I was invited to come to China to teach journalism at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) -- one of China's "elite" schools, by Tai Zischer, acting dean of its Department of International Journalism. I met Tai in 1995 when I spent 10 days in China looking into traditional Chinese medicine. I told Tai that I could only teach journalism the way it is practiced in the United States. That would be all right, he said, because SISU is training students how to communicate with the West.
When I received a formal invitation in January 1996 to teach the Spring semester, I took a six-month leave from my duties as associate editor, Medical News & Perspectives, for the Journal of the American Medical Association, borrowed heavily from my 401-K retirement fund, and arrived in Shanghai on March 1, three days before the start of the spring semester. I wanted to arrive earlier but university housing would not have been provided.
As a "foreign expert" I was assigned to teach four courses: "Feature Writing" and "Broadcast Writing" for 20 third-year students, and "Editorial Writing" and "Science Writing" for 31 seniors. I told my students that I had come to SISU "to help train engineers who will build bridges of understanding between China and the West."
I thought that the students were eager to communicate with the West. That was only one of my misconceptions I found difficult to shake.
I had given much thought about what and how I would teach so that I wouldn't get into trouble with the government or university officials. I thought of ways to address necessary issues without sounding critical of China's government and leaders. But it was not the government that I had to fear. No government or university official interfered with any of my lessons. No one even suggested what I should or should not teach. I was surprised to find myself completely on my own. I did know that each class has a student leader who reports what is said in class to the school's Communist Party secretary. My problem, however, was not with the officials. It was with the students.
By the end of the first week of classes, I was in shock and dismay. I couldn't get the students to stop talking to each other, reading, or doing homework. One student even tried to sit in my class with Walkman headphones on. Few showed interest in what I was saying. Only one student would even look at me. The rest looked down at their desks or else read. The second week, I walked into the senior year's class to find this note on my desk:
Dear sir, You know, this's our last semester and we have to find our jobs in these two month. So we're finding jobs sparing no effort. Though we're interested in your lesson and we like you very much, we have no time writing anything more. We hope you can understand us and will cooperate well.
Yours,
all
I copied the note on the blackboard, corrected it, and pointed out that the author needed both lessons and writing assignments. But neither irony, wit, nor logic was going to do me much good--not at a school of journalism and communication where no one seemed bothered that the sign outside the school says "JOURNALLSM."
I not only persisted in trying to overcome the students' lack of interest, I was determined to get them to take part in classroom discussions. Fellow foreign teachers called me a courageous fool. That's not the way students in China learn. The Chinese educational approach requires students to memorize what their teachers say and the readings they are assigned. Thinking, discussions, and debates are frowned upon. Whenever I tried to get the students to speak, I would suddenly see nothing but the tops of their heads as they stared down at their desks like children being scolded. I spent most of the semester trying to find a way to overcome years of negative conditioning. I finally succeeded: I got them angry enough to openly challenge me. The way I did that was by denying them the Mao-given right to plagiarize and cheat. Challenge me? Hell, they revolted! As one of my fellow foreign teachers, who had studied in China during the Cultural Revolution, put it, I got a glimpse of the behavior of the Red Guard when they turned on their teachers, beating, torturing, and killing them for daring to teach what was no longer allowed.
Many of the first assignments my students turned in were nearly impossible to correct. They were handwritten, single spaced, edge to edge, on sheets of paper approximately 5"x 7". They left me no room to rewrite their "Chinglish." Many of their sentences and paragraphs defied deciphering. Their work showed no evidence that they understood even the most basic principles of journalism. For my third year students' first assignment, I gave them an assignment right out of Mel Menscher's News Reporting and Writing Workbook,--which gave them facts about a crime along with quotes. All they had to do was write a short news feature. About one third of the class made up their own quotes or reported "facts" not given. One student, created a whole dialog between the criminal and his victims.
I was astonished. I was astonished again when many of these students later turned in work that was fairly well written in clear English. I noticed a pattern: Many of the students wrote muddled Chinglish when they had to write about something for which they could not find anything to copy--like when my science writing class had to write about a trip they all took to Shanghai's Natural History Museum. But when they could choose the topic to write about--like an opinion piece concerning Taiwan -- their writing became understandable. When they couldn't copy from some published work, they copied from each other: All six of the seniors who had to write about preparation of specimens at Shanghai's Natural History Museum used the same malapropism, writing about the beautiful "leathers" of birds instead of "feathers."
Any doubts I had that so many students were cheating were dispelled when I heard from other foreign teachers that they were struggling with the same problem. Judith Rabinovitch, a Japanese studies scholar from the University of Montana and her husband, Tim Bradstock, a Chinese studies scholar there, observed that students who seemed incapable of getting a subject and verb to agree, would turn in sophisticated theses on Hamlet or Lord Jim with long complex sentences, all grammatically correct. According to Judith, during one exam, she kept hearing voices but couldn't see anyone's lips moving--the students appeared to have been using ventriloquism to cheat!
I began lecturing why plagiarism and cheating is a double sin for journalism students. I told them that in the West, a student caught cheating or plagiarizing will most likely be expelled or put on probation. Journalists caught plagiarizing are fired and their careers are often ruined. I told them I would fail them if they plagiarize, cheat, or knowingly write falsehoods. I might as well have been talking to the Great Wall.
