"Reputable" Sources
Know what I don't want to see in any more essay assignments? Stuff like this:
"Your paper must use three reputable (edu sites, NCLive sites, books) resources for research."
"Reputable" is, according to Wiktionary, "having a good reputation; honorable", but I think I might take the liberty of saying that, in the case of academic research, "reputable" is generally taken to be more or less synonomous with "credible" or "accurate". It isn't that the teacher wants a source that's known for its upstanding moral fiber-- it's that she wants one that isn't full of bullshit.
If she had said "scholarly", and maybe that's what she was thinking (though the idea that "scholarly" and "reputable" might be indistinguishable in her mind is still rather troubling, for my part), then I would be able to go with two out of the three. .edu sites are kind of by their very nature scholarly. NCLive sites? That's a really good database system for peer-reviewed articles! Totally on board! Books, though? That is a terrible way to differentiate between the good and the bad. Of course, she probably didn't think it through. Maybe she's still thinking of how it was back in her day, when the internet was probably just something those weird kids in the corner were barely begininng to conceive of, and when books were, in theory, vetted to make sure their information was accurate before publication-- especially the books she was most likely to have access to, the ones in the college library.
Now, though? Being on the internet doesn't make a source inherently bad, any more than being in print form makes a source inherently good. At this point in my educational career, encyclopedias are pretty much vetoed as sources on the basis of making me read much more boring shit, but back when they were allowed, I had teachers who would have had me believe that the encyclopedia set down in my basement, the one that was published when the Soviet Union was still a thing? Is a better resource than Wikipedia. Pros and cons of Wikipedia aside, if I need to write, purely as an example, a paper on the Republic of Belarus (formed in 1990 as a post-Soviet state)? Being in print doesn't in any way make that encyclopedia downstairs a better resource on the subject. It doesn't even have to be Wikipedia. What if I wanted to use a History.com article? Or a first-hand account from someone who lived there at the time, which they published on their blog? There's a reason MLA guidelines exist for citing these things, you know.
More to the point, have you seen some of the books out there?! I've already addressed the issue of books becoming dated and their information no longer being accurate, as compared to a well-maintained online resource, which can change to reflect current realities. But that aside, there's all the mindnumbing crap being published. She didn't even specify "published by a major publishing house" (which still isn't any guarantee of quality, but would probably at least help screen out the truly extreme cases). She was probably thinking it, but if she's gonna spend that much time in class talking about how you always need to "go deeper" (BRRRRRM) and examine exactly what you mean by your words? Then I'm holding her to that shit. Did you know that there have been books published on how women belong in the kitchen, non-whites need to accept their place, atheists are somehow evil and actively trying to subvert society, etc.? Did you know that books have been published which defend racial intolerance, homophobia, and genocide? DID YOU KNOW THAT COSMO HAS PUBLISHED SIX, COUNT THEM SIX, BOOKS OF SEX TIPS?! I refuse to accept this premise that all books are created equally respectable and useable in the quest for information. Don't get me wrong, I love books. Many of them are wonderful for both leisure and research. However, to suggest that the simple state of being printed on many sheets of paper which are then bound together is enough to make a piece of writing somehow intrinsically better (or worse) than the same piece of writing published on a blog or other website? That's insulting the good books too.
According to my ethics teacher's words, if not her exact meaning, if I wrote a three-hundred page diatribe on how time-travelling dinosaurs who allied themselves with Darth Vader were actually responsible for 9/11, and I self-published that shit? That would be more reputable than articles on nationalgeographic.com.
I would like to suggest that this is no way to classify resources.
I just want to note that this isn't something only one particular teacher has said. She's just trying to do her job, and I'm not trying to make this about her. What I am trying to make it about is this bizarre idea that association with or publication on the internet somehow automatically decreases the worth of a work. It would be stupid of me to deny that the internet has changed how we interact with information, how we verify it, and how we disseminate it-- it has, and there are new skills that need to be cultivated if you want to competently navigate the information you find online. That still doesn't mean that being offline automatically makes anything better.
