The History Paper, Part IV: No Cheating? 

Ray W. Karras

Maybe Trudeau wants us to believe that the student looks sad because he knows he deliberately cheated.  This is certainly possible, but it is just as likely that the cartoonist had something else in mind.  Perhaps the most remiss—the guiltiest?—party here is not even in the scene.  This latter, and hypothetical, possibility is the concern of this article. 

Out of sight in the before and after of this episode is the history teacher who assigned the student’s history paper and will soon grade it.  Suppose this imaginary teacher told his or her history class something like this:

“Write a report on the Louisiana Purchase.  Use your own words because you know I will not accept plagiarism.  Fire up those brain cells and think!”

Hypothetical as they are, these instructions, or some version of them, may sound familiar to people who work in schools.  This assignment seems to beg for trouble—and unnecessary trouble at that.   Teachers can and should use strategies to help prevent plagiarism—and improve other aspects of student performance—when they assign history papers as homework.  Many teachers might already use the strategies suggested in what follows, but gathering them in one place may be helpful.

1.  Do not assign “reports.”  A report is essentially nothing but a description of events.  To write one, a student need only reproduce what he or she finds in the mother of all reports, the nearest encyclopedia.  For some, the World Book will do, as it has since the sixth grade; others may consult the more sophisticated Encyclopedia Britannica.  In these heavy books students will find facts already selected, ideas already developed, and thoughts already expressed by professional writers.  Very little thinking is left for students to do.  When using encyclopedias in this way one hardly needs to attend history classes, or even to go to school at all.  All one needs is an assignment like the one above, for the Doonesbury student did indeed write a report, even though his paper turns out to be less a report on the Louisiana Purchase than one on what the World Book said about it. 

2.  Do assign essays that require students to think.  It is hard to plagiarize when one thinks for oneself.  The thematic essay is one variety that requires thinking.  Instead of asking students to write “about” the Louisiana Purchase, require them to inquire into only one aspect of it.  Classroom discussion can raise productive questions.  What were the roles of Sacajawea and other Native Americans in the Lewis and Clark expedition?  What scientific discoveries did the explorers make?  What Constitutional problems did Thomas Jefferson face in deciding to purchase Louisiana?  What diplomatic negotiations with France were involved?  The student addressing any one of these questions will find only limited help in an encyclopedia entry; several additional sources, which should be footnoted, will be necessary.  The student will have to synthesize eclectic information to write the essay; synthesizing is, of course, a valuable thinking skill.  The result should be a unique essay that only the student who wrote it could write. 

More challenging than a thematic essay is one that makes a historical argument in which the student claims and supports a controversial hypothesis answering a historical question (2).  For example, was it just plain luck that enabled Jefferson to purchase Louisiana (3)?  As a strict constructionist of the Constitution, was Jefferson hypocritical in buying Louisiana, as his opponents claimed?  Was there any real scientific value to the Lewis and Clark expedition?  Did Sacajawea betray her people by helping Lewis and Clark?  Answering any one of these questions in an historical essay requires the student to claim and defend an informed opinion of his or her own.  This personal commitment reduces the temptation to copy the work of others. 

Plagiarism, then, is often only a symptom of a deeper trouble, namely, a failure to teach students how to express what they think about the history their teachers want them to know.  Students, like everyone else, like to speak for themselves when they think they know what they are talking about. 

3.  The essay organization strategy.  It is worth a teacher’s while to write an instruction sheet telling exactly how he or she wants students to organize their essays.  Instructions like these are unlikely to be found in any other classroom, nor will any book strictly follow them.  The more idiosyncratic the teacher’s instructions, the more effective they are likely to be.  What cannot be found elsewhere cannot be plagiarized.  The teacher may quite arbitrarily insist that students follow such exclusive organizational rules. 

An instruction sheet for organizing a thematic paper might tell students: 

A.  In the first paragraph of your essay tell exactly what aspect of your subject you will write about.  Say no more in this paragraph.  (For example: “Thomas Jefferson faced serious Constitutional problems when he decided to purchase Louisiana.”)

