Many teachers on the high school and middle school level and most college/university professors strongly discourage the use of Wikipedia http://www.wikipedia.org as a primary source for research papers and other such projects. However, a new extreme as arisen in a New Jersey school district. They have gone as far as to ban Wikipedia from their network. Their reasoning behind this? Students will be too "tempted" to use Wikipedia and its untrustworthy information. I agree with one critic, Denise Walker, in that this is sad. I agree that sometimes the information found on Wikipedia is not up to the standards of a primary source but most of the time it can give you a good place to start if you have no idea what you are talking about. Walker mentions that it is a shame that this school district simply banned the site instead of making it into a learning experience. Instead of telling them not to use the site, why not tell them to contribute to the site and add the information that they find from their primary sources to the information already on Wikipedia, or why not take the opportunity to have a discussion about the importance of integrity in media. I would never use Wikipedia as a primary source but before I start a paper or a project with a completely new subject matter I almost always start with a wiki. I gather information and use it to search other key terms associated with my main focus in order to write and inclusive paper. I think that banning Wikipedia would be tragic.
The article I based this blog posting off of can be found at the following URL:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20071127-banning-wikipedia-at-school-good-idea-or-missed-opportunity.html
Comments (4)
Wow, I actually agree with you. My ENGL 030 teacher actually encourgages it because our theme is "Digital Democracy" and there is no better example than Wikipedia. Plus, it's free so that is nice. Finally, if you need to know what the general population thinks about a certain issue, why not look at something that the general population has the ability to edit?
Posted by Anonymous | December 13, 2007 12:45 AM
Posted on December 13, 2007 00:45
That one was ME!!
Wow, I actually agree with you. My ENGL 030 teacher actually encourgages it because our theme is "Digital Democracy" and there is no better example than Wikipedia. Plus, it's free so that is nice. Finally, if you need to know what the general population thinks about a certain issue, why not look at something that the general population has the ability to edit?
Posted by D. J. Lingelbach | December 13, 2007 12:46 AM
Posted on December 13, 2007 00:46
BIZARRE. It's like the next-gen version of banning books from the curriculum. I can't see this lasting very long, though. Sooner or later someone with a brain will be in that part NJ and point out that they're incredibly misguided.
Posted by Papapapat Bonner | December 14, 2007 4:18 AM
Posted on December 14, 2007 04:18
*sigh* But this is the same with everything. Something difficult to deal with comes up so someone has the bright idea of just getting rid of it entirely and ignoring the fact that it's a problem. God forbid they educate their students on proper research practices.
Posted by Abby Assetto | December 14, 2007 4:18 PM
Posted on December 14, 2007 16:18