Duncan Fuller's enquiry and the subsequent discussion raise two important
but distinct issues.
1) The treatment of offensive material in student work. I would have thought
that most universities operate policies that all work should be written in
non-sexist, non-racist, non-discriminatory etc. language. Any student simply
reproducing material which is sexist, racist, discriminatory etc in an
uncritical manner clearly would breach these guidelines and can be penalised
accordingly. This is not censorship, it is rather the policing of
consensually accepted axioms of what is acceptable intellectual discourse.
Furthermore, any student reproducing material from a clearly subjective
source without critically reflecting on that material, acknowledging and
rehearsing alternative points of view, and evaluating the strength of
assertions on the balance of evidence available, should also be failing to
meet assessment criteria for students critical abilities. Neither of these
strategies necessarily infringe freedom of speech or censor particular
political opinions. Indeed, whilst the BNP's propaganda is obnoxious and I
would not wish to direct students to their web-site, it is significant that
they have moved out of their old inner-city stomping-grounds to take on
rural issues, in part reflecting an unsavoury extreme nationalist strand in
some of the 'countryside' movement, and I would expect a good student coming
across such material to critically interrogate the BNP's involvement
accordingly.
2) Sourcing from the web. It strikes me that so far, most discussion in
universities about use of the web has concentrated on its potential either
as a teaching aid, or as a source of learning resources - ie from particular
'teaching web-sites'. Indeed, it is the fact that many of the latter are not
peer reviewed and the factual accuracy of the information they provide is
untested that causes greatest concern for many physical geographers.
However, the greatest potential of the web for human geographers is surely
that it provides unprecedented easy immediate access to a wealth of
empirical data - whether that be quantitative data such as the US census;
newspaper archives; or web-sites of organisations with on-line versions of
literature, reports, press releases etc. And, quite simply, are students are
not yet trained to engage with this material. What we need is to incorporate
into geographical methods courses training for students on how to read and
deconstruct web-sites as texts, examining the textual and visual
representations of the site in the context of the aims and activities of the
organisation concerned. We need to teach students that organisational
web-sites, whether for the BNP or Greenpeace or the DETR or whatever, are
not the equivalent of journal papers and textbooks, but should be treated as
more akin to advertisments, publicity brochures, annual reports, film and
television, all of which students are becoming increasingly familiar with
deconstructing as a result of cultural geography and qualitative techniques
courses.
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Dr Michael Woods
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
SY23 3DB.
Tel: 01970 622589
Fax: 01970 622659
E-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
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