An Educational Challenge

Several years ago, I taught a course on parent guidance to a group of child psychiatry Fellows.  This was a bright group of students, all of whom were in their 4^th or 5^th year of post-doctoral training. 

I assigned them a task.  I asked them to pretend to write an advice column for a parent magazine, a 400- to 500-word column, sharing their views and opinions in response to parent inquiry.  For their first column, I asked them to respond to a parent seeking advice about spanking. 

A week later, I collected their columns.  I read them and, for the most part, thought they were dull and mediocre.  My wife read them and thought there was something not quite right about them.  After doing some investigation, she discovered that 7 out of 8 papers were written almost word-for-word from articles found on-line. 

Initially I was angry and disappointed.  I let the students know that if they had been on faculty, they would have been fired for plagiarism.  If they had been in a graded course, they would have failed. 

The students thought I was being unfair.  After all, if I had asked them to write a column about the side-effects of Paxil, wouldn’t they have Googled side-effects of Paxil in order to get the information?  I tried to explain that they were comparing apples and oranges. I didn’t ask for a recitation of facts about spanking. I asked them to articulate an opinion, their opinion. 

As I talked more with the students, I began to understand why they struggled with my task.  I was reminded that they worked in a high-pressured academic environment in which time was short and demands excessive.  Some admitted to going on-line as a short-cut, a time saver. I was reminded that much of their science and medical education, preceding my class, was done on computer while trying to learn massive amounts of information. It was their reflexive response to seek out the right answers on-line.  I was reminded that these students functioned in an environment where they were under constant supervisory scrutiny. They were afraid to be wrong. To be creative and original was to risk being wrong. 

As a teacher, that class was an awakening.  I became aware of a potentially serious educational pitfall. For many years, my student’s education had not encouraged the formulation and expression of opinion.  They had neither the experience nor the confidence to put their own thoughts into words and think that it could be okay. 

I have shared my cautionary story with teachers of all grades and levels, reminding them that, in this age of information, we must conscientiously teach critical and creative thinking.  Every student deserves time to think, to play with ideas, to develop opinions.  No right or wrong.  Computers off.  No Googling allowed.