How Green Becomes Wood

"For some, yes, but others could hardly be considered credible, and I could find no evidence to the contrary," she said with a faint smirk. "Unfortunately, it has been proven many times that governments like to alter the truth, hasn't it?"
 
"That's true," Daizi agreed slowly, "but it seems..." Finding her words was a struggle. It seemed unfair to her, but she couldn't determine how to explain that without seeming like she was just emotionally defending her precious baby. The suddenness in which she stopped speaking, and the clear look of thoughtfulness in her face, made it seem like she perhaps just didn't remember the word. Instead, she was trying to articulate how a teenager should be critical of the government, and not accept information blindly, but also that there needs to be some standard of accessible sources.

Dark, though, simply looked to Ciara.
 
Ciara said nothing just yet. She had been silently listening to every word, letting Miss Jones have her time. She still had the paper and appeared to be studying it quietly.

Miss Jones waited a moment, her face trying to remain neutral, but there was a tiny, impatient crimp in the corner of her mouth, and her finger tapped the table very lightly. Finally, she said, "I know it may seem harsh, but I want my students to learn to be able to dig into their sources and check things like, 'have they been altered?' As well as consider the consequences to using sources incorrectly and the harm that can cause."
 
"One or two looked decent, but most of them were emotional pieces. Blog posts and that sort of thing," she said dismissively. "Things we were cannot accept as accedemic research unless it is supposed to be a personal piece."
 
"They were primary sources, though, were they not?" Dark asked, taking out his own copy of Alec's assignment and flipping through it, "If the Government sources were insufficient as primary sources, and these are primary accounts of the topic at hand, sectioned out to account for their subjectivity. I suppose I am only wondering what sources you would have preferred to see?"
 
Dark looked over the paper with a flat affect, taking the time to carefully read the document. For a long time he was silent. Then, raising his head, he looked at her straight on and asked, "Do you know, I was also a history teacher, until about one year ago?"
 
Dark's expression didn't change, but Daizi shifted in her seat, "I was not let go, but my reasons for changing focus are not important here. I only mentioned it at all because I have a question not as a student's parent, but as a fellow in the field."
 
"In your opinion, these are biased and untrustworthy," Dark said, placing his fingertips over Alec's sources, then touched what she had handed him, "but these are acceptable, do I have that correct? Because having read this source, it seems to me as biased as the first-hand accounts, they are merely in a disagreement. What is it about these sources which make them more valuable to you? We both have studied history, surely we both recognize the importance of first-hand, primary sources to the historical record."
 
"This is very true, I agree, and I think we can both agree that no matter how much a person may try not to show it, every author of said primary sources has a bias of some sort," she said calmly. "After all, look at the Maccabees! Both of which claim to be firsthand accounts of the Maccabean Revolt, but are very different from each other. One at least makes an attempt to sound rational and professional while the other is pure propaganda. Personal experiences and expectations can highly color the lens through which you write or read, would you not agree? And we all have certain sensitivities from our own perceptions of the world. It is unavoidable. Not to mention, these are blog posts. They are completely unverifiable. Even if they are intended only as a snapshot of the life of someone living in a certain situation, how can someone prove that they are what they say they are? Especially in this day of AI Generation. Do you remember that massive problem with 'Amish Life Hacks' on YouTube back in '26? Terrible things. Even before AI, people pretending to be or suffer from things that did not exist was not exactly unheard of."
 
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"Some of them are from blog posts," Dark replied, holding up Alec's paper and arguing now from the perspective of a historian, "And they have dates of publication making them probably from before generative AI. We can verify them against other sources, just as we would with letters and journals from a hundred years ago. This is recent enough to be in living memory. It is our parents lifespans at the absolute oldest."
 
She did not even look at his paper. "Three of the four blogs have disappeared without a trace. Or rather, the authors of the blogs disappeared, leaving the blogs abandoned. No attempts to find those authors were met with any success, meaning that they are still unvarifiable, and one source alone does not cut it in my class."

"Ahmed Mahmoud, Zahra Asadi, Mariam Jabbar, and Nasr Fadel," Ciara said quietly.

Miss Jones paused, a flash of confusion crossing her face. "What?"

Ciara looked up. "Ahmed Mahmoud, age 53, Zahra Asadi, age 56, Mariam Jabbar, age 49, and Nasr Fadel, age 50. Most of them ceased to blog as their lives moved on or due to threats against their lives."

"Oh," Miss Jones said, looking off-kilter. "I did not find that information."
 
"Believe me," Dark said in genuine earnesty, "Had his assignment only cited blog posts, I would agree with your opinion, but..." He flipped to Alec's bibliography.

Now once more, Daizi spoke up, choosing her words carefully, "I feel... A little bit... As though it's not so much that his sources were bad, but that, maybe, you had specific sources in mind, and he found ones which didn't support that same view, which is why they were unfavourable. I'm not saying that to attempt to be accusatory, I'm an anthropologist. We deal extensively with bias, and I take the view it is impossible to be wholly impartial."
 
"I am sure you have, and it is terrible that you have to face such things," she said in a soothing tone. "However, I do take some offense in your... non-accusation that I would ask my students to cherry-pick their findings to favor my own personal bias. I recognize that you are attempting to protect your own interests, though, so I shan't hold it against you, of course."
 
"Face which things?" Daizi asked, for a moment genuinely confused, and then she clarified, hiding her annoyance at her tone. It seemed patronizing to her ears, "I meant academic bias, within my field. Similar to yours, I imagine. Every account has an agenda, be it governmental, the story of a survivor or... what have you. Are there any sources in his assignment you felt were valid?"
 
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