Comments for Our Kids Are Failing - And It's All Wikipedia's Fault!

Our Kids Are Failing - And It's All Wikipedia's Fault!

2008-06-23T16:00:00Z

Talk about a knee-jerk reaction. Yesterday, news broke out in Scotland about how the internet was to blame for Scotland's failing exam pass rates. According to the Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC), Wikipedia, among other sources, was cited as the reason as to why the students were failing. Is this a case of the internet making us stupid? Or do students just need to learn how to use the new research tools of the web a little more appropriately?

]]> It's All Wikipedia's Fault!

According to the report, Eleanor Coner, the SPTC's information officer, said: "Children are very IT-savvy, but they are rubbish at researching." She noted that today's students do the majority of their research online instead of using books or other resources that could be found at the library.

The internet encyclopedia, Wikipedia, was one of the Council's main concerns because its very nature allows it to be edited by anyone and it is not updated by verified researchers, they said.

In addition, the Council was worried that students don't know how to research and tend to put faith in the validity of online resources. Says Ronnie Smith, the general secretary of the Educational Institute of Scotland, "We need to make sure youngsters don't take what they read online as fact."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

We've heard many of iterations of that phrase before - "don't believe everything you read," "don't believe everything you see on TV,"...now it's the internet's turn to be held up to scrutiny.

Is The Internet Making Us Stupid?

A quick glance at this news could lead one to believe that this is a clear case in support of Nicholas Carr's recent argument that the internet (or Google, as he says) is making us stupid. Easy access to a stream of information via the internet, he says, is affecting our ability to focus for long periods, like when reading and absorbing long articles (a trend we also mentioned here). In a way, Wikipedia could be seen as the ultimate manifestation of our convenience culture when it comes to information retrieval.

How many times per day do you do a quick search to look up a quick fact and winding up skimming the highlights on a Wikipedia page? (For me at least, I'll admit it's a the very least a daily occurrence, if not more.)

But are the failing test scores really an indication of our brains' ability to reprogram itself to adapt to this new way of learning, as Carr mentioned in his article? And is that ability really affecting our intelligence?

...Or Do Students Need To Learn How To Research ?

Perhaps not. If anything, this problem could point to the fact that educational institutions need to adapt their curriculums to include teaching students what real research is all about. A Google search may or may not lead them to valuable resources online, but many students today clearly don't know how to differentiate between what's legitimate and what's not. Being able to look at a piece of information online and challenge it in order to determine whether or not it is a fact is simply not a skill that many online users have. However, once this process is learned, students can apply it throughout their education - no matter what medium they use for research.

Image credits: Library: Canadian Veggie

Comment from Daniel Brusilovsky on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T16:57:30Z

Seeing that I am a student, not college, but high school, I use Wikipedia as a tool. Wikipedia is not to blame for students receiving bad grades. The students are to blame for their own bad grades. If they want to spend the time on the internet, doing who knows what, its their choice, but blaming recourses is not right.

Students do need to learn how to research correctly, and not copyright and/or plagiarize, but everyone needs to learn sooner or later.

Just my two cents,

Daniel Brusilovsky
www.danielbru.com

Comment from PR NY on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T16:58:25Z

Is using Wikipedia any different from using the 'World Book', Colliers or the Britanica, which we did in our school days.

In fact the Britanica had two subject options: short info and detailed info.

How many pre-Web students got their research info from encyclopedias back in the day - if there was an error or change, it could only be updated in the next edition.

Comment from Doug K. on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:10:09Z

I don't see anywhere here where the teachers (who are apparently lousy teachers) are taking any of the responsibility.

Doug K.

Comment from anonymous on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:10:31Z

The internet is over-rated in its usefulness. For as long as tech geeks and people who stand to gain money talk up how important the internet is, and play down its negatives, people will believe it. I think the internet should be 'blamed', at least to make the public perception of it more in line with reality. Every time someone criticizes it, there are swarms of blogs that rush to defend it, usually without any research done on their parts.

Comment from Todd Andrews on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:22:15Z

There is no way a website providing people additional information can be a problem. The problem is with the teachers or parents not properly teaching research practices.

Comment from Jess on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:25:01Z

Blame the internet.

Blame this scary new technology, blame kids for being lazy, blame, blame and blame some more. When you're out their blaming, these kids are learning and understanding how to use new tools on the net to their advantage. So look out, they're way more prepared for our world than you think.

With information at our fingertips, the important lessons to be taught are creativity, communication and critical thinking abilities.

Last I checked none of those things are found in encyclopedias (besides the relevant entry for that word)

oh and @anonymous: you're overrated - there I said it.

Comment from anonymous on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:45:59Z

@Jess...

That's exactly the kind of sarcastic, factless, sensationalistic response I would have predicted.

