In those guidelines, Purdue University notes there may be “cultural differences” in the way plagiarism is defined. I would argue it’s not so much cultural differences as a difference in the way academic institutions respond. Policies on plagiarism have evolved through the years as new challenges like the Internet have emerged. The better universities in the Philippines are becoming stricter in defining and penalizing plagiarism, but I have been appalled by papers of students in other universities where entire papers are lifted from the Internet. My suspicion is that the teachers don’t even read the essays and term papers.

Educators have to rethink the now ritualized requirement of a term paper or essays for college courses, and I say “ritualized” because the submission parallels our practice of religion, specifically going to Mass. What “counts” now is simply attending Mass, and never mind that it’s in the middle of a noisy mall, done while eating a hamburger, surfing the Net on a smartphone, or flirting with the cute guy or girl a few meters away.

With term papers and essays, all that counts, it seems, is the submission. What’s lost is the original intention of these papers, which is to get students to research, to read, to get different data, views and opinions and to synthesize them into a paper, and to contribute one’s own insights.

I should mention there is another major scandal wracking the American publishing industry, this one involving Jonah Lehrer, who it turns out had fabricated quotes from the singer Bob Dylan in his best-selling book “Imagine: How Creativity Works.” Here is a case that does not involve plagiarism, but is still a form of gross dishonesty, notwithstanding the title of the book. The offense was considered serious enough for his publisher to pull out copies of the book from the market.

(E-mail: mtan@inquirer.com.ph)