For days I agonized over the final assignments the seniors turned in. I didn't know how to grade them. A few clearly were plagiarized and most looked suspicious. I confronted one student with the fact her paper was written in perfect English, yet her first two assignments had been very difficult to read. She said she was flattered to hear that I think her writing was so good and apologized for "not working as hard on her first assignments." I was reluctant to flunk students just because their final papers were much better than their earlier work. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant solution: I sprung a surprise editorial-writing exam on the seniors. I asked them to write an opinion piece on the "plague of plagiarism--is it or is it not a problem in this class and in society in general?" I explained that the exam would help me grade them more fairly because it would give me an up-to-date sample of their writing.
Immediately, the students began to grumble and-- for the first time--some spoke out. The exam was unfair and unnecessary, they protested. Previously, students had asked me what is required to get into Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. (I'm a proctor for Columbia's entrance exams in the Chicago area). So I reminded them that applicants are required to come in and write a news analysis on a subject they are given, without either preparation or any reference material. Columbia applicants get only 45 minutes to write their opinion piece; I was giving them 90 minutes. I told them they had better get started, because they had only 85 minutes left. The grumbling grew louder.
One student said that she couldn't take my exam because it instructs them to "use facts, reasoned arguments, and literary style to sway public opinion," but she doesn't know any fact about plagiarism. "Do you mean that in your 22 years of life, you have never known any classmate who has plagiarized?" I asked. No, she insisted.
"Well, fine," I said. "Then you do know some facts, don't you? You can write that you don't think there is a plague of plagiarism because you have never known any student who plagiarized." Another student argued that they cannot take the exam because they were being accused of plagiarism and therefore cannot be objective. I said that that was nonsense. In previous classes I had told them that editorials and opinion pieces are commonly written by people with strong biases and positions to defend.
The protests escalated to a mutiny. The students switched from English to Chinese and I stood there listening to insults, laughter, and jokes I couldn't understand. I finally told them to keep quiet because there was an exam in progress. If they didn't want to take it, then they should sit quietly or else leave. All but seven students got up and marched out of the room. Two of the remaining seven actually took the exam. The other five huddled together chatting while one did all the writing. I didn't know what they were up to until the designated writer turned in the paper entitled, "The Plague of Prejudice." In it the gang of five accused me of intolerance and American cultural imperialism. There is more than one version of truth, they claimed, and cheating and academic integrity are not the same in all cultures. The essay was full of the same kind of sophistry that China uses to explain why shooting students in Tiananmen Square is not the same as shooting Palestinian students in Israel--moral principles and human rights are determined by geographical lines.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to keep this brilliant justification for cheating. When the students marched out, they went to the school authorities. Either the dean or the Communist Party secretary sent a monitor to my class to ask me to turn over the students' papers. I asked one of the two students who took the exam (the only student I had who showed both integrity and the courage to dissent from the Communist Party line), would they get into trouble if I didn't turn over their exams? He lowered his head and said nothing. That was enough of an answer. I gave the monitor the exam papers.
This student later rewrote his paper and gave it to me. It is quite a revealing essay: "For universities in China, plagiarism is indispensable. Without it, most professors would find it hard to publish 'fine' books. Most students would not be able to write their graduate thesis.... The schools would not run 'properly' without plagiarism." He also told me that he plagiarizes like other students. He hates doing it, but he would be penalized if he didn't. The school work load is enormous; students can get good grades only by copying the work of others. And plagiarism doesn't stop after graduation, he says. For his student internship he worked on the business page of a Chinese newspaper, where the business editor routinely copied articles from foreign newspapers.
As I expected, the dean of the School of Communications called me in for a meeting (the only one I ever had with anyone at the school except for informal meetings with Tai). The dean said that there was an "unfortunate misunderstanding." The students were not doing anything wrong by copying the words of others. Plagiarism is the copying of ideas, not words, he said. In studying English, Chinese students are encouraged to use the writing of others as "models." I told him that every English dictionary I have seen defines plagiarism as the stealing of words or ideas of others and passing them off as one's own. I pointed out that it's close to impossible to prove theft of ideas unless words are also stolen. I also said that copying another's writing for practice is one thing. But stealing the words of others for work that will be graded is quite another. I told him that one of my students admitted to having a native English-speaking friend help her write her final assignment. I said that this can be no more acceptable than letting students bring friends into class to help them take an exam. He suggested that I give my third-year students (my classes with the seniors were mercifully over) "concrete examples" of unacceptable conduct. I told him that that was my plan. I had already prepared a lecture on journalistic ethics with concrete examples. And to persuade the students to pay attention to the lecture, I was going to give them an exam on the material the following week.
Believe it or not, during my exam on journalistic ethics, the cheating was audacious. I caught two students red-handed. One was the class leader. I caught her with her notes on her lap. Another woman was so engrossed by her neighbor's answers that she didn't notice me standing over her, shaking my head in disbelief. When I grabbed her exam and tore it up, she vehemently denied cheating, yet offered no explanation why she was reading her classmate's paper.
Just as distressing, five of the six male third-year students didn't even show up for the test. Nor did they turn in the final paper for my other course. I am certain they wouldn't have pulled this without assurance from a university authority that I wouldn't be allowed to fail them. I did fail them in both classes. I also failed five seniors in Science Writing and six in Editorial Writing for plagiarism. Failing either of these classes would have kept them from graduating. Tai told me that none of my grades were changed, yet all of my seniors graduated on schedule. A week before I left China, Tai asked me to sign some papers printed in Chinese.
When I asked what they were, he said they were the students' grades. I said that there were no grades on the pages. He said that they would be added later. I refused. I told him that I resent the way the university has acted in this matter. Tai said, not to worry, I didn't have to sign. I suspect that the school later added altered grades and forged my name.
Andrew Skolnick is an associate editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association.