one teacher’s journey

A recent article in the Crimson echoes similar stories from Cornell and Tufts, all in relation to the Middlebury ban.  The slant in the beginning of this one focuses on the shift by some profs to actually include Wikipedia articles as part of their syllabus. 

Here, again, the balance seems to exist.  Some professors assign their students to author and edit Wikipedia entries–a good way to create the “editors” that Will Richardson always advocates for. 

One professor, who assigned articles for reading, admitted that-due to the ‘unstable’ nature of the entries–”perhaps I should re-look at the entries from time to time.”
Isn’t this what we should do with all our teaching resources?  Just because a photocopied article (shhh!) has worked well for years, is it still relevant?  The best I can find to illustrate a point?  This, to me, is just good, reflective practice…regardless of the inclusion of Wikipedia in my course materials.

Harvard Hebrew Literature and Philosophy Professor Shaye J.D. Cohen, in commenting on the need to be skeptical about Wikipedia, said:

“Wikipedia represents all that is great and all that is dangerous about
the Internet.  It is incredibly powerful and readily
available, and yet can mislead the unwary and spread disinformation.
One hopes that a good undergraduate education will enable students to
assess what they are reading.”

One hopes that, if we are doing our 21st century jobs correctly, a good secondary education will enable them to do so as well.

It seems as though Middlebury College isn’t the only one. I wonder if this is a sign of things to come, with more professors making it clear that they will not accept Wikipedia as a cited source.

It certainly appears to be a growing trend of bloggers and “journalists” opening with misleading headlines. The Cornell Daily Sun’s Ben Eisen writes of professors who will not allow Wikipedia to be cited. Yet even the profs agree that Wikipedia has its realm of usefulness.

Cornell history professor Aaron Sachs:
“I tell my students that Wikipedia is sometimes a decent option for a
getting a basic overview,” he said. “But even then it takes a lot of
practice to recognize when an entry might be more or less reliable.”

Eisen does quote students in his story, however, which gives a more well-rounded perspective:

“I will use Wikipedia if I need to look up an equation or if I want to
get background information before starting my research, but I wouldn’t
ever cite it in a paper,” said Michael Lazar.

The understanding of Wikipedia’s limitations seems to come from many arenas. “(E)ven Jimmy Wales, the site’s co-founder, says that neither Wikipedia —
nor any other encyclopedia — should be used as an academic source.” (from Eisen)

What about high schools? Those teachers who require research of any kinds have already encountered Wikipedia in the Works Cited page. Is it worth “taking a stand” and making a clear ban on citing it? I’m starting to think so, under one huge condition: that we, as educators, do a better job of explicitly teaching our students how to evaluate sources for reliability and validity.

I hear the voices now…”I’ve been doing that for years!” Yes, so have I. But web sources like Wikipedia are a brave new world that few of us teachers have sought to understand. If we are going to teach students how to be evaluators (or “editors” as Will Richardson calls them), then we must first understand how these new tools work and how they are different from the sources of even a year or two ago.

I’ve been quite interested in the latest flap over Wikipedia and the recent ban by the history faculty of Middlebury College in Vermont. At issue is the citing of the community-edited online encyclopedia in academic work.

This is a polarizing issue among educators, as are most technological innovations. Time is often the best judge of the worthiness or merit of any new technology, but what to do until that final judgement. Do I, as an English teacher, allow Wikipedia to be cited? Do we, as a high school staff, take a particular stance on the issue as well?

I appreciated a recent article in the Tufts Daily, “So long, truthiness: Middlebury bans Wikipedia in the classroom,” and the comments from a number of Tufts history professors. What I appreciated most is what appears to be a rather balanced and thoughtful view of the web tool.

“It’s a popular knowledge compilation that, as a scholar, would be
dangerous to rely on,” Malchow {history professor at Tufts} said. “However, as a first step – as you’re beginning some research or for basic knowledge that you’re not going to assume is necessarily accurate – it can be incredibly
convenient. I use it myself sometimes as a starting point.”

“I don’t deny that it’s a useful tool,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s a scholarly tool.”

I also agree with Associate Professor Gary Leupp as well:

“I think [a ban on Wikipedia] is irrational,” Leupp said. “It’s
important to inculcate a critical sense in students about any kind of
source.”According to Leupp, no source is truly credible. To him, choosing which information to believe is what learning is all about.

“Students have a tendency to read a book by one fallible human being, and then to say, ‘Well in the book they said …’ They – as if it were a
committee,” Leupp said. “Students often revere sources in a way, but
they are written by individuals.”

“Students should disagree with and doubt parts of anything they read,” he continued. “It’s all part of the critical reasoning faculties you want to develop in a history class.”

And an English class…and math…and science…and life. To me, it seems we are missing the point. Here is a real-world opportunity to teach our students how to question validity and reliability, and we are–in many cases–running from it by deciding to ban it outright. And we all know how well bans work, right?

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