Like I said before: *in theory*, wikipedia is a great
educational source, but *in practice*, no one believes
it. Wikipedia does have its flaws that I believe could
be solved by this.
--LittleDan
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
I believe it already is a "valid educational
source".
Waiting for approval from educational bureaucrats,
and being restricted
by their political whims would destroy Wikipedia as
we know it. The
scrutiny would be not just on an article by article
basis, but on a
school district by school district basis. The range
of these from
permissive open-minded to Christian or Islamic
fundamentalist is so wide
that we would never have the resources to do all the
needed editing.
Wikipedia's primary value is not as a static source
in the way that a
printed book or CD wuld be. It is as a growing,
dynamic and editable
source. In the perpetual battle between the
irresistable force and the
immovable object we are on the side of the
irresistable force. Here in
British Columbia the provincial department of
education (at least in
theory) bases education on three principles of
learning. The one that
is relevant in this context is that education
requires the active
participation of the learner. The learner is not
there to just
passively vacuum up knowledge; he needs to
contribute to that knowledge
interactively. The old model based on respecting
the elders who
painstakingly amassed a precious body of knowledge
is not working as
well as it used to.
In the economic terms of supply and demand the
supply of knowledge has
been made higher than ever by electronic means. The
last time knowledge
got such a boost came with Gutenberg in the 15th
century. Taking an
example from a modern 18th century democracy like
the United States, we
have the Electoral College. It reflects a time when
Gutenberg's
revolution had taken hold, but before the
revolutions in transportation
of the 19th century. Communicating the results of
elections from
Georgia and New Hampshire was not a simple task. It
would have
stretched the imagination of the drafters of the
constitution to
conceive that some day a far larger and more
populous country would be
able to have all the results in one place before the
end of voting day.
(The Florida anomaly would have been no less
baffling to them as to the
modern person.)
Returning to education, the opportunity that we
offer is in dynamically
learning the skills of democratic participation.
Focusing on the
negative act of controling sexually explicit
material or the positive
act of promoting religious or patriotic values would
both have us
missing the opportunity. Part of the skill too is
learning to cope with
the disruptive elements in the society.
I could maintain this rant a lot longer! :-)
Eclecticology
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