I have friends who teach. One of them was sick and asked me to sub this morning, which I am thrilled to do. It is such a kick walking into a classroom unprepared. You have so little time to capture their imaginations and hold their interest, but when you do, it is a hoot. And if, 80 minutes later, they walk out thinking that they learned something useful, well. It’s a heady thing.
Our topic for today was integrity, maintaining ethics in research and academic writing, the proper ways and times to quote authors and cite sources. It was fun, a most enlightening discussion. They students agreed that plagiarism was bad, which I take as a good sign. Most of them admitted that they knew people who had cheated or plagiarized another author for reports, but we agreed that not only was it wrong, it was fairly stupid, because anything they can find on the Internet, so can the teacher. A lesson for us all.
