Friday, June 05, 2015

WEST BOCA HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL MARK STENNER ACCUSED OF PLAGIARIZING GRADUATION SPEECH FROM David McCullough, Jr.

From within the post at BocaNewsNow:


On the plagiarism accusation, both the Palm Beach Post and the Sun Sentinel report that Stenner borrowed heavily from a now famous speech given by David McCullough, Jr. in 2012, The speech featured tough talk — telling students they are “not special” and where they go from here is what matters. That speech led to a book deal.

From the Palm Beach Post:

“On Thursday, Stenner acknowledged his mistake, telling the Sun Sentinel that he ‘should have said this was in part taken from (McCullough). Be he insisted that he didn’t consider what he did to be plagiarism. “I take things off the internet and things and clean them up.”




link: http://bocanewsnow.com/2015/06/04/west-boca-principal-mark-stenner-accused-of-plagiarism-sent-us-bizarre-email/

Recall the 2008 post on IPBiz
TechDirt: plagiarism as re-imagination and collaboration
, which included


On the subject of inevitability, TechDirt has a post titled Is It Really So Bad If A Student Plagiarizes A Speech? specifically on the Palo Alto High plagiarism matter [of a graduation speech], but definitely extend-able. Some text:

We've discussed how silly the concept of "plagiarism" is in many contexts once you look at the details. It's a concept that needs to be rethought -- as it often really represents someone reimagining a work in a different, and potentially valuable context. In fact, we've seen a few plagiarized defenses of plagiarism that are pieces of art by themselves.

Some of the TechDirt material:

It can be especially silly in school, where what some people consider plagiarism is really no different than collaboration.


is closely related to earlier TechDirt material, as, for example, to the spin TechDirt put on the "burning pajamas" plagiarism incidents [wherein hundreds of college applications mentioned "burning a hole in pyjamas at age eight" working with a chemistry set].

However, a more reasonable way of looking at it, is that it's teaching students the value of collaborative work (...) it's not all about just getting off easy by copying content, and more about a more collaborative approach to content.

Same old, same old at TechDirt.

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