Teaching the value of citation and the role in plays in making sense of the world is easier than choosing to require MLA or Chicago or deciding how many points proper citation format is worth.
Teaching students the value of citations
Citations are vital to students because citation is vital to us, we all live in an information rich and truth poor environment. The media through which we learn about the world is ubiquitous and endless, making the value of the information we glean from it entirely dependent on our ability verify its accuracy and authenticity.
Is the state of Florida considering legislation that would ban gender studies programs in public universities? Did John Winthrop really have sixteen children through four different wives? Did the state of Indiana really replace every road sign in the state because some people believed that the computer bar code serial numbers were part of a plan to help the United Nations take over the United States?
We need to see citations, references and sourcing in what we read, hear, and watch so we can have some sense of where the ideas and evidence come from. Without citations, references and sourcing, we can’t “double-check” to see if what we are reading, hearing and watching is actually true or can be relied upon. Only a fool would accept something without checking.
We also need to make citations and references to our sources when we are writing or presenting so we can assure our readers and audience that we are not just making our arguments up out of thin air. Only fools would accept our ideas and explanations without citations.
We also need citations to prove that we didn’t steal anyone else’s thoughts, ideas, and words. Only thieves steal.
Teaching students to think
We are teaching students how to think better. One way to think better is to make sure that you’re thinking is based on a foundation of verifiable evidence and fact. Citations do that.
We are teaching students how to think better. You can think better by paying attention to your assumptions. Citations reduce assumptions.
We are also teaching students how to prove a thesis through spoken and written communication, stressing citation helps them prove their thesis. Effective writing is essentially mind control. If you’re doing it right, the readers will change their understanding of the world based on what you’ve written. Students should think of their citations as part of their team, their posse, helping them to convince their readers.
Is the form of citation important?
Depending on your teaching context, many of your students spend their adult lives in some sort of knowledge work. Knowledge work in every industry has scholarly communities with institutions and traditional norms of how to create and communicate knowledge. Those norms include very specific rules of citation. All of the sciences as well as the fields of medicine and law have long-established and enforced rules that govern how practitioners communicate to each other to exchange ideas and create new knowledge. A pharmaceutical company publishing research about a new drug, a legal team filing a brief with a federal court, engineers marketing a guidance system for a a driverless car – all need to adhere to those rules or citation because the stakes of their fields are so high. With little room for error, the rules of citation establish the rules that ensure safety. With the potential for tremendous profits, the rules of citation establish the rules that ensure no one steals ideas from anyone else.
Yes, students will have to know proper citation format for college, but they are likely to forget any of your lessons by the time they get there. Middle and high school assignments aren’t going to be submitted to the AHA for publication, or a college final project, they don’t need proper format. Students should know the value of sources and citations in what they read and write and a fair amount of practice deciding when and where they cite their sources without getting trapped in the weeds of how they cite their sources
