Schools and Education - Understanding the Rise in Apathy, Cheating and Plagiarism

The Romantic era began in 1770, with its peak being from 1800 to 1850. With emphasis on the imagination and emotion, Romanticism emerged as a result of the Enlightenment period, which heavily placed values upon reason and order. Thus, Romanticism depends heavily on “the practical accomplishments of the prior un-Romantic era— a relationship between material wealth and scientific knowledge on one hand, and personal, spiritual, or emotional transcendence on the other, that twenty-first century Americans continue to manage.” The simplest explanation for what is Romantic is “‘anything but the here and now’ or whatever is not realistic” (“Romanticism”). The

The period of Romanticism, occurring between the years 1800 and 1860, left a significant impact on not only the literature of that time, but the literature of today as well. Prior to romantic writings, the world focused on society and logic. Romanticism allowed people to start valuing individualism and to appeal to emotional responses. This new way of thinking brought new literary styles, themes, and genres that were never explored before and are still found today. The literature of Romanticism allowed people to escape the harshness of reality and enter a different world.

Literature has been a part of our cultural inheritance that enriches our lives from centuries. Every literary work carries such great historical, social, intellectual importance and deepens our understanding of our society as well as our history. History plays a basic role in shaping any kind of literary works: every play, poem, novel we read is either affected by the people surrounding the author, the political context in which it was written or the society that shapes the entire work. As Roland Barthes argues that the author “can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original” meaning that he is always the product of his time and that he always writes what she or he learned from that particular time in history.

The period of Romanticism, occurring between the years 1800 and 1860, left a significant impact on not only the literature of that time, but the literature of today as well. Prior to romantic writings, the world focused on society and logic. Romanticism allowed people to start valuing individualism and to appeal to emotional responses. This new way of thinking brought new literary styles, themes, and genres that were never explored before and are still found today. The literature of Romanticism allowed people to escape the harshness of reality and enter a different world.

Cheating has been an ongoing procedure that has been occurring since before I was born. This has been a problem for years and continues being so as cheating is becoming more and more common. In the article by LA Times, ¨Cheating in School Reflects Basic Confusion in Society¨ (August 22, 1999) written by Mari Pearlman, she explains how adults want teachers to punish students for cheating although they are doing the same thing, only in different ways. I agree with Mari Pearlman´s analysis on what she has to say about cheating because still to this day, it is all true.

The Romantic Era, also referred to as the Romantic Movement, was a cultural shift from the rational, scientific reasoning of the Enlightenment to a free-spirited, emotional driven attitude of non-conformity. It lasted from about 1780 to 1880 and encompassed literature, art, social commentary and politics. This research will explore in greater detail the values held during the Romantic Era. Specifically, it will classify values by origin in ethnicity, geography, language and religion, differentiate between the values held by individuals and groups, and finally, compare and contrast the values of this era with traditional American values of today.

Upon analysis of these two text, it is clear that Blum and Pérez-Peña share similar ideas concerning cheating on college campuses; however, there are many differences between methods to prevent cheating and where the blame lies. One similarity the two authors convey is students need more education about cheating and how to avoid it. Blum states that “Professors who teach writing and composition struggle to educate students about what citation means and how to avoid plagiarism”(2), while Pérez-Peña gathers that students do not understand boundaries around cheating because the institution does not educate them properly (1). Another common idea the authors share is that the 21st century student is different than those of the past. Blum says

The Romantic Movement, also known as romanticism, took place in the early 1800’s. Rather than write about the lives of ordinary people, romantics dealt with the ‘romance’ of life. They appealed to sentiment and imagination rather than reality (Miller, 534). The essence of Romanticism is a belief in the power and validity of human emotions as a means of knowing and a guide to life. Instead of following the previous periods’ belief in a ruling class as the center of power, romantics believed that power existed among all people. This was due to every humans capability to learn through emotional experiences, regardless of stature (Roberts, 1032). Romantic writers not only glorified these beliefs but the past as well, so it made sense that the Romantic Movement was partly a reaction to the Enlightenment Movement of the 1700’s. The people of the Enlightenment emphasized reason and progresses the way romantics lived off of emotion and instinct (Miller, 534). In addition to reacting to the past, Romanticism undoubtedly reflected many ideas of the, then, present (Roberts, 1032).

The Romantic Era was a period of that examined emotions and put them into words. Romantics abandoned the logical traditional Western World thought which believed that intelligence was the method used to understand the world. However, the Romantics opted to espouse imagination and feelings as a veritable approach to empathize the world. (James ,488)

Change - The Romantics were liberals and conservatives, revolutionaries and reactionaries. Some were preoccupied with God, others were atheistic to the core. The Romantics saw diversity and uniqueness - those traits created diversity between man and nations. The Romantics exclaimed, "Dare to be!" (The History guide).

The idea of man’s natural goodness and the stress on emotion also contributed to the development of Romantic individualism; they believed that what is special in a man is to be valued over what is representative (the latter is often

Historians note that the Romantic Movement was a sort of call to arms against the sovereignty of logic. Their modus operandi was to invade “pure reason … with free-flowing fantasy[, a]n emphasis on the free” (Gasparov et al.). The imagination was to become the new lens through which life was viewed. In terms of time, the Movement is placed into three periods: The first phase, which ranged from the mid-1790s to 1800s; the second phase, from the 1810s to 1840s; and the third phase, said to be post 1848 (“Romanticism”). The first phase, known as the “early period,” set the stage for the rise of the “romantic consciousness” that would saturate the lives of the romantics. The second, or “mid period,” denotes the timespan in which romanticism spread throughout Europe. The third and final phase, the “late period,” comes as the values and beliefs of the movement become commonplace (Gasparov et al.).

Romanticism, in a way, was a reaction against rigid Classicism, Rationalism, and Deism of the eighteenth century. Strongest in application between 1800 and 1850, the Romantic Movement differed from country to country and from romanticist to romanticist. Because it emphasized change it was an atmosphere in which events occurred and came to affect not only the way humans thought and expressed them, but also the way they lived socially and politically (Abrams, M.H. Pg. 13). “Romanticism emphasized the individual, the subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental,” (Thompson, E.P. Pg. 108-109). Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism

individuality and a rebellion to tyranny are some of the ideas the romantic period brought to

London, it had a long lasting influence on literary studies, in particular with regard to ideas of semiotics and logo-centric conceptions of meaning and authorship. The text makes a fundamental claim about the nature of literary production, as well as the way in which a text may be related to by