Plagiarism, what? Here??

English teacher Suzanne Linder has written a very thoughtful open letter to students on the recent rash of plagiarism she is seeing in her classroom. Though I usually try to keep things light here, I feel compelled to reflect on her message. Some thoughts in no particular order:

• In my experience, plagiarizing (or cheating) well generally takes at least as much effort as doing the actual work in the first place. In other words, if you copy and paste directly, or even paraphrase, you are probably going to get caught. Just as the Internet has made it easy to plagiarize, the Internet has made it easy to catch plagiarizers. I guess the temptation overrules common sense.
  
• Why don't we use one of those plagiarism detection services that are so popular in schools and universities these days? A bunch of reasons (disclaimer: my reasons). First, these services assume guilt. All papers are typically filtered through the service before the teacher sees them. I can hardly think of anything more antithetical to Uni's culture and ethos (then again, isn't plagiarism also?). Second, they require that students turn over their intellectual property and private words to a third party. Third, they cost schools lots of money that is desperately needed for real educational purposes. And when plagiarism is typically easy to identify, why pay to have it detected? I could go on.
  
• It's true that some assignments seem to invite plagiarism. When there's no analysis component, when no true inquiry is required, when it seems like all that's being asked of a student is to parrot what they find. Some in my field have issued a call to "ban the bird units" like these. I find, however, that Uni teachers don't assign too many bird units. They do ask for thoughtful synthesis and analysis. They also have high expectations and they care about their students. So what gives?