[p2p-research] More on "Does the Internet Makes Kids Stupid(er)" from NY Times

[Michel Bauwens]

As a further follow-up to “Does the Internet Make Kids Stupid(er)” today’s
NY Times had an interesting “editorial observer” article entitled
 “Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name)”.  See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/opinion/13tue4.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

The gist is that cutting and pasting rather than thinking and analyzing
starts early and is/will be hard to change and performance will be
undermined as a result.  Unfortunately, there is no suggestion as to how
this practice might be changed. Any thoughts from this group?  More/better
software to catch cheaters...a scholastic police state?  More ethics?

Here’s the conclusion from the NY Times:

*Prof. Pritchard and his colleagues illustrated the point in a study of
cheating behavior by M.I.T. students who used an online system to complete
homework. The students who were found to have copied the most answers from
others started out with the same math and physics skills as their
harder-working classmates. But by skipping the actual work in homework, they
fell behind in understanding and became significantly more likely to fail.

The Pritchard axiom — that repetitive cheating undermines learning — has
ominous implications for a world in which even junior high school students
cut and paste from the Internet instead of producing their own writing.

If we look closely at plagiarism as practiced by youngsters, we can see that
they have a different relationship to the printed word than did the
generations before them. When many young people think of writing, they don’t
think of fashioning original sentences into a sustained thought. They think
of making something like a collage of found passages and ideas from the
Internet.

They become like rap musicians who construct what they describe as new works
by “sampling” (which is to say, cutting and pasting) beats and refrains from
the works of others.

This habit of mind is already pervasive in the culture and will be difficult
to roll back. But parents, teachers and policy makers need to understand
that this is not just a matter of personal style or generational expression.
It’s a question of whether we can preserve the methods through which
education at its best teaches people to think critically and originally.
*

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