I imagine what several of the upthread commenters are saying is this:
Whether or not something counts as “lending” likely hinges on the underlying circumstances and on the speaker’s knowledge and intent. There is no categorical answer to your question.
Merely paraphrasing one’s essay (“I argued that the author’s thesis is problematic because …”) wouldn’t be called “lending” by anyone. But verbally reading aloud parts of an essay slowly enough to allow someone else to take accurate notes might. That’s why a lawyer will likely spend time with your daughter, read and compare the two essays, and ask her very specific questions regarding what happened. That’s a good thing and one of the many reasons parents shouldn’t hesitate to hire lawyers when these situations arise.
Even if this meets the school’s definition of lending, there is still the question of notice. Given your daughter’s age and the ways in which Covid has scrambled norms, one could argue that even if she did “lend” parts of her essay, she wasn’t on notice that she was doing so.
I would imagine that your daughter had done a good job on the paper, and was proud of her work. I can easily see her reading from her paper to demonstrate to her friend the level and extent of analysis required, never imagining that the girl would copy it word for word, however she managed to do that.
Notice ? Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Plus, a prohibition regarding not sharing one’s work prior to an assignment due date is a matter of commonsense & of common knowledge.
An issue that the school will consider regards “selective enforcement” of the rules. The rules should apply equally to all students.
If the plagiarized version was recognizable as a plagiarized piece, then the sharing was more than a brief discussion.
Ignorance of the law ordinarily isn’t an excuse for violating criminal statutes (and even there, we find numerous exceptions - that’s why it matters what a statute actually says). But we still require criminal laws to be clear enough that people receive notice. We also require them to be written down and enacted in advance.
In any event, these aren’t criminal laws. These are anti-cheating rules devised and applied to 15 year olds. It may well be that certain behaviors are so obvious that we would all agree that a 15 year old should realize she was in the wrong. But the more ambiguous the behavior and the younger the population, the better the argument for advanced notice.
Thank you for clarifying your remark about “notice”. Essentially, you were referring to notice of what type of actions are prohibited with adequate specificity to put one on notice that certain behavior is prohibited.
But, notice does not have to be so specific as to cover every possible prohibited act . Commonsense comes into play in this situation. If a work can be copied in such a similar fashion that an accusation of plagiarism is raised, then the work was shared in an inappropriate manner to facilitate such copying.
I hope you are not calling a 15 year old child ignorant. This thread has been respectful, please keep it that way. Obviously she did not know that reading from her paper was considering lending it out. I also do not define lending in that way as well. Had she known, she would not have even done it to begin with. I don’t think that makes her or myself ignorant, she just wasn’t educated enough around it to understand what that word meant in regards to this situation. She knows plagerism is wrong. She did not think reading from her paper to show her friend how she explained the prompt meant she was lending out her paper. She did not know her friend would be copying her words or give permission to do so. It doesn’t seem fair for them both to have the same punishment. But of course that is just my opinion to which I stand by.
“Ignorance of the law is not an excuse” = does not refer to any individual. Simply means that one cannot escape consequences for one’s actions by pleading ignorance of the law.
“Notice” deals with specificity & commonsense understandings.
Unfortunately, under the circumstances presented in this thread by OP, in my view the OP’s daughter’s actions led to plagiarism of her work by another student.
Putting on my teacher hat - Yes, reading your own work to another student would be considered lending or sharing. Teachers use the word “sharing” all the time to describe students reading their work aloud to other students.
I think it depends on how it was read whether reading is considered lending. It is certainly lending if you were reading it and watching somebody write it down or type it. It may also be lending if you are reading it slowly, repeating passages, seeing someone take notes, etc. I read it to her does not give enough information. This is why the facts matter.
Mine said she was reading as she was doing her own homework. The girl would ask a question she was stuck on and mine would stop what she was doing and explain how she answered and at times what she said. She assumes the other student was writing things down but only says that now because at the time she didn’t know if she was. When you are on FaceTime, you see their face not what any other part of them is doing. The girl has told her she wrote it down as she said it but for full disclosure she didn’t say this until after they got in trouble…aka mine was not aware she was writing down her words at the time this happened.
In that context yes, but not for all things. If I offer to “lend” you my book, would me reading the book to you be what you thought “lending” meant? I don’t want to get into an argument of semantics, I can only tell you what my 15 year old thought it meant.
Dear OP, I’m going to offer a different perspective. Our expectations as parents that our kids have perfect transcripts is harming them in my opinion. What happened to your daughter is unfair and if it were my kid I would offer sympathy, education and understanding. However it is her grade and if she is sad and angry enough to do something about it she has the student grievance protocol to follow and guide her. It might not lead her to the desired outcome but it will provide her with a sense of agency. It’s not the first or last time that she will be at the wrong end of an unfair rule and I think she needs to be the one deciding if and how and why to fight. The friendship repair is also probably on her mind. I feel for her. It’s hard being 15…
In your daughter’s situation, it was her work product for an assignment that was shared with another prior to the due date which differs from a published work such as a book which is available to all.
To Piggyback on the previous posts, if your daughter was at a school that has an honor code, she would be facing the same consequence (in college, it could lead to suspension/expulsion).
It sounds like your school has a honor code where responsibility of students for their own education, assumes intellectual honesty and integrity in the performance of academic assignments, both in the classroom and outside.
I literally just sat at a Academic Dishonesty meeting about 2 weeks ago, where one student plagarized another’s student’s work (both are seniors)
the outcome was pretty much the same as it is at your school:
Because of school policy, the school is saying both students had to redo the paper and only get 50% credit for their grade. This is the lesser of evils when you think about student could have gotten a 0, a suspension or a combination of consequences.
With everyone talking about lawyering up, what are you looking for as an outcome? Are you looking for a grade change? This might be an uphill battle because the administration can’t make a teacher change their grade (especially considering the circumstances around the grade- the school has a policy and although it may have been unintentional, your child was a participant in violating that policy). If necessary the teacher can/will lawyer up through their union leaving you with nothing but a big legal bill and not necessarily getting the outcome that you want.
I feel bad for your daughter and what has happened to her. Really tough and hard lesson.As far as a C not looking good on her college applications, the great thing about being a sophomore during COVID, she can live through it and raise her grades going forward. You have to reinforce to your daughter that she is not defined by this C or this incident.
I agree! She actually took it upon herself to send an email to the teacher and department head. I did not help her one single bit with her email. She wrote with such maturity that made us really proud of her. She stated that she was unaware what she did was wrong and said she does not feel its fair that her grade will suffer because someone decided to copy her work without her knowledge. She wants to fight this. She isn’t sitting back and letting us do all the work. This matters to her. She works really hard. She isn’t a “naturally gifted” child. She has to work for every good grade she gets and she knows that and thats why this is important to her.