For some time now I’ve been thinking of writing this article. Ever since, for the first time in over thirty years of reviewing (mainly) non-fiction books, two people questioned my objectivity. (One did so rudely, and in public; the other politely, and in private. I responded to the latter.)
I was reminded of this by an article by Stephen Downes in which he discusses an article by Roy Peter Clark: In journalism, ‘objective’ is a good word with a noble history. But let’s consider ‘distance from neutrality‘.
Pointer posits the idea of a scale of neutrality, ranging from zero (Objective) to five (Propaganda). Here’s what Downes says:
“To me, fully ‘neutral’ means fully diverse. To me, the most ‘neutral’ stance in the scale is what he calls ‘engaged’, which included “heavy fact-checking, especially on the powerful... labels designed to make opinion transparent... evidence is weighed and presented proportionally.” The same holds true, I would argue, for teaching. Zero is too far on one direction; five is too far in the other. But it is up to the individual teacher, I think, to make the call”
I would largely agree with this, although I think there are a couple of other considerations. I could discuss these in the context of teaching, but as it was my book reviewing that was “questioned” I’ll use that as the vehicle for this discussion.
The first thing I’d say, at the risk of sounding trite, is that it’s not possible to be objective or neutral. For example, I am about to read and review a book about how to stem the flood of teachers leaving the profession. At the moment, according to some statistics I saw recently, in England more teachers are leaving the profession than are joining it. Now, when I read that book, I’m going to bring to bear my knowledge of all the half-baked initiatives I’ve seen come and go, and the disingenuous statements made by officialdom, such as those in the recent White Paper, including this: “We will deliver 500,000 teacher training and development opportunities by 2024...”. Not teachers, note, but opportunities to become a teacher. As I said in my article, I am delivering the opportunity to donate £1,000,000 to the Terry Freedman Benevolent Fund. (Get in touch if you’re interested.)
I’m going to bring to bear the experience of having all my free periods taken away because there weren’t enough teachers to cover staff absences.
I’m going to bring to bear my experience of having to teach Maths, Drama, English and History, none of which I am qualified to teach.
How on earth could I possibly be objective? And I get so angry about the poor quality of Education Secretaries we get lumbered with, who are hopeless and hapless (in my opinion) when it comes to dealing with the recruitment and retention crisis, how can I possibly be neutral?
But is objectivity or neutrality even desirable? Surely, what the potential buyer of a book about this subject (or a book about how to teach, or assess students, or behaviour, or leadership or any other educational topic) needs and deserves is a review that is not objective or neutral? Surely what they deserve is a review that states, quite clearly, “this was tried in 1995 and it didn’t work then”, or “I’ve thought about this topic too and I think the author is completely wrong”, or “Having been around the block a bit I completely agree with this author’s suggestions”?
In terms of Clark’s scale I would place myself mostly as level three (engaged) to four (advocacy). The problem with the scale, though, is that it’s linear, and should probably be 3D. For example, if I am reviewing a book about, say, teaching Computing, I am certainly going to be doing some “heavy fact-checking” (level 3). However, if the book suggests that as we can’t train enough Computer Science teachers we make do with using unqualified teaching assistants or older students to “facilitate” computer programming lessons, of course I’m going to be guilty of “Story selection in support of a particular cause and interest” (level 4). I’m not interested in giving any credence to the views of people who have never taught and who in my opinion don’t know what they’re talking about in this context.
I would even go so far as to suggest that the author deserves more than objectivity or neutrality. Yes, you want the review to be fair, but you also want it to be honest. Maybe being honest is neither objective nor neutral.
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