I'm not saying the internet is a horrible thing. I'm saying that the perception of it is far more positive than its net effect on the world. Overly defensive net junkies like Jess make it difficult to look at it for what it really is. The web does far more to help you avoid thinking than it does to foster thought.

Comment from Emery Dora on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:47:28Z

@Todd Andrews is absolutely correct. Younger students have grown up in an age of typing into a search prompt, and thus this behavior is second nature. It's up to the teachers to educate on how to use the information garnered in this fashion responsibly.

Wikipedia is a great starting-off point for information on a vast array of subjects, but teachers should emphasize that it's a useful reference as a guide for further research, not an end-all be-all.

If educators emphasize cross-referencing and double checking sources and facts (as well as the fact that Wikipeda is comprised of UGC), younger students will learn to be more disciplined in their research practices. Hopefully.

Comment from Marcello on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T17:53:53Z

The problem isn't just students believing everything they read on the internet. The problem is also teachers and professors believing everything they read on the internet.

I work at a prominent university and I'm often astonished at how many academics use Google as their sole research tool and don't take the time to verify the information that they find.

Unfortunately we've made some embarrassing mistakes as a result. The academics' excuse is almost always "but I saw it on the internet!"

Comment from Kevin Devine on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:10:50Z

I agree with the comments that it is the teachers' or librarians' responsibility to educate. I worked for over three years at a library and the librarians commonly used Google or Wikipedia to get quick answers. If you see them doing it, you are going to do it.

Most librarians (not all) don't have the ability or the inclination to teach someone how to search using the Internet. They have a fear that if everyone used the Internet to research, they will lose their job... What librarians need to do, is wake up! Teach people how to research, how to search and how to fact-check. On the Internet, then, at least, you will be useful...

Comment from justelise on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:11:40Z

What's stopping the teacher from rejecting web sources, Wikipedia, Encyclopedias, and non-AP web articles as sources? What happened to giving the kids parameters within which to work? I've been assigned many a paper where encyclopedias and web sources were not considered appropriate sources on the undergraduate and graduate level.

If no one teaches the kids what is a quality information source from what is not, how would they know better? Why are the parents not involved in this process as well?

The internet itself is not making anyone stupid. Perhaps it's making everyone too lazy to go further than the search engine for research, but I'd hardly say it's responsible for all of the problems this article describes. When I was in H.S., we had classes at the local college library on how to do proper research, and how to search for and cite sources. I don't understand how kids graduate from H.S. and don't know how to research today.

Comment from Emily on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:26:57Z

This is a subject of nearly continuous conversation among librarians. In fact, I think I may at this point *dream* in deliberations related to these sorts of questions. Students have always needed to be taught to engage information--all information--critically, thinking, writing, and arguing with vigorous, skeptical engagement. Too much of the wikipedia-bad argument pretends there's such a thing as 'right' information, when really there's only information to be grappled with. I like to bring a copy of the 1910 Britannica--alarmingly racist stuff, surely taken as 'fact' in its time--to compare with wikipedia. Information is produced within specific historical and cultural contexts that shape what we can know and tell about things. That has always been and will always be the case.

Comment from Kevin Marks on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:31:27Z

Douglas Adams had this sorted out back in 1999:

Because the Internet is so new we still don’t really understand what it is. We mistake it for a type of publishing or broadcasting, because that’s what we’re used to. So people complain that there’s a lot of rubbish online, or that it’s dominated by Americans, or that you can’t necessarily trust what you read on the web. Imagine trying to apply any of those criticisms to what you hear on the telephone. Of course you can’t ‘trust’ what people tell you on the web anymore than you can ‘trust’ what people tell you on megaphones, postcards or in restaurants. Working out the social politics of who you can trust and why is, quite literally, what a very large part of our brain has evolved to do. For some batty reason we turn off this natural scepticism when we see things in any medium which require a lot of work or resources to work in, or in which we can’t easily answer back – like newspapers, television or granite. Hence ‘carved in stone.’ What should concern us is not that we can’t take what we read on the internet on trust – of course you can’t, it’s just people talking – but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV – a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make. One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no ‘them’ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‘us’.

http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

I though evaluating sources was what the 'new humanities' education was all about?

Comment from Peter Naegele on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:32:23Z

Kids aren't as web-savvy as everyone claims. Check out this article and realize that they aren't the "digital natives" they have been exalted to be.

Wikipedia is pretty much the wild west as Sanger describes it. It's not a place to learn for students, but it is a place for educators to learn how to build their own wikis.

The concept of the wiki isn't the problem, it's the infrastructure of Wikipedia and Conservapedia that are giving wikis a bad name

Comment from Jason on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:32:51Z

95% of the email hoaxes I receive have been forwarded to me by people over the age of 50. So as a whole, we need to learn how to best use the internet as a research resource, not THE research resource. Undoubtedly, the internet has replaced many of the late nights spent doing research at the library that many of us once experienced, for better or for worse. I agree with the article, and that research needs to be taught, because just telling someone to find books and articles from periodicals isn't the answer either. I recall from years ago citing sources from books from the 50s. Certainly there was newer, better researched data than stuff from 4 decades earlier that I just didn't have access to in a small town, or in a small school, library.

