[WikiEN-l] Textbooks (was: Announcing Wikimedia Foundation)

[The Cunctator]

On 6/22/03 11:22 PM, "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Anthere wrote:
>>> The reason why our encyclopedias have to be
>>> NPOV is because our audience is a  general one.
>>> The reason why our textbooks have to be DPOV
>>> is because our audience is very focused (the biology
>>> student, for example) and we need to  bring that
>>> student through the material in a logical and efficient
>>> way. 
>> 
>> No. Wrong. One do not have to throw away
>> NPOV just for the reason the audience is more
>> focused. That has nothing to do.
> 
> No - you are totally wrong (stings a bit doesn't it? In the future it would be
> nice if you showed some respect to the opinions of others. OK?)

Mav, you might try remembering English isn't her native language before you
assume she's not showing respect for your opinions.

>> Logical and efficient is totally compatible with
>> NPOV. What you suggest is "cutting" very
>> important information, that students will later
>> need to make informed decisions. Removing
>> infos is neither logical nor efficient in the long
>> term.
> 
> You are confusing a completely liberal education with the very real fact that
> most courses are designed to get students through a certain /limited/ set of
> material as efficiently as possible. In none, not one, of my college
> textbooks on biology is there any serious mention of Creationist viewpoints.
> That is /irrelevant/ information to have in a college-level biology textbook.
> In short; there are /separate/ classes that deal with that subject.

Are there nonserious mentions of Creationist viewpoints?

>>> Same thing is true for a section of a medical
>>> textbook on abortion ; we leave out most of the
>>> history and the different political views on the
>>> subject and just talk about the procedure itself
>>> and maybe have a single paragraph at the
>>> end sating something about access to the
>>> procedure and that risks doctors  face when
>>> they choose to specialize in this area.
> 
>> I disagree with you Mav.
> 
> Now that is a nicer way to disagree. Was that hard?

Now, that's being rude.

Boy, this textbook idea is opening up a whole ugly kettle of fish. We even
already have new poorly conceived acronyms.