Via The Seattle times:
Linda O’Connor regards Wikipedia the same way former first lady Nancy Reagan campaigned against drugs.
She urges people to “Just Say No.”
The Great Meadows (N.J.) Middle School librarian hasn’t been a fan of the online encyclopedia for years. This fall, she decided it was time to make others at her school aware of the Web site’s pitfalls.
She put up a sign saying “Just Say ‘No’ to Wikipedia” over the computers in the school library.
Several other school officials feel similarly about the Web site. Wikipedia is blocked on all computers in the Warren Hills Regional School District.
Some teachers at Easton Area High School discourage its use, as do officials at Centenary College and Lehigh University.
“We don’t see it as an authoritative source,” said Nancy Madasci, Centenary’s library director.
The problem with Wikipedia, the school officials said, is it can be modified by anyone. There have been many cases of incorrect information on the Web site, some of which has been biased.
Any source, including the so-called authoritative sources such as Britannica or some other encyclopedias may have incorrect information as well. The key to teaching is not to teach absolutes but to teach curiosity, investigation, the pursuit of knowledge, and questioning skills. In today’s society, in the information age, students must learn how to pursuit information on their own when no one is around, not to simply remember the birth date of one or the “exact” historical facts written thousands of years after events, in all likelihood missing key elements in what has led things to happen.
If we teach our children the concept of absolute in knowledge, are we teaching them to learn, or are we teaching them to remember? If we teach our children absolutes, will it help them in their lives, or will it limit them as students, adults, and as individuals? While school officials may want to do the right thing, they are doing the exact opposite. Instead of questioning the source of the material, the should question their methods of teaching. Just as the Wikipedia project was counter-intuitive to authoritative sources, a complete paradigm shift in the school system, in our education and how we view education, is what I believe is needed.
This is about as funny as the constant spellathons held in the US. Don’t they know that nearly all their spellings are based on corruptions of other languages, notably English!
So basically teach censorship? They need to search technophobia in Wikipedia.
It’s true that much of Wikipedia is unverified and some is pure opinion. But it’s not as bad in that regard as it used to be, and in any case there’s no such thing as a truly objective resource. Wikipedia’s been cleaned up a lot the last few years. I find it to be an incredibly useful resource. Rather than banning it, I think it’s a good opportunity to teach children how to read critically and determine for themselves the authoritativeness of an article.