Comment from Alex Funk on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:38:35Z

History does repeat itself!

Don't they realize that they can get additional information from sources at the bottom of each Wikipedia entry? This should actually help students ability to find additional sources (and) get them into the library with the names of the books and authors already written down. Its probably the ones that are just plagiarizing the Wikipedia entries much like you could do with Encyclopedia Britannica 12 years ago

Comment from BG the TB on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T18:41:16Z

The original article in the Scotsman said:

"Standard Grade pass rates were down for the first time in four years last year...WIKIPEDIA and other online research sources were yesterday blamed for Scotland's falling exam pass rates."

So there was no Internet access in Scotland before last year? Kids couldn't access Wikipedia prior to last year? :-)

The Scottish Parent Teacher Council is using some pretty faulty logic here. Exam scores fall in one year and they blame the Internet? What about the immediately preceding years when the scores didn't fall? Something tells me that kids were using the Internet then as well. :-)

Comment from Vicki on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T21:33:03Z

> With information at our fingertips, the important lessons to be taught are creativity, communication and critical thinking abilities.

Someday, perhaps, the schools will wake up and teach these.

I am reminded of something I read recently in Twitter and then followed up on in my own weblog:

If answers to your test questions can be looked up by "cheaters" on their phones, maybe they don't need to learn them? BETTER QUESTIONS PLZ?

http://vlb.typepad.com/commentary/2008/06/readin-ritin-an.html

Comment from Leon Westbrook on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T21:35:54Z

No one can ever take Wikipedia seriously when articles on Star Wars are much more in depth than the actual Solar system.

Google Wikigroaning.

Comment from Chad on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T21:36:11Z

I was in college during the inception of Wikipedia and it was made very clear it was not to be used as a source. Makes me think, was I not allowed to use it because it was new and lacked credibility? If so, what has given it the educational backing to make it common practice now?

In reference to Jess' comment, they should be learning how to use the tools at hand, but they need to know reliable, verifiable tools from the inconsistent. As far as the blame is concerned, what do the failing students think? I would think the students failing would be pointing their fingers (especially if they blindly trust Wikipedia).

Comment from web design company on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T21:41:40Z

I was talking to my wife a few weeks ago noting how amazing that it was that anything we want to know we can now find out. When I was in high school in the early 90's the internet was really just getting started and a lot of people din't have computers. My children are going to grow up in a world in which all knowledge will literally be available at their fingertips. I don't think it will make people stupid- if you're interested in a topic you will learn about it- but it will make knowledge less valuable in a supply and demand sort of way. Being a knowledgeable person will be as valuable as a person who knows how to effectively qualify a search string. Sort of like how people can’t really spell/type and don’t have to learn thanks to spell checkers (I had a couple of typos here myself).

Comment from Conrad Medrano on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T22:10:06Z

Wikipedia is not completely at fault for students failing, I myself have seen students go over the edge in using Wikipedia as a reliable source. This mediocrity needs to stop with the children. If they cannot learn what good research is then: you sink or you try to swim. It is posted on almost every site page that the information is lacking credibility. You can't just blame the site, because in the end, those whom are tempted to use the site must truly take the fall.

Comment from MG on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T23:12:35Z

That's RIDICULOUS !!!! It is time to blame the teaching system, not the internet. I encourage my children to use wikipedia to enhance their knowledge of all things. The Internet and wikipedia are FANTASTIC! Maybe the teaching system is getting worried and starting this stupid rumour, because we might not need them anymore! MG

Comment from Syahid A. on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T23:24:20Z

Wikipedia is not the problem. The problem are teachers who failed to show their kids the right way to complete a research. Wikipedia can be put to good use and it is still relevant.

Comment from Deepa on 2008-06-23

2008-06-23T23:44:47Z

The internet (and certainly not Google) isn't to blame. A handful of students in this day and age simply don't quite know how to research. I know that many schools require one keyboarding class either late in the Elementary years or sometime in Middle school. Perhaps, along with the keyboarding class, there should be a few lectures on how to properly research?

Comment from ARJWright on 2008-06-23

2008-06-24T00:07:26Z

As many of the commenters have stated, people with the ability to teach the right use of the tool cannot blame the tool for not teaching the user of the tool how to use it best. If you do not teach analytical thinking, fact-finding and analysis, and other such information judging skills, how then can you assume that anyone will find the Internet or any media as a suitable research tool? It shouldn't be an argument except where parents, educators, and governments look at themselves as being the ones that failed the experiment of better equipping subsequent generations on how to live in their changing world.

