Palestínufólk og palestínskt fræðafólk og álitsgjafar hafa alltaf verið sniðgengin af vestrænum meginstraumsmiðlum. Þar ríkja raddir vestrænna og ísraelskra stofnana. Í þessum miðlum, eins og ríkismiðlum Evrópuríkja á borð við RÚV og BBC, og bandarískum miðlum eins og CNN og New York Times, svo ekki sé talað um aðra bandaríska öfgahægrimiðla, er nánast aldrei talað við palestínskt fræðafólk né heldur við sérfræðinga um Palestínu annars staðar að. Þannig er aldrei talað við ísraelsku Gyðingana Ilan Pappé eða Avi Shlaim í Bretlandi þó að þeir búi þar og séu háskólaprófessorar þar, sérfræðingar í landráni Ísraels í Palestínu, með langan lista af bókum, vísindagreinum og verðlaunum í sínu farteski.

Ég tók saman nokkrar staðreyndir um sniðgöngu á fyrirlestri Gil Epstein. Samantektina Um sniðgöngu og fyrirlestur Gil Epstein á vegum PRICE-stofnunarinnar má finna hér á pdf-formi.

The goal of teaching-learning, from a dialogical perspective, is that the student appropriate mathematical discourse, which means not only assimilating it, but also adapting it creatively to his or her own “semantic and expressive intention” (Bakhtin, 1986, pp. 293 - 294). Bakhtin distinguishes two competing characteristics of discourse: authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse. Authoritative discourse is a discourse that only expresses a single perspective and demands acceptance. It is discourse of officially accepted knowledge, such as is found in textbooks, government policy documents, and from the mouths of teachers. It is a characteristic often associated with traditional teaching, where students are expected to assent to, and internalise, the presented content, without having their own perspectives having impact on the content. Internally persuasive discourse is discourse that resonates with us, that enters into an interaction, and struggle, with our other internally persuasive discourses, all our other “available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions and values” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 346). Internally persuasive discourse is not simply taken as given, but developed further, “applied to new material, new conditions; it enters into interanimating relationships with new contexts” (Bakthin, 1981, p. 346). It is the discourse of our personal beliefs, the ideas that move us, that shape us and create the stories we tell ourselves about the world and who we are (Landay, 2004).

Variation theory says that learning consists in coming to discern differences in an object of learning that were previously unnoticed. We are thus learning to see an object in new ways. We can never see a thing simply as what it is - we always see some aspect of it, against a background and as compared with other things.