The Academic Bates Motel

Abstract

Anti-plagiarism norms have nothing to do with what children want out of life a priori. There are children who love to copy from young ages. Yet teachers universally proselytize anti-plagiarism values as if they are natural law to people when they are more impressionable. Why? Plagiarism is not a crime, so telling them that it is bad is not for children's benefit. The reason academics teach anti-plagiarism norms is that anti-plagiarism values are common in academia. Academics are abusing their position of power over children by embedding professional academic norms in children's minds. In this article, I explain this by developing a metaphor I call the Academic Bates Motel. I believe academics are earnestly trying to shuffle young people through pipeline from education to employment. The crux of this is Hotel; that is, universities, academics' domain. Academics take hold of people when they are very young and start training them to become guests at Hotel. This means that values required of Hotel guests tend to become inseparable from way that people think. However, people eventually check out. They do not need these norms outside Hotel, yet can only continue to believe in their indoctrination in absence of deprogramming. In looking at Hotel through lens of plagiarism norms, I discuss ways that enforcement of academic norms teaches values beyond anti-plagiarism. It introduces harmful peculiarities into people's psyches, like belief that copying itself is uncreative, that it is good to be a snitch, that abnormal people deserve to be ostracized, etc. All of these are taught in order to inhibit a completely natural desire, merely because it goes against rules of a Hotel they will never see again. What a tragic waste of potential plagiarists.