Introductory Comments: Series on Writing a Research Paper, with Detailed Statement of Assignment, Model Research Paper, and Vocabulary Accumulated in Conducting the Research

I typically find that my students have never been required to do a genuine research paper, in which they must use some form of accepted citations. For such a paper, a bibliography listing sources is not sufficient. A research paper is considered plagiarized if information for the exact source material is not specifically given, including not only author, and title of the book or journal, but also chapter or article name and pages on which the precise information may be found.


The three forms of citation now accepted for scholarly publication are footnotes, endnotes, and internal citations. Footnotes and endnotes are identical in form, with placement either at the bottom of the page on which the reference is used (for footnotes) or all references given in numbered order of appearance at the end of the article or chapter (for endnotes) constituting the only difference. Internal citations typically give only author, title of work (only if more than one book is used for a single author), and page numbers in parentheses immediately following the pertinent material used, with full information as to publisher, date, and page numbers given in a “Bibliography,” “References,” or “Works Cited” list at the end of the research paper.


I prefer the endnote format, and this is the one that I use in the model research paper that I present in this series focused on writing a research paper. 


What follows in successive sections are instructions to students for writing a research paper on the comparative virtues of nonviolence or violence as means for achieving social change; a model research paper on that topic; and a vocabulary list that I derived from reading of the source material and the vocabulary used in my own paper. This vocabulary list is one of many that I have compiled for explicit vocabulary instruction to my students.


This series on writing a research paper is very important for exposing the slim cognitive abilities of those in the education establishment and their debased notions of  the components of K-12 education.


The education establishment--- led by education professors and then including central school district administrators, building principals, and teachers who have been trained in departments, schools, and colleges of education --- devalues knowledge:


Education professors instruct their students that specific knowledge sets may always be accessed in numerous available sources: traditional books and journals, online versions of these, and websites. They maintain that students need not learn specific subject area material, particularly before high school; throughout most of their K-12 years, factual knowledge is not as important as the matters of “critical thinking” and “lifelong learning.”


Such reasoning emanates from the least respected professorial contingent on college and university campuses, education professors who are themselves short on knowledge. How convenient for them, then, to argue that knowledge is not important.  Released from the need to give their future teachers and administrators much in the way of information, they feel free to stress critical thinking and lifelong learning as the goals for education.


This is a sham and a grave injustice to our K-12 students, the reason that they now move across stages at graduation time to claim pieces of paper that are diplomas in name only, and the explanation for why the adult public in the United States is so woefully short on knowledge in the realms of mathematics, natural science, history, government, economics, literature, and the fine arts.


In the absence of true knowledge, students move through school guided by teachers who claim to be teaching critical thinking skills and instilling lifelong learning--- but do neither. One cannot reason critically in the absence of substantial accumulated knowledge about the subjects considered for critical assessment. Nor can one gain much enthusiasm for a lifetime of learning when she or he has learned so little during their years in school.


What I have presented in this series of articles is a research paper assignment of the type that truly requires students to engage in critical analysis. They are asked to consider seriously the arguments of those who favor and those who disfavor violence as a means for social change--- and to decide where they themselves stand as to whether nonviolent means or violent means are most valid for the achievement of social change.


Before they write such a paper, they read lengthy articles and book chapters. And in the case of my own students in the New Salem Educational Initiative, they read these articles on the strength of a great amount of accumulated knowledge in the history of the United States, the particular history of African Americans, and a broad range of historical information pertinent to a world that included the British Empire and the colonial experience of that empire's largest possession--- India.


Witnessed in the presentation of the research paper, and the vocabulary list of terms accumulated in researching and making the presentation, is genuine critical thinking and respect for the processes of serious scholarship that engender enthusiasm for lifelong learning.


The reader of this series of articles will come to look past the slogans and shibboleths of the education establishment for an understanding of the excellent education that our children now await and will only have when we have thoroughly overhauled K-12 education into that knowledge-intensive endeavor that will give our young people lives of cultural enrichment, civic engagement, and professional satisfaction.