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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: November 1, 2003
Latest Update: June 4, 2004
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Sanctioned Plagiarism for Conceptual Linking

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, November 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

I want to remind you of the definition of sanctioned plagiarism, just in case someone had come along who missed our earlier discussions. We learn language, we are socialized into social behavior by modeling and interpretation. We learn writing the same way. Read deeply and widely and you will write well. But the ritual categoriaztion of rules of writing has intimidated and inhibited many of us. This lecture is on how to copy with permission for the sake of developing good writing habits. To me, that's sanctioned plagiarism, and I wish everyone would practice it.

In art, we go into museums to learn by copying the masters. In literature, we read the classics, we explore them, and when we begin to write, they are our models. No one would let you build your own car without years as an apprentice to fixing and learning from the cars of those who have gone before you.

Using multimedia to learn and explore social theory and social problems is a relatively new willingness of the university to recognize that we do not all learn in the same way, in the same time frame, and with the same results. That doesn't mean that we don't learn. It just means that the academic world does not yet have a strong enough grasp on effective measures of learning, so they settle for tests and rote learning, and stressful, make believe worlds when the real one would be enough.

The Fall 2003 exhibition of Naked Space is a first effort to offer a prototype of multimedia interactive modes of learning that can be shared with families, communities, friends, and can gather us into much larger communities of learning that will support the small groups that are necessary for some learning activities. I recognize that in statistics class, I need to work with tiny groups some of the time. But some of the time, with the technology of the Internet, I can allow students to review, edit, and practice at their convenience, wherever they may be. Then they come back to find me, singly, in small groups, in much larger groups to clarify their understanding.

We are discovering that the ability to move from tiny clusters of two or three to larger groups of five or six to whole class size and then to lectures and discussion questions built on what we did in all these groups is a much better way to learn. We know each other; we know who's best at doing what; and we know that it's OK to share in what jeanne calls "sanctioned plagiarism." We're also learning team work, and we aren't wasting our time in pre-structured groups created for the sake of someone else's vision of "cooperative learning," and which sometimes consist of busy work to jar us awake, and bear little or no relationship to delving seriously into academic discourse.

Our groups are forming naturally. They're not required. We're as welcome to withdraw and learn on our own as we are to share. But we've also been given enough time for sharing with those who wish to share that we've learned how much others have to offer. We're not afraid of sharing anymore. And cooperative learning tends to obscure the lack of trust between students as well as between students and teacher.

Our Naked Space is based upon trust, built slowly through show and tell and share that is then conceptually related to our theoretical focus. Naked Space is not a space at all. Though in class jeanne always guards zealously the empty space around which our concentric circles of sharing are formed. The only thing we ask is that we all be able to see each other. So, of course, we disrupt the rows of desks in every classroom. The back of someone's head leads to an arrogance of denial. That's not a person; it's the back of a head. Those rows lead to conformity, nonanswerability, finding incredible discomfort if you try to turn around to see who's talking behind you, and to an acceptance of the student as a numer in a carefully organized hierarchy on monologic nonanswerability. So we break them up, and show and tell.

We aren't having controlled classroom discussions on lectures and discussion questions. We have those on the Internet, where everyone can join in and get published on our site. We're having illocutionary discourse, sharing our deepest feelings about some of these issues, so that we can see how social theory affects us, how our beliefs affect Others, and engaging one another in the aesthetic process of focused interrelationships. And with each discussion, no matter how deep the affect, we work at bringing ourselves back to the more formal space of theory and conceptual linking of that feeling to our understanding of the issues. The empty space of our circle as we engage in these discussions is what we are calling the naked space, the space we reserve not for agreeing or disagreeing, not for instrumental reason and trying to convince someone that we're right, but for hearing one another in good faith as humans with differences, differences in belief, in values, in life experiences. In this naked space we are creating an aesthetic product, a new learning community, not linear, not tied to the textbook, though referred to the text, not exclusive, but inclusive. We do not test because a test would not affect our community of learners. We do things; like art and dance and music; we talk deeply about all the social issues that come before us; not to fix them, or to linger on how others would fix them, but to try to find how those issues matter in our lives and shape our lived experiences; in order not to be complicit in the exclusion and/or exploitations of those with fewer of life's gifts than we presently enjoy.