Haunted by the Spectre of Ghost Writing

Yesterday a university colleague referred me to an article in one of the best known Lebanese newspapers citing me on student cheating: “Students Buy Assignments As Semester Ends”. I had warned colleagues that I had been interviewed on this subject by a Daily Star reporter and that an article that could refer to any or all of our courses was due out soon; we had been anticipating the piece. The startled young writer had politely knocked on our Fisk Hall office door last week and asked a colleague and I whether we could answer some questions about student cheating on written assignments, including the basis on which we suspected it. The reporter had already investigated the ghost writing business in Lebanon and was seeking more information, determined to cite the views of faculty members. The problem was widespread, she said, wondering whether anything more could be done to curb it.

The ghost writing business is illicit and generally done surreptitiously. Though alarmed by the information she had gathered, the reporter seemed comfortable talking to us about it, having worked as a graduate assistant in our department in the past. Her findings, focused on universities in Lebanon, are in my view local examples of a global issue: a disease that is geographically pervasive and reflected online as many paper mills advertise and sell on the internet. Whether the phenomenon is new to the world is doubtful, though the problem has come to light more clearly in the past decade or two through the internet.

To my knowledge, some celebrities and politicians use ghost writers for their biographies, speeches and blogs; some artists use them; and a number of pharmaceutical companies have resorted to medical ghost writing to promote their products, so students are not the only culprits in this world. Still, the academic use of ghost writers requires special attention as it is a problem worse than plagiarism. Some plagiarism is unintentional, when, for example, students complete their own assignments but lack skills in summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting, especially in a foreign language; or when they have not understood the importance of crediting their sources though they have been taught about it. While a partially plagiarized text might include some student effort, a ghost-written paper generally does not, except possibly when the students provide the dealer with articles and other sources as content.  

It takes necessary courage to discuss this taboo subject and bring it into the open as it can undermine the credibility of those involved, be they companies, celebrities, students or others. English teachers have a special role to play in reducing this problem by motivating students to write, engaging them with relevant topics, teaching effective research and writing skills, emphasizing processes rather than products, and discussing students’ projects with them, providing feedback from start to finish. Teachers of other subjects should also pay attention to the types of assignments they expect as the more unreasonable the assignment, the more likely the students are to resort to external help or "services".

 

This is my initial reaction to the newspaper article on students purchasing papers. I hope to respond further on this issue in future blog posts as a short posting such as this cannot do this profound subject justice.