Professors To Ban Students From Citing Wikipedia

Inisheer writes "History professors at Middlebury College are tired of having all their students submit the same bad information on term papers. The culprit: Wikipedia — the user-created encyclopedia that's full of great stuff, and also full of inaccuracies. Now the the entire History department has voted to ban students from citing it as a resource. An outright ban was considered, but dropped because enforcement seemed impossible. Other professors at the school agree, but note that they're also enthusiastic contributors to Wikipedia. The article discusses the valuable role that Wikipedia can play, while also pointed out the need for critical and primary sources in college-level research." What role, if any, do you think Wikipedia should play in education?

Comments

Re:Or is it the other way around?

[drinkypoo]

I wonder how many of those professors had actually been misinformed. I've had a handful of professors state information that I found out later to be in disagreement with a larger community.

I took an A+ class for easy credits and the instructor swore up and down that firewire was a 400MBps interface, not 400Mbps. I actually had to bring something in and show him to correct him. Now this is just a community college potzer, his actual job was engineering industrial lighting, but it just illustrates the point that there are often people who know more than you do.

Our education system is totally upside down and backwards anyway. I think the biggest mistake is simply to send your kids to a public school. Lots of people don't feel like they have a choice, but that's a bunch of bullshit.

It would be better to live within your means and have a parent stay at home and provide schooling, if they fucking knew anything, than to send them in to public school to be trained to be factory workers (which is what our school system is designed for, and even moreso since we instituted this "no child left behind" bullshit which is really a "reduce all of our children to the lowest common denominator" program.) Unfortunately most people didn't learn anything of real value in school (not until they learned a trade anyway) and they're thus utterly unqualified to teach anything of value to their children.