Another tricky thing about citations, is this: What if you know something, that probably isn't common knowledge, but you don't know where you got the information from? For a high school student, should they look around various texts to find a citation to provide? And, not to be a post-modernist about this, what is providing citations for anyhow? I think it is a good idea -- but not so much to give ownership to the idea to someone else - but rather, to give credibility to the paper the student is writing! In other words, it's as if the teacher is reading the paper with the unwritten statement, "I don't believe you." and the unwritten question, "Can you prove this is true, by showing that this information comes from a source that I *will* believe?" Again, sorry for my post-modernist questioning - I tend to hate this aspect of myself (but alas, the culture I was raised in - always questioning, never accepting - I'm working on it, though, at least within myself)... I can remember in a religious conte
xt, relating a story I had heard from some of the monks in the desert from the 7th century. It was a particulary enjoyable story, to me, at least - and I found myself quite hurt when I was asked, "What is your source for this assertation?" Of course, I tend to be a delicate sort, my curse/blessing, and far too naive for most environments. But this is a different issue than plagiarism, of course. Still, when dozens or hundreds of people write on a particular topic, and the reader is well read on a particular subject, and the subject and its inticrisies become part of the reader, and considering that languages and ideas are often learned in phrases - chunks of words - it shouldn't be surprising that, for example, Martin Luther King Jr's thesis contained chunks of other ppl's works. Often a person doesn't even realize where the information has come from. Indeed, if the person has incorporated this knowledge into his/her general body of personal knowledge - is this not the goal of learning/education? P
roviding citations gives credit where credit is due, perhaps. Providing citations gives credibility to the writer of the report/essay/thesis/paper/book. But it seems like it is knowledge that is held out "at arm's length" -- knowledge that isn't incorporated. Just my random thoughts, from a non-teacher.