In conclusion, please don't cite this post in a paper, because it isn't reputable.
"Your paper must use three reputable (edu sites, NCLive sites, books) resources for research."
"Reputable" is, according to Wiktionary, "having a good reputation; honorable", but I think I might take the liberty of saying that, in the case of academic research, "reputable" is generally taken to be more or less synonomous with "credible" or "accurate". It isn't that the teacher wants a source that's known for its upstanding moral fiber-- it's that she wants one that isn't full of bullshit.
If she had said "scholarly", and maybe that's what she was thinking (though the idea that "scholarly" and "reputable" might be indistinguishable in her mind is still rather troubling, for my part), then I would be able to go with two out of the three. .edu sites are kind of by their very nature scholarly. NCLive sites? That's a really good database system for peer-reviewed articles! Totally on board! Books, though? That is a terrible way to differentiate between the good and the bad. Of course, she probably didn't think it through. Maybe she's still thinking of how it was back in her day, when the internet was probably just something those weird kids in the corner were barely begininng to conceive of, and when books were, in theory, vetted to make sure their information was accurate before publication-- especially the books she was most likely to have access to, the ones in the college library.
Now, though? Being on the internet doesn't make a source inherently bad, any more than being in print form makes a source inherently good. At this point in my educational career, encyclopedias are pretty much vetoed as sources on the basis of making me read much more boring shit, but back when they were allowed, I had teachers who would have had me believe that the encyclopedia set down in my basement, the one that was published when the Soviet Union was still a thing? Is a better resource than Wikipedia. Pros and cons of Wikipedia aside, if I need to write, purely as an example, a paper on the Republic of Belarus (formed in 1990 as a post-Soviet state)? Being in print doesn't in any way make that encyclopedia downstairs a better resource on the subject. It doesn't even have to be Wikipedia. What if I wanted to use a History.com article? Or a first-hand account from someone who lived there at the time, which they published on their blog? There's a reason MLA guidelines exist for citing these things, you know.
More to the point, have you seen some of the books out there?! I've already addressed the issue of books becoming dated and their information no longer being accurate, as compared to a well-maintained online resource, which can change to reflect current realities. But that aside, there's all the mindnumbing crap being published. She didn't even specify "published by a major publishing house" (which still isn't any guarantee of quality, but would probably at least help screen out the truly extreme cases). She was probably thinking it, but if she's gonna spend that much time in class talking about how you always need to "go deeper" (BRRRRRM) and examine exactly what you mean by your words? Then I'm holding her to that shit. Did you know that there have been books published on how women belong in the kitchen, non-whites need to accept their place, atheists are somehow evil and actively trying to subvert society, etc.? Did you know that books have been published which defend racial intolerance, homophobia, and genocide? DID YOU KNOW THAT COSMO HAS PUBLISHED SIX, COUNT THEM SIX, BOOKS OF SEX TIPS?! I refuse to accept this premise that all books are created equally respectable and useable in the quest for information. Don't get me wrong, I love books. Many of them are wonderful for both leisure and research. However, to suggest that the simple state of being printed on many sheets of paper which are then bound together is enough to make a piece of writing somehow intrinsically better (or worse) than the same piece of writing published on a blog or other website? That's insulting the good books too.
According to my ethics teacher's words, if not her exact meaning, if I wrote a three-hundred page diatribe on how time-travelling dinosaurs who allied themselves with Darth Vader were actually responsible for 9/11, and I self-published that shit? That would be more reputable than articles on nationalgeographic.com.
I would like to suggest that this is no way to classify resources.
I just want to note that this isn't something only one particular teacher has said. She's just trying to do her job, and I'm not trying to make this about her. What I am trying to make it about is this bizarre idea that association with or publication on the internet somehow automatically decreases the worth of a work. It would be stupid of me to deny that the internet has changed how we interact with information, how we verify it, and how we disseminate it-- it has, and there are new skills that need to be cultivated if you want to competently navigate the information you find online. That still doesn't mean that being offline automatically makes anything better.
In conclusion, please don't cite this post in a paper, because it isn't reputable.