The skill of assessing the reliability of sources is incredibly important for History students. Today I look at two different sources writing about Confucius and assess them for their reliability.
The skill of assessing reliability should not be sidelined to just the study of history, it can be used in every aspect of your life, especially when we get most of our information from the internet, which is quite frankly swirling cesspit of misinformation.
Pre-Listening Vocabulary:
Two great YouTube clips on Lateral Reading:
Stanford History Education Group Lateral Reading
This episode is proudly sponsored by Amped Up Learning
Season One Cover Lesson Bundle
Contact: Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9, Facebook and email historydetective9@gmail.com
All original music written and performed by Kelly Chase.
Hi, this is Kelly Chase and you are listening to History Detective, a podcast where I usually delve into the past to uncover the mysteries of history and then explore how that story might be reimagined through song. You can catch those episodes in your podcast feed, but this is special mid-season treat, so I am mixing it up a bit and I am hoping that you’ll be able to rely on today’s episode to improve your evaluation skills.
(Rabbit Hole Music 1🎼)
The Concept
In case you didn’t get my subtle hint in the intro, today I will be talking about the historical evaluation skill of reliability. But I don’t think this skill should be sidelined to just the study of history, I think it can be used in every aspect of your life, especially when we get most of our information from the internet, which is quite frankly swirling cesspit of misinformation.
While trying to find a snappy quote to start off this bonus episode, I found one attributed to the Chinese philosopher Confucius. “A man who lacks reliability is utterly useless.” Firstly, um what about women? Secondly, this quote is in English, I am pretty sure that 2500 years ago in China, English was not the language of choice, so who knows what might have been lost in translation. Thirdly, just because you have found a Google image with a black background and an authoritative looking portrait set to the left, with a decorative boarder and a wise font, doesn’t mean it’s really true. Even four-year-olds can use Canva. The irony of this Confucius quote about reliability is that, I don’t think that this quote can be reliably attributed to Confucius. Yes, that’s right I just fell down a confusing Confucius rabbit hole.
Most of the sayings that are attributed to Confucius were from an ancient text that was compiled after his death called the Analects, this book was supposedly written over a time period of 50 years. Now think about it. If you are trying to remember word for word a conversation that you had last week, it is total struggle street, imagine trying to write a book of quotes from someone 50 years after they died. Yeah sure, maybe you might get the essence of someone’s philosophical beliefs, but I don’t think you could reliably say that any of the sayings attributed to Confucius are 100% accurate.
Part of checking the reliability of a source is to see if other scholars corroborate, so let’s see what other people have to say about these writings.
Firstly, Marc Csikszentmihalyi (Chick-sent-me-high), who is the Chinese Program professor at the University of California in Berkley, he has a PhD in Asian Language Studies and is the editor of the Journal of Chinese religions. He has translated and edited at least 3 books on Chinese philosophical though. I found the following information in an article he wrote for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, last updated in 2020 and which has 23 academic citations. So, I am going to assess the reliability of this article as being well researched and written by a credible expert. He says, “The many sources of quotations and dialogues of Confucius, both transmitted and recently excavated, provide a wealth of materials about the philosophy of Confucius, but an incomplete sense of which materials are authoritative.” So our expert scholar, is unsure about the reliability of the Confucian writings.
Now to find some corroborating evidence. In a Washington Post Article by Angela E. Couloumbis, she writes, “the words … from … the…Analects of Confucius, [were] compiled by his disciples after his death.” I want to make some observations about the reliability of this article. The author is not a Chinese scholar, but a journalist. She holds a Master’s Degree in Journalism and has worked at the Philadelphia Inquirer since 1996. She is listed as winning the Vigoda Award for journalism. Not to downplay the achievement, but when I looked into the award, it is only for writing staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Additionally, the article does not have any citations, the role of a journalist writing for a popular newspaper is fundamentally different from that of scholar writing for an Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Although, it has a similar sentiment, journalism has many functions and I would categorise this as more of a “think piece” about Confucianism rather than from years of translation and scholarly research on a topic.
So that is an example of how you might assess the reliability of sources.
When looking up the credibility of the authors, I used a concept called “Lateral Reading”. It means instead of just reading what is on the page, you take side-step and try and find out as much information about the author or organisation as you can. There are 2 excellent YouTube videos I would recommend from both Crash Course and Stanford History Education Group, that go into more depth about the skill. I will link them in the show notes.
And just on a side note, please don’t use the expression “Confucius Say” before launching into your Confucius misquotes. It is racist saying that originated in the late 1930s to stereotype Chinese Americans as being “other” and having a poor grasp of English grammar, but the “Confucius Say” comics were also incredibly sexist, and they normalised both the physical and sexual assault of women. I will not share any here as they are not appropriate for my PG rating.
Instead, I will leave you with the wise words of the great philosophical thinker Winnie the Pooh for you to carry with you as you wade through the information on the internet. “Always watch where you are going. Otherwise you may step on a piece of forest that was left out by mistake.”
(Rabbit Hole Music 2🎼)
I would love to hear any suggestions for future episodes, so please get in contact. You can follow me on Twitter @HistoryDetect, Instagram @HistoryDetective9 or if you have any burning questions that you would like me to answer in a future bonus episode email me at historydetective9@gmail.com
This Kelly Chase, on the Case.
(Transition music🎼)
If you are a teacher or student, you will find a link to the transcript in the show notes.
History Detective is a completely independent podcast, so if you would like to support me so I can continue to make episodes, I have ready-made classroom resources available to purchase for all of the season one episodes. I have just released the History Detective cover lessons bundle which includes editable worksheets for every Season One Episode. So if you need to leave a cover lesson for when you are sick or have to attend a meeting, pop the worksheet in your LMS and know that the students will be able to access a self-paced lesson and engage in historical thinking skills. You can find it my Amped Up Learning store, which is linked in the show notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoQG6Tin-1E&t=8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHNprb2hgzU&t=94s
Next time on History Detective (Transition music🎼)
Next time on History Detective, I will do a digital archive deep dive to uncover the mystery of Chernobyl and the missing cheese.
If you liked what you heard and know someone who might enjoy History Detective too, please share and subscribe and because I am a teacher, you know I love gold stars feel free to rate, review. See you next time.
Bibliography
Couloumbis, A, E. 1995, Words of Wisdom: Who Was Confucius? What Did He Say? The Washington Post, Access Date 26 September 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/1995/12/13/words-of-wisdom-who-was-confucius-what-did-he-say/2b6a527b-41be-40a4-a732-5589ac87917b/
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, "Confucius", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2020/entries/confucius
Edelstein, S, 2015, Wise Man Say: Politically Incorrect Comic No Funny, Envisioning The American Dream