Dialectical Journal: Howard

Author/Title:

Rebecca Moore Howard: Postpedagogical Reflections on Plagiarism and Capital

Summary: Fantastic essay by Howard exploring the relationship between various types of capital and students/instructors/institutions. Howard boldly claims that plagiarism is not something that can or will be solved by pedagogy and instead of offering solutions, asks for a response from composition instructors.

Reflection	Quote
This is the answer no one ever wanted to say or believe, that we cannot fix this problem though pedagogy—I think Howard is taking a real stand here—it feels very risky, but I completely believe and support her position. That makes me wonder what other people’s responses were to this essay…	“Yet the more I study student plagiarism, the more I identify problems not susceptible to pedagogical solution” (219).
This is just offensive—people who plagiarize or engage in some type of textual theft are not always brigands and thieves, we need to take a closer look.	“Dennis Baron speculates on the possibility of a “low-moral threshold” in plagiarist” (220).
This is such a sticky debate—on the one hand I am driven to place blame on the “ownership” and “capitalism” copyrighting did to text—but that is not entirely fair, authors deserve to claim ownership over their work and make money for what they do—but I can’t help but wondering what our world would look like if we truly lived without these notions of property… :/	“The development of copyright in England was based on Locke’s asserting of creators’ moral rights to ‘own’ the fruits of their labor, and that has affected our culture’s way of thinking about plagiarism” (220).
Great, I love that Howard is specifically using economic vocabulary—understanding this almost as a clash of classes shifts the perceptive and, at least for me, offers me a larger understanding of the “competition” she later addresses.	“Whether it is in teaching moral codes or citation rules, an assumption that runs throughout the discourse of plagiarism is that the “solution” to it like in the classroom.” Further “[a]lthough teaching citation and encouraging morality are worthy endeavors, students’ plagiarisms are not “solved” by these endeavors. Pedagogy can’t fix plagiarism, because students and faculty are too much working from different economic systems” (220).
Economic capital: The money and property whose accumulation secures dominant class power. Symbolic capital: Prestige, reputation, fame. Social capital: Credentials derived from one’s group memberships. The social capital that attaches to a group multiples the cultural capital of each member and functions as symbolic capital. Cultural capital: Expertise and credentials that are linked to the body, attributed to the indicidual, and are thus nontransferable.        Three variants—embodied, objectified, and              institutionalized cultural capital. (221)	“In Bourdieu’s analysis, educators and students a like are defined by their participation in cetain forms of capital: economic capital (in its different kinds), cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic capital (prestige, reputation, fame)” (221). ßexpanded definitions from Howard’s essay
Here the institution is making a product	“The acquisition of embodied capital is an act of self-improvement. In its objectified state, cultural capital becomes a materialized product, such as artworks. In this state it is transmissible” (221).
Here the institution is giving value to the product they made by giving “it” a pedigree	“In the institutionalized state of cultural capital, performative magic is effected through the granting of academic degrees” (222).
“We assign writing task because:” 1.we believe writing is an important “skill” or tool” 2. we believe our students will lead more satisfying lives if they can write well 3. we believe that practice in writing produces a more accomplished writer 4. we believe [writing tasks] will lead to greater degrees of student self-knowledge or self-satisfaction 5. in order to measure how well the student has learned […] writing itself   (222).	“write-to-learn” principles (222) ßWhy do we assign these tasks?
If academic institutions do anything, it is this use of cultural capital.	“Bourdieu is probably best known by educators for his articulation of how the educated social groups (professional groups or classes) use cultural capital as a social strategy to hold or gain status and respect in society” (223).
This really troubles me—because it really is very true—it is the cycle of cycles and you don’t even know you are a part of it until it is too late to escape, it’s like the gang you can’t leave…we should all get spider web tattoos…(and if you don’t understand that reference, I’ll explain it to you, but you gotta ask J )	“By urging on our students the importance of the “knowledge and skills” we offer to impart, we are inescapably urging that our students value us, too—that they desire to be like us, at least insofar as they are to desire the capital we hold” (223).
Beyond driving instructors to disdain their students, so too does the reverse. It is unrealistic to think we are going to form relationships with each and every one of our students—but as the instructors, we must be conscientious of this struggle and be the mature authority in the classroom that can let go of our baggage.	“At stake is a competition between instructors’ goals of embodied cultural capital for its intrinsic value, and students’ goals of institutionalized cultural capital for its value in conversion to economic capital. That competition can drive instructors to explicit contempt for their students” (224).
L	“Numbing.” That’s the effect student writing has on instructors” (225).
Especially in today’s consumer society—college is just that go-between. That lay over between high school and their “real” job.	“Students may regard writing in the academy not as a means of personal or intellectual growth (embodied cultural capital) but as a requirement for a grade, a credit, a degree (institutionalized cultural capital, which then translates into the accumulation of economic capital)” (226).
I am ashamed to admit that I have felt this way more than once—almost as if some of my instructors were really out to get me, out to fail me no matter what I did or tried to do within the course—it can be a frustrating and painful experience to feel as though someone wants you to fail short of your goal.	“From the students’ perspective, the instructor may be an impediment to their project, an obstacle between them and the grades that will contribute to the institutionalized cultural capital that can be directly translated into economic capital” (226).
So if this number of students feels this way about the work assigned to them—what types of work do we create that allows them more authority over authorship? How do we give their writing value?	“Only 35% thought that ‘writing a paper or project for a college course constituted authorship” (228) Further, “[t]he writing itself, then, has no intrinsic value” (228).
We have two things going on here—one is students feeling like the work assigned to them is “busy work” and not really meant to help them in any way. The second thing is that students only see plagiarism as wrong if they get caught—so you have frustrated kids resentful of the “busy work” they are assigned and seek out ways of reducing the time it takes to complete those assignments by copying/cheating/etc.	“[…] students who believe that the objective is not writing but the speedy completion of writing tasks in order to accumulate material forms of capital. […] unacknowledged appropriation of others’ texts is bad only if one is caught at and punished for it, impeding the march toward that economic goal” (228-9).
I wonder what it would look like if we actually used this site for an assignment—comparing and contrasting the 10hr method to the 10 week method…???	“Similarly, we parody the writing process just as surely as does StudentHacks.org when we create assignments intended to thwart plagiarism, instead of assignments designed to engage students in stages of inquiry that invite them into the intellectual life” (229).
Howard’s “postpedagogical” claim explored through this essay.	“[…] our classrooms, many—perhaps most—of our students do not subscribe to the goals that have brought us instructors to that classroom” (229).
So like I was discussing early, instructors really have to let a lot of their own baggage go in the classroom—not an easy task, but with so much out of our control, there has to be a point where we allow for the expectations of others to be visualized along side ours.	“Composition instructors will benefit from recognizing that students and their writing can never be brought, by pedagogy or any other means, into full compliance with instructors’ preexisting textural ideals” (230).