The student is not looking me in the eyes, “I wrote that. Those are my words. It is just a coincidence that they were similar to another source. I never saw that source. I came up with that paragraph, just like someone else did.”
Plagiarism was my least favorite student issue. It came in many flavors. Some students took things from the internet and passed them off as their own. Some used quotations or parts of published sources. Others would try to pass off another student’s work as original. Most of the time, their parents made no attempt to defend them. Most of the time, these students came clean and admitted what they had done.
When they owned their mistake and when their parents stood beside me in holding them accountable, we moved forward. They learned a lesson. I never ever called a parent or sat down with a student to talk about this issue unless I was 100% certain that what they had turned in was not their own. There were times I suspected. There were times I had evidence, and there were times I advised students that what they had written was too close to another source.
When I confronted a student and their family, I knew what had happened. I knew that they knew it, too. If the student denies what they had done or their parents look at the theft of the writing and excuse it, the student is reduced back to that child inventing excuses for the broken vase. It turns a teenager into a toddler and their parents into patsies.
If students’ behavior doesn’t matter, if their choices have no effect or consequence, then they really are children. If students cannot be held accountable for their errors and misdeeds, then their successes and achievements are meaningless. They are ineffectual, lame, and impotent. When parents find excuses for their children’s behavior or try to reason it away, their failure to deal with the reality comes at the cost of their own integrity and their child’s growth.
Similarly, when we don’t like the reality of a situation, we may sometimes find logical or probably fantasies that replace the bad news we wish to avoid. We have all done it. We rationalize away things we don’t want to accept. We find soothing excuses that feel better than the harsh facts that we want to wipe away.
A rationalization isn’t a reason. It is an excuse. It is thinking one’s way out of dealing honestly with an unpleasant truth. It is a thin imitation of reason, a shadow lacking the substance of the truth. It is a childish strategy of pretending what you want to believe is true.
And it frees us from doing what needs to be done. It forgives us, lets us off the hook, and gives us phony peace of mind that, at least temporarily, staves off the guilt of lying to ourselves. We are not responsible. We are victims. We didn’t do anything wrong.
There is nothing new or shocking about avoiding responsibility. There is nothing revolutionary about putting on blinders to avoid seeing what is in front of us and escaping into an imaginary world of “what ifs” and “that might not be true” and “someone else is to blame.”
Without honestly and accurately facing the truth, we avoid responsibility for our actions. That is what denial is all about. Without looking at ourselves critically and as dispassionately as we can, we cannot own our errors and learn from them. Without “fessing up” and learning to acknowledge and own the bad as well as the good, we cannot move forward to repair our relationships, learn from our errors, and be better people.
The denial of the truth, the failure to accept responsibility, and the refusal to think critically rob us not only of our adulthood but also of the two of the most important parts of our humanity: reason and responsibility.
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