Sheldon Rampton wrote:
My old school textbooks never mentioned the genocide against Native Americans, and judging from Larner's account, it seems that this is something that ought to be mentioned when students learn about Mount Rushmore -- unless, of course, we think "history" should consist solely of self-congratulatory propaganda.
Right, well, that's exactly my point. The example was just something I heard in the news the other day and isn't essential.
My point, stated abstractly, is that outside of a few cases where extreme ideologues (of whatever sort) have sway, or where most people feel that children shouldn't have certain information *period*, NPOV is likely to be satisfactory to most of the people who are concerned about the content of school texts. That more or less flows naturally from what NPOV means and how the wikipedia process works to generate it.
As a practical matter, it's easy to see a school admin blocking wikipedia from student access at school if we have photos of genetalia, or an article about 'fuck', no matter how NPOV. But I don't think we'll be blocked merely for having an NPOV article on Mount Rushmore, including all the unsavory history that you cited.
For now, I'm not too worried about whether wikipedia is acceptable to school boards. That's not our primary mission, which is to create an NPOV encyclopedia for adults. But in the future, when we get ready (possibly under the 'Nupedia' brand name or whatever) to produce an "edited" or "finalized" or "certified" or "peer reviewed" version, then it could quite possibly be a design goal to make sure that we have a very good shot at school acceptance.
--Jimbo