Thursday, February 27, 2014

Plagiarism #5 Jan Hunt's list

I'm not looking for the person's name; I know who it is. I want help with documentation. Thanks.

Starting middle of the second page there, it's from this: http://www.naturalchild.org/jan_hunt/misunderstand.html





Maybe the parts before and after that list are lifted, too; I hope someone recognizes some of it.

http://sandradodd.com/search has two unschooling search forms, but they don't cover Jan Hunt's page. So it might be worth searching for a distinctive phrase and Jan Hunt, if you think more might be from her site.

Thanks,

Sandra

Plagiarism 4 abundance and guests


The left is a quote with some paraphrasing from a Just Add Light that links to this page: http://sandradodd.com/abundance
How much do you need to own to touch a child gently? How much money do you need to have in order to smile?

Look at what you have rather than what you don't have. Look at what is in the world beyond your family and your neighborhood, and rejoice that your child might be able to go out someday and experience things you've never seen or heard or touched or tasted.

Sometimes Just Add Light has original text, but usually i t's a quote from something in my book, on my site, or in a discussion (Always Learning, or Radical Unschooling Info, or a Wednesday chat).

The righthand side is close to some things from this page, I think. I'm doing this quickly because I'm leaving for Australia tomorrow, so I'm not reading carefully. If anyone finds a word-for-word passage, I'd appreciate a note below. Thanks.



Guests in your home, and in your life

Some people enjoy the idea that we choose our parents when we're in some incorporeal waiting room somewhere. Others get a kick out of the idea that they will meet the same souls they "knew before" to work things out. Sometimes those beliefs become justifications for bad parenting or slack friendship, because one can always say "Well this is the way it was fated to be." I'm not interested in helping anyone justify the mistreatment of others, so if the beginning of this paragraph is the way you see your relationship with your child, please skip to the next page.

If you're still here, this is what helps me when I am stuck for how to act: I think of my child as a guest in my home. He didn't really choose to come here; I brought him here myself. When there were siblings, he didn't choose to have them. Even a child who says "I want a sister" rarely knows what he's talking about; by the time you can produce one he's on to wanting a motorbike or something. No child has a nine-month attention span, and by the time a newborn is a playmate, a year or three have passed. Don't ever blame a child for having a sibling regardless of how much he expressed a fantasy wish for a playmate who lived there.

Being new to the world, and you being his host (and partner), any light you can shed on the mysteries of the world, and any clues you can give him on what's likely to happen and what's expected of him would be good for all concerned. Advise him what might happen at a wedding reception, or a birthday party, or at a place he's never been to before. Show him how to eat a new food he hasn't seen. Help put him at ease if he's nervous. Provide him all the coaching and reassurance he wants, and no more than he wants.
Find ways to accommodate his everyday needs. Step stools, low drawers and shelves, a low hook for his coat and hat, a small chair and table, some snacks he can get to without asking—consider those to be requirements rather than luxuries. Be courteous and generous.
SandraDodd.com/guest

64

That's cut and pasted (by me) from the word file of The Big Book of Unschooling (which I wrote).

Plagiarism 3


I have said for 20 years that my child needed to be safe in his own home.
One of the quotes on the left seems to be a misquote of that.

Some of the others seem very close to things I've written, but I'm not sure if they're cut and pasted.

Other phrases on these pages seem familiar, too. Sometimes it seems "unschooling" is replaced with "progressive parenting" and that not much else has changed.

The search at the bottom of this page might help: http://sandradodd.com/search Google might help if something is lifted from a site not covered by that search.

And if nobody can find anything, that's worth knowing, too. Thanks, anyone who has any time to check.

Plagiarism 2 Q&A with suspicious answers


Some of the phrases look very familiar.

I have a site search for my site, and one at the bottom of this page that adds Joyce Fetteroll's site and Pam Laricchia's. I'm thinking some of those things are from Joyce's site (and maybe some phrases from mine).

http://sandradodd.com/search

Plagiarism 1 Priorities and false details

I've used this blog because there is an element of mystery in these questions.

I do know who the author is but I don't want to name her in public, so if you know, don't put the name. I'm interested in having assistance with exact citations of a few things. There will be five or six scans posted from the same book.

This is the most blatant of the examples I scanned today:


On the right, under "Priorities" the author says "One of my clients, when asked…" and "I responded by explaining…"

Otherwise the text is lifted word for word in some places from my priorities page:
Someone in a discussion had been asked to consider which was more important to her, health food or her child's happiness. She wrote:
Health food is not more important to me than my children's happiness. Health food is one way to promote a healthy body and the health of my children is very important to me. So is their happiness. You seem to be saying that the two priorities are mutually exclusive. I would like to find a way to promote their health without sacrificing their happiness and vice versa.
Joyce Fetteroll responded:
When we're trying to achieve two goals there will be times when a decision will lead towards one but away from another.

When conventional parents are faced with deciding between happiness and another goal more often than not the goal of children's happiness becomes secondary.

If you've ever made your child cry because of something else that you wanted, then your child's happiness was secondary.

One time I was upset about a spill or something and my daughter said "It seems like you care more about the rug than you do me." I, of course, said "No, of course not." And yet she was right. For that moment the fact that she was upset was less important than the need to get the spill mopped up.

And with conventional parenting that happens a *lot*.


That text has been on that page since at least April 2005: http://web.archive.org/web/20050426022707/http://sandradodd.com/priorities (though it didn't have Holly's title art at first).

The book was published in 2012 and when I asked the author to contact me, she withdrew the book, and did not respond to me. I asked again, and still didn't get a response.

I think there are things on the lefthand page that are similarly lifted from published unschooling sites, books, or discussions, but in the example above, the plagiarism is compounded by being credited to other people specifically. Changing Joyce's story about her daughter to a story about the author's son makes it twice as dishonest, in my opinion. I had hoped for the author to let me express that to her, in hopes that she would withdraw all of her writings from the internet, and perhaps acknowledge the problem.

Any help to find links or evidence about other parts of the page, or the other scans, would be appreciated. If you click the title of the blog, you can get to the others. If you click the image, you can see it a bit larger.