B.  In the first sentence of the second paragraph announce one aspect of your subject. (For example: “Jefferson had to face the problem of strict construction of the Constitution.”)  In the following sentences of this paragraph give specific evidence and explain how it illustrates the aspect you stated in the first sentence. 

C.  In the third and in each of the following paragraphs (except the last one), deal with a different aspect of your subject.  Treat each of these exactly as you did in the second paragraph.  (One example: “Jefferson had to deal with Constitutional objections from his political opponents.”) 

D.  In the last paragraph, simply repeat the statement you made in your first paragraph. 

4.  Practice anti-plagiarism exercises in the classroom.  In this strategy, students are given two or three minutes to read one selected page of their textbooks.  Then the books are closed and the students are allowed five minutes to write all they can remember from what they have just read.  Then books are reopened and students can correct for accuracy and detail.  Finally, students might share their papers with each other and discuss the fascinating fact that different people can find different things in the same source.  The same procedure should be followed when writing an essay at home. 
Some students will not be proud of their work in this classroom exercise.  “My writing is not as good as the textbook’s,” some will say.  The teacher’s proper reply, of course, is: “If you could write like the textbook you should go to work for the textbook company.  Anyway, I like your writing better than the textbook’s because it is your own.”  (History teachers can doubtless find a suitable response to their colleagues in the English department who complain that students’ “dramatic improvements” in writing skills are being undermined by the history department.)

5.  The strategy of fame.  Good student essays should not be wasted.  They should be marked with “A”s, put through a copying machine and made available as models for the whole class.  Truly grand essays might be marked “A+” and catalogued and shelved in the school library.  The “published” students will be delighted, and so, for many reasons, will the teacher.  It is a very bold and foolhardy pirate indeed who will copy work so famously displayed.  It is also wise to keep a permanent file of outstanding student essays.  Younger siblings and friends have a way of inheriting the works of their elders, sometimes years later. 

6. Checking sources.  Teachers cannot read all the sources student essayists use, but spot checks can achieve much.  Look especially at the sources of the best essays; usually a page or two of these sources will reveal the truth.  Papers that are too well-written are sometimes too good to be true.  And before reading any student essays, it is a good idea to scan the appropriate entries in the World Book and the Britannica.  Echoes of such works can often be heard if plagiarism has occurred. 

While these strategies are not airtight guarantees against plagiarism, teachers who use them—or others of their own invention—can at least feel that they are serving the cause of their students’, and of their own, integrity. 

Back to Doonesbury.  What grade should Trudeau’s history student receive on his paper?  If his hypothetical history teacher gave an assignment like the one imagined at the beginning of this article, and if no further precautions were taken, then surely the student should get an honor grade.  As instructed, he wrote a “report.”  He used his own words. . . sort of.  Instead of copying “initiated by Thomas Jefferson”, he wrote “at the initiation of Thomas Jefferson”; instead of “The purchased area. . .”, he wrote “The area that was purchased. . .”, and he may have made additional creative changes before he was finished.  His mother is surely correct, for his writing is as professional as the source from which it was copied.  As for those brain cells, he did “independent research”—didn’t he?  Apparently he met the assignment he was given. 
And yet, why does he look so sad? 

1. Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury, in The Boston Sunday Globe, 12 March 1995. 
2. For detailed treatments of essays that argue, see Ray W. Karras, “Writing Essays that Make Historical Arguments,” OAH Magazine of History (Summer 1994): 54-7; and “Essay Assignment: Write an Historical Argument,” The History Teacher, forthcoming.
3. Almost any student may be entertained as well as instructed by Henry Adams’s “The Louisiana Treaty” in The History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, abridged and edited by Ernest Samuels (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1967), 177-93.  This chapter contains the hilarious perfumed bathtub scene in which Napoleon orders the  sale of Louisiana. 
4. An example of such instructions is given in Karras, OAH Magazine of History and in The History Teacher, op. cit.