Comment from Vic Grace on 2008-06-23

2008-06-24T03:54:56Z

That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I home schooled my three sons (all adult now) and introduced them to the internet back in the late '80's. We found it to be a great tool for research and learning. I wasn't impressed with schools then and I am not now, they are just looking for another excuse for poor teaching. It is not about learning by rote it is about learning how to learn, how to love learning and to keep on learning all our lives and the internet provides a wonderful opportunity to do that. Of course there is rubbish to be found on it but there is a lot of rubbish being taught in schools too, it is up to the individual to learn enough to sort the good from the bad.

Comment from Steve Boyd on 2008-06-23

2008-06-24T04:12:53Z

There's a lot of junk on the net

And there's also *A LOT* of high quality information available, the vast majority of most of which you wouldn't be able to access via a high school or uni library.

Saying that the entire internet is stupid is a stupid statement in itself.

Academia is ridiculously snobby. I clearly remember our university library, with it's hundred or so thousand books from the 1950-80's, none of which actually got used. They defended this fact by saying that the value of a library can be measured by the number of rare and obscure (read: completely useless) books that it contained

idiots

Comment from Naor on 2008-06-24

2008-06-24T11:17:46Z

It seems that the same problems with the education systems exists everywhere.
It is really easy to blame someone else, in this case the internet/wiki. It is also very "trendy" to get the parents "involved" - which really means trying to pass the "education" responsibility to the parents.
What teachers, schools and governments doesn't understand is that the world has changed, and as a result a paradigm shift is required in education.
Nowadays, being "educated" should transit from "remembering" to "understanding". It means providing research skills , critical reading, logical analysis skills. The humane knowledge is slowly but surely reaching its way to the internet, but the human knowledge is produced by peoples, so everything (well almost) is very subjective, if you want to "understand" something = to "know", you need to examine several sources, compare them, weight their creditability, analyze them and finally reach true "understand".
This requires a shift in the whole teaching system. Educating teachers, changing methodologies, providing resources, better paying to teachers to attract the "right stuff" etc. etc. Maybe it's an already lost war, since education is not "business" you can't really see quick returns in the next quarter, you can't IPO a school and you can't make M&A exit. It's a long term investment which will benefit society as a whole, in today's society, where politicians as well as businessmen are blind to anything which is more then 1-2Q's ahead.. that's a problem.

Comment from Wack on 2008-06-24

2008-06-24T13:31:57Z

Anyone who's worried the web makes them stupid, I'm assuming you don't watch TV then, right?

If you do, then you're worrying about the wrong thing...

Comment from Kern on 2008-06-24

2008-06-24T19:40:02Z

This is only symptomatic of a greater problem in society. Our technology has expanded far faster than our ability to socially adapt. Internet chat rooms, instant messenging services, online information, special interest forums, and so forth, are great resources -- for people who already are well-adjusted socially and have good problem solving methodologies. Unfortunately, the quick spread of computers and the explosion of the web also has an understandable appeal to anyone who has access to a computer - who wouldn't be attracted to a wealth of speedy information at your fingertips? This is problematic at all ages but is particularly disturbing amongst the youth, where critical social skills that many of us learned by having to intereact directly with people are poorly developed or missing. Small wonder that wikipedia and the ilk are often taken at face value!

Blaming academia for not teaching critical thinking is convenient but not accurate. That simply sweeps other issues under the carpet - like overcrowded classrooms, greated difficulty reaching a disconnected portion of the class (crack babies, fetal alcohol syndrome children, internet addicts, etc - which are all on the rise), and shrinking education budgets (in a great many urban environments but not all). Watching a teacher try to run a class of 30+ kids (allowing for disabled kids and those who have been given a home life of sitting in front of a computer or television) is a sobering experience.

In the end it simply means that we are all wrestling with how to integrate the vast and readily-accesible potential of computers and the web into the thread of our society. These tools, starting with television, have enormously enriched our internal worlds at the expense of interpersonal skills/relationships - and no, your AIM buddies don't count as developing social skills! :)

The parent group finding fault with Wikipedia was a foolish knee-jerk reaction, to be sure. However, it doesn't mean that this isn't a symptom of a greater problem.

Comment from Michael Perlman on 2008-06-26

2008-06-26T23:46:26Z

As a student, I often see Wikipedia being used a a primary source of information, when, IMHO, it should be used as a directory of sorts. Because anyone can add/edit infortion to/on Wikipedia, it leaves room for errors and bias. Instead of relying on Wikipedia for original facts, students should examine pages on the site for links to the primary medium that broughtthe fact into public view.

Comment from Cana on 2008-07-09

2008-07-10T06:58:04Z

Parents should guide kids to use internet safely and correctly.

http://www.parents-kidz.com