I feared that attending another plagiarism talk would prove to be a fruitless endeavor, being that I’ve heard the content more or less a dozen times before. I’m sure the people delivering the talks have heard criticisms from people like me before (people who think they’ve heard it all) and still continue to witness events of plagiarism, thereby solidifying the importance of the talks. What I find to be interesting at these talks (and necessary to address) is one’s inability to hand in the same work for more than one class. In high school, though I never attempted to do this for fear of all my teachers having some mass anti-Sarah congregation, I did not fully realize the importance of avoiding this. If a certain assignment fits the requirements for more than one class, and you yourself have produced that assignment, why not hand it in? I suppose the answer is simple: you’re getting nothing out of handing in that same paper more than once, you’re not encouraging yourself to think differently, to produce more work from a different perspective, etc.
Something stressed upon during the talk that interested me was the categorization of information that one is expected to know. The instructor would place a phrase on the screen (ex. Barack Obama is president) and say, “This is common knowledge. You do not need to cite this.” Then, he would show something slightly more specific and ask, “Is this specific enough to need to cite? Is this located in the gray area?”
I considered the categorization of knowledge into common, less common, and obscure, what am I expected to know, and where most of my knowledge lies. In what communities does my “obscure” knowledge devolve into something common?
In terms of Moran’s Interdisciplinarity, and his exploration into the reasoning for the dismissal of the English major, I considered the classification of the information explored in English classes as knowledge that is common. English does not seem to be a closed-off abyss of facts and obscure knowledge: “English…is generally accessible to those working outside the discipline in a way that, say, particle physics or differential equations are not” (Moran 19). When does the information explored in English classes require citations? Is the personal perception/opinion on common information what pulls you into the category of less common knowledge?
I’m sure even the term “common knowledge” is deceiving, as any sort of information in different settings/communities is not common (we are not innately born knowing who the president is). Common knowledge is taught somewhere at some time (and this time varies based on the person and his/her own experiences).
When reading Walker’s Meridian, I considered how much of the book is considered common knowledge. I have taken the Civil Rights Movements to be knowledge that is common, but, obviously, Meridian Hill’s experiences are not commonly known. (Even then, however, her struggles within this class could be seen as common knowledge, barring the influence of independent perception/opinions on her character/actions.)
Thinking of knowledge in terms of pain, nothing is common. Pain is a subjective experience, and it is impossible to understand another’s experience of pain (“another” meaning any separate being, human and animal alike). It is impossible to understand exactly how information is seen/interpreted/perceived in the mind of a separate being. So is knowledge ever really common if there is no way to understand exactly how certain information is understood? Or is information common, and the perception of information uncommon, specific to the reader?