Jan is a first-generation Chinese American attending an independent day school in the Southwest U.S. She attends “Chinese school” as well as her day school, but she doesn’t take Chinese school as seriously as her independent school, since it is just an after-school opportunity to improve her Chinese language skills and study Chinese literature — and as with most of her classmates, Jan attends the school at her parents’ insistence. Each year, there is an essay contest at Chinese school, and the winning essay is published in the local newspaper. Jan is a gifted writer with a strong voice and insight, and while the after-school experience was not important to her, she found that she put energy and inspiration into her writing for the essay contest.
On the day their essays were to be submitted, Jan learned that a classmate was handing in an essay he had not actually written; a friend much more proficient in Chinese had given him the essay to submit.
“I knew there was a chance that that essay could be selected as the winning one,” Jan explained. “Thus, there was a slight dilemma over whether I should tell my teacher that my classmate cheated or not do anything. I didn’t know for sure if that essay would win, so would there be any harm in not telling my teacher? I… did not want to cause a huge fuss.”
Framed as such, Jan may be thinking about this issue in terms of the “right vs. right” paradigm: justice vs. mercy. Sure there was cheating going on, but when do we choose the battle and insist on laying down the law (or blowing the whistle so that others can lay down the law), and when should we shrug and say, “Don’t sweat the small stuff?”
Jan suggests that, had this taken place in her “regular school,” she might have felt differently about the issue. “I can’t really explain, but Chinese school is not taken nearly as seriously as regular school by anyone, so I thought that it wasn’t such a big issue. However, now as I look back, I feel that, if that essay had won, then some people out there that would have been hurt. Ultimately, that classmate’s essay didn’t win, so I guess this is my ‘woulda, shoulda, coulda’ dilemma!”
Suppose you were a teacher or administrator at Jan’s day school, and you heard about this story. How would you handle this situation? Would you be tempted to explore Jan’s attitude about plagiarism, or does she have a right to her own point of view about “credit” regardless of school policy — especially since this writing did not take place in school? In other words, do you view this as a conflict between right and wrong, based on the notion of “giving credit where credit is due”? Alternatively, if this is a tension between two rights for you, which paradigm seems most important — that of one individual, either the plagiarizer or Jan, and the wider community of writers; that of rules vs. exceptions; or is the real driver here honesty vs. loyalty?
If you were to ask Jan about the choice that would result in the greatest good for the greatest number of people, would she, in retrospect, choose speaking up or letting this one slide? Which guiding principle carried the day for her in this case? Was it simply a matter of not making a fuss or was there something larger — about the context and its lack of importance to her — that contributed to Jan’s decision? Was she putting herself in the shoes of the “lazy” student who had not bothered to write an essay, and deciding that given the nature of Chinese school, she could sympathize?
This dilemma takes place in Chinese school, but there are certainly many contexts in which it might apply. How important is “ownership” in determining “what is right”? If students do not feel invested in a learning process, is a lack of moral courage or moral action more understandable? In other words, if we can see why Jan didn’t speak up about the plagiarism in her story, where do we draw the line in other classrooms or learning settings for our students?
There is much to ponder from a simple, passing example that Jan had thought little about until learning about the “right vs. right” nature of most ethical challenges.