2008 Woodie Awards
In defense of SparkNotes
Amy Cohen
Issue date: 11/15/07 Section: Op/Ed
According to the concepts of integrity, which are honesty, sincerity, and uncorrupted moral virtue, that govern most of our thoughts and actions, we've come up with the basis of most of the Ten Commandments, including thou shall not cheat. Aside from the conventional and clear-cut definitions of cheating, like cheating on your significant other or cheating on an exam, what is considered cheating exactly? What about those grey areas such as cliff notes, otherwise known as SparkNotes?
Face it; in high school we all used SparkNotes at one point or another as an easy way out of homework. Too lazy to read that book for English, or to use the euphemism, don't have enough time to read that book for English? Read the summary online instead. Not only will reading the summary take considerably less time, but unlike the book itself it is almost guaranteed to be understandable, and chances are you will probably do as well on the paper or exam as the person who took the time to actually read the book. Good deal, right? Unfortunately, most people would consider that cheating because you aren't actually doing the work yourself.
There is, however, a complication to the use of SparkNotes. What about the student who has done the work and uses SparkNotes to clarify what they've read? Or the student who reads through SparkNotes after reading the book in order to spark an idea for a paper topic-after all it is called "SparkNotes." Technically, that wouldn't be cheating because the student has already done the work, they'd just be using SparkNotes as an extra resource.
What if we re-thought how we dealt with looking at the information in the first place? What if we merely used Saprknotes as aother way to look at our problem? Considering that a major part of our liberal arts education is the encouragement to think outside the box for new and fresh approaches to ideas, perhaps Sparknotes is appropriate.
If SparkNotes is a way to save time on assignments, and that time would be better spent on other assignments, then SparkNotes is a good thing. The first component of good study habits is time management, and in order to manage your time wisely you must prioritize. No one wants to acknowledge that one assignment or activity is more important than another, however, it does happen. If you honestly feel that playing five hours straight of Mario Kart is more important than reading for a class, then I think that by now, as college students, we have a right to decide for ourselves what is most important in our daily lives.
SparkNotes is a gift. Its use is not controlled by our academic system and reading it will never be assigned as homework. If it was, I would be willing to bet that someone would find an easier way around that. That is the beauty of SparkNotes. It is the creative, but lazy man's guide to homework. SparkNotes is necessary, because, after all, time and ease are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
Face it; in high school we all used SparkNotes at one point or another as an easy way out of homework. Too lazy to read that book for English, or to use the euphemism, don't have enough time to read that book for English? Read the summary online instead. Not only will reading the summary take considerably less time, but unlike the book itself it is almost guaranteed to be understandable, and chances are you will probably do as well on the paper or exam as the person who took the time to actually read the book. Good deal, right? Unfortunately, most people would consider that cheating because you aren't actually doing the work yourself.
There is, however, a complication to the use of SparkNotes. What about the student who has done the work and uses SparkNotes to clarify what they've read? Or the student who reads through SparkNotes after reading the book in order to spark an idea for a paper topic-after all it is called "SparkNotes." Technically, that wouldn't be cheating because the student has already done the work, they'd just be using SparkNotes as an extra resource.
What if we re-thought how we dealt with looking at the information in the first place? What if we merely used Saprknotes as aother way to look at our problem? Considering that a major part of our liberal arts education is the encouragement to think outside the box for new and fresh approaches to ideas, perhaps Sparknotes is appropriate.
If SparkNotes is a way to save time on assignments, and that time would be better spent on other assignments, then SparkNotes is a good thing. The first component of good study habits is time management, and in order to manage your time wisely you must prioritize. No one wants to acknowledge that one assignment or activity is more important than another, however, it does happen. If you honestly feel that playing five hours straight of Mario Kart is more important than reading for a class, then I think that by now, as college students, we have a right to decide for ourselves what is most important in our daily lives.
SparkNotes is a gift. Its use is not controlled by our academic system and reading it will never be assigned as homework. If it was, I would be willing to bet that someone would find an easier way around that. That is the beauty of SparkNotes. It is the creative, but lazy man's guide to homework. SparkNotes is necessary, because, after all, time and ease are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.