Inelegant integration and my discontents.

Tomorrow morning, I will again try to teach my students how to integrate quotations into their prose.  Since the last lesson failed to stick, I think I'll use one this time instead of that damnably ineffective carrot.  The passages they will be trying to integrate will, therefore, not be randomly selected from books and articles relevant to their research, but passages from my dissertation which, should they mangle, will lead to their mangling.  (Or so I'll say.  I only hope they haven't taken my oft-repeated mockery of the thing too much to heart.)  For example, I will present them with a sentence from page 94 of the dissertation, followed by four possible ways of citing it:

In sum, in the late 1890s three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism that only argues that the same forces which shape evolution generally also work upon human populations; a developmental teleology that points to a single cooperative (or socialist) future; and a means by which exceptional individuals could accelerate that development, such that the inevitable end becomes visible in the span of a single lifetime.

Which of the following best integrates the material in that quotation?

1. According to Scott Kaufman, who earned a doctorate and now teaches, back then there were three ways evolution worked: a "form of social Darwinism," or a "developmental teleology" of socialism, or by "accelerate that development" (S. Kaufman 94).
2. Scott Kaufman, whose dissertation has a really long title, the entirety of which I'm quoting here, wrote a dissertation in which he argued about evolution, shape, and development, "such that the inevitable end becomes visible in the span of a single lifetime" (Scott Kaufman, The Really Long Title of His Dissertation, page 94).
3. Experts in Nineteenth Century evolutionary theory, such as Scott Kaufman of the University of California, Irvine, argue that as the century came to a close, "three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism ... a developmental teleology ... and a means by which exceptional individuals could accelerate that development" (Kaufman 94).
4. Scott once claimed that "in the late 1890s three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism that only argues that the same forces which shape evolution generally also work upon human populations; a developmental teleology that points to a single cooperative (or socialist) future; and a means by which exceptional individuals could accelerate that development, such that the inevitable end becomes visible in the span of a single lifetime" (Scott).

Those are egregiously arcane on purpose: I don't want them to debate the merits of the theories, merely the manner in which they're presented.  The idea is to get them to discover and discuss the logic behind a neatly integrated quotation, so that in addition to just parroting the form of a correct citation, they understand exactly why one of those sentences is superior to the others.  I'm using my own dissertation purely so I can engage in classroom theatrics like: hiding by the podium in shame at its awfulness, then trying to revise it on the fly (to hammer home the point that writing-is-rewriting, and that only idiots are ever truly satisfied with the quality of their prose); becoming mock-offended when they have no idea what I'm talking about and amusingly belligerent when they murder my prose; etc.  (It's an act, but in a class as inherently dry as a research and methodology course, you'll fall asleep if you don't have a shtick.)

One last note: I've included every manner of citational error I noted with this paper set, but as I doubt (or hope) that my students didn't include every erroneous or inelegant citation humanly possible, feel free to tell me a few more I can wedge into those three vile examples.

Comments

[Karl Steel]

Great exercise. Another example (the 'partial citation indicating the students don't understand what they're quoting'):

There were three kinds of evolutionary thought in the 1890s: "social Darwinism," "developmental teleology," and another one, having to do with "exceptional individuals" (Kaufman 94).

You might ask what's important that's been left out, and ask why the phrase "development teleology" can't just be quoted without being explained.

==
Maybe give examples of good and bad paraphrase too?

[dave]

My nemesis is the quotation with absolutely no integration—you know, the one that just gets dropped in there, as if the student is saying, "Oh, and here's some stuff. You deal with it."

Example:
Scott Kaufman knows a thing or two about evolutionary thought in the 1890s. "In sum, in the late 1890s three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism that only argues that the same forces which shape evolution generally also work upon human populations; a developmental teleology that points to a single cooperative (or socialist) future; and a means by which exceptional individuals could accelerate that development, such that the inevitable end becomes visible in the span of a single lifetime." Therefore, please give me a good mark so I can get into [insert professional program here.]

[Luther Blissett]

Dave, that's the most common quotation mistake among my high school students. I call it "the floating quotation." Like Scott, I have a shtick that involves creating Writing Monsters throughout the year, so that different monsters are associated with different writing errors. The floating quotation looks basically like a Pac-Man ghost. It just sits there. Not particularly scary, but it will cost you points if I run into it.

(Then there are the too-specific/too-general thesis monsters, who I call Skylla and Karybdis. And the Sharktopus, which is the bifurcated thesis. And the Baggy Monster, which is like the Pac-Man ghost, only drawn to look like a brown paper bag. He haunts papers lacking proper paragraph transitions.)

[Julian]

"three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism that only argues"

I think that's a disagreement of tense, but I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm? "Schools of thought operated," but each one of them "argues" in the present tense? I guess an abstract thing like a school of thought can be said to exist forever, and therefore still speak in the present tense.

[JPRS]

Jack London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house in which London was born burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and a plaque was placed at this site by the California Historical Society in 1953.

"In sum, in the late 1890s three schools of applied evolutionary thought operated simultaneously: a vitiated form of social Darwinism that only argues that the same forces which shape evolution generally also work upon human populations; a developmental teleology that points to a single cooperative (or socialist) future; and a means by which exceptional individuals could accelerate that development, such that the inevitable end becomes visible in the span of a single lifetime." (Kaufman 94) [block quote]

Though the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed. London was essentially self-educated. He taught himself in the public library, mainly just by reading books.

[era]

If I were your student, I would be suspicious of three out of the four just because they refer to yourself in an obviously silly manner. Go for the least silly one (number 3). Maybe I am overestimating your students, but then maybe you are underestimating them?

[marriotr]

Era, that was honestly how I picked #3 on my first pass. I second your motion.

[SEK]

I guess an abstract thing like a school of thought can be said to exist forever, and therefore still speak in the present tense.

It's awkward, but yes, intellectual history's supposed to be in the perpetual present, because these ideas are always being bandied about irrespective of publication dates.

Maybe I am overestimating your students, but then maybe you are underestimating them?

I am and I'm not. They're actually quite bad at differentiating between silly self-referencing and establishing authority, and frequently write sentences like "He is a professor with a doctorate." So yes, the over-the-top quality of the self-referential silliness gives the game away; however, extreme examples stick with them better than bland truths, so ideally they'll remember them better.