Plagiarism Primer for Parents

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One great way to instruct your children about the dangers of plagiarism is to have them do a short research paper on the topic.  I encourage you to have them research plagiarism online, and then write a one page report on what they learn.  It’s not hard to learn enough about plagiarism in a short amount of time, and just taking a short time to do a little research is often all you need.

For parents, I do have some tips to guide you.

Read, close the book, and write.

First, it can be easy to avoid plagiarism of print material.  With print material, encourage your student to read the material, with or without taking notes.  After looking at the material, they can close the book.  When they write about what they have read, it is not generally considered plagiarism when you write down your ideas after reading them, without quoting the source word for word.  (Of course, if you have a child with a photographic memory, that certainly becomes more complex!)

Quoting Authority vs. Implementing Feedback

Plagiarism may involve quoting an authority, without giving credit to the source of your ideas.  That is very different than receiving feedback from a teacher and implementing that idea.  Educators help children write by brainstorming with them and providing feedback.  In the process of brainstorming, you may suggest some ideas for improving your student’s writing.  If they use your ideas, they are not plagiarizing you.  Instead, they are implementing feedback from their writing instructor (which has to be far better than disregarding their writing instructor!)

Lying is Wrong

Plagiarism is complicated.  Lying is simple.  When you read stories about plagiarism in schools, it may sound complicated until you look at the details of the news reports.  The big problem with plagiarism isn’t complicated at all!  The big problem is students CHEATING.  They are looking for book reports and essays online, cutting and pasting entire documents, and then turning those papers in for a grade, as if they wrote it themselves.  There are some nuances about plagiarism, I know.  But the issue that colleges are concerned about is wholesale cheating, and lying about who wrote the content of a written paper.  To counter that problem, high school and college teachers subscribe to services on the internet.  They scan the student’s paper, and the computer program will look for papers available on the internet that are similar, and tell them what percentage of the paper was stolen.  Then the teacher knows the student just flat-out lied about writing that paper.  To counter the problem of cheating in your homeschool, focus on values.  Teach your children not to lie.  If they would never dream of downloading a paper online and saying that they wrote it themselves, then the biggest issue about plagiarism has been effectively handled in your homeschool.

Last year Matt, Alex and I were interviewed for a new documentary on education in America.  Flunked was recently released and we received permission to post the portion of the documentary which showed our interview.  In the clip below, we are talking about our public school experience and gifted education.  You can read more about the movie here. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

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