Checking Our Sources

I spent the first part of my weekend helping chaperone our school's cross country team for their first meet of the season. The meet to place in Quinhagak (quin-uh-hawk) which is a short 20 minute plane ride for us. The boys did well with our middle schooler placing first, and I even participated in the village's annual Salmon Run - a 5K marathon. I didn't run the complete course though, nor did I run. I walked about half of the course and decided that the amount of rain that was coming down on us made it more of a swimming marathon than a running marathon. It was fun though, and it was nice to get to know the students who came with us.

I got back to Eek at around 2:00 pm, and decided to head to the school and relax. I started using Pinterest recently since it has a lot of cool images for me to use with my lessons, and it's also just a cool site to browse for ideas. I recently started a board for poetry and was browsing through some poetry quotes when I ran into this quote which is attributed to Alfred Lord Tennyson - the Victorian poet whom you may know for poems like In Memoriam or "Crossing the Bar."

"Awwwww," you might say. "What a cute thing to say to a loved one." I thought the same thing, too. In fact, I had already added it to my repertoire of cute things to say to ladies when I started to wonder where this line came from. I not only studied Tennyson in a few of my collegiate classes, but I also studied him on my spare time. So, I was a little miffed with myself when I couldn't remember where this line came from. Doing a quick Google search, I came up with a BBC article that attributed the quote to him. Wonderful! I thought. Now I don't have to do anymore searching. However, I noticed the article didn't attribute the line to the poem it came from, or any work of Tennyson's for that matter. The English teacher in me didn't like that. Not. One. Bit.

Digging a little deeper, it turns out that a lot of websites attribute this quote to Tennyson, but don't tell you where it comes from. Finally, I found a website that attributed the quote to a poem Tennyson wrote called "Flower." Well, it actually turns out that it's not in that poem, nor any other version of the poem I can find. In fact, Quote Investigator traces the first use of the quote back just a short 30 years, well after the life of Alfred Lord Tennyson. The phrase was used as a popular Valentine's day message in the 80's, and I suppose attaching the name of a well known poet made the gesture more grand.

This is the part where my students would ask me, "So what?" or "What's the point, Jake?" and I can only imagine you are asking the same thing. Well, what I'm getting at, folks, is that we need to be sure what we're posting on the internet for everyone to see is true, backed by facts, isn't supported by just one credible source, and doesn't just end up being a phrase you took from a Valentine's day card. 

People are starting to get heated up about political candidates with the 2016 election coming up next year, and I'm glad to see that people are willing to participate in the election. However, please please please please please take nothing at face value. Do the research. Google, Youtube, Fact Check, talking with other people and listening, and relying on more than one news source are great ways of making sure you're getting what you're voting for. Unfortunately, I see our society becoming more and more dependent on the news articles our friends post on Facebook rather than doing the research ourselves. And, it's just so darn easy to hit that share button for things you totally agree with despite whether it's true or not.

In the end, I'm just advocating for a smarter, more intellectual approach to political discourse. I'm advocating for researching both liberals and conservatives. Know the good, know the bad, and know the ugly. Chances are, you are going to want to know what they are before you vote.