Henry gets an "F"

This occured to me last night, when someone pointed out that giving Alex an "F" for creating an explosion in chemistry class isn't the appropriate punishment, because it doesn't at all reflect Alex's abilities in class. Alex can get punished, in a variety of ways, but giving him an "F" basically tosses out all the work he's done thus far in the class, and any work he does before the end of the term. This is unfair to Alex; even if the overall grade for the class included behavior or participation or another equally subjective area that could be docked for creating an explosion in a trash can, other assessments would be entirely seperate and wouldn't be affected. Unless Mr. Fuse has explained to his students he reserves the right to manipulate grades based on non-relevant criteria to the grades themselves, he really can't give Alex an "F" for this incident.

Now look at poor Henry's plagiarism case again. Before this paper, Henry was making steady progress. He hadn't shot from a "D" student to an "A" student, but he his grades have steadily rose. This isn't a "D" student who has done nothing but "D" work all term. He plagiarized, and while that isn't as easy to seperate from the rest of his course work as Alex's trash can explosion is, this is still one mistake that doesn't neccessarily cast a shadow over his previous work. That work wasn't plagiarized, and it was improving. It's obvious he was making improvements in his writing, because the teacher was initially impressed at the paper and attributed it to Henry's progress. Like it does to all writing teachers, it eventually dawned on her that this was too good; had she been suspcious of his other work or of him in general, she would have immediately assumed the paper was plagiarized. But regardless of that speculation, the basic point is that his one mistake shouldn't replace the other work that he's done. Even just giving him an "F" on the paper, which I do believe is warranted, would not change the other grades he's received in the class. Would it hurt him? Yes. If the "F" was a zero entered into the gradebook for the paper, good 'ole Henry would fail the class. Giving him a "F" for the entire class, just because of this one incident of plagiarism, and reporting the incident to the appropiate authorities, completely undermines what he did accomplish in the class. You might ask what difference does it make, since he'll fail the class regardless of whether the grade is given just to the paper or given to the course. I have to assume that, like we talked about in class, most teachers would try and contact the student, either to discuss the issue or to simply notify them of what has happened. I think it would make a huge difference if the student was told, "I had to fail your final paper, because there was strong evidence of plagiarism, and this in turn earned you a failing grade in the class," than if they just received notification of a violation of the academic dishonesty policy and an "F" on their report card.