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"White Bread for the Mind"
The latest in the "the Internet is ruining kids
today" genre:
Google is “white bread for the mind”, and the internet is producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim this week....
Her own students are banned from using Wikipedia or Google as research tools in their first year of study, but instead are provided with 200 extracts from peer-reviewed printed texts at the beginning of the year, supplemented by printed extracts from eight to nine texts for individual pieces of work.
Peer-reviewed papers (on paper!) have a place, of course. And in an educational environment, they probably even deserve a privileged place. But if Google is the white bread of the mind, then pass the peanut butter and jelly. Googling myself and others makes me hungry, and I suspect the 18-year-olds in this prof's classes won't really be giving up their white bread diet, either.
Professor Brabazon’s concerns echo the author Andrew Keen’s criticisms of online amateurism. In his book The Cult of the Amateur, Keen says: “To-day’s media is shattering the world into a billion personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile.”
We here at reason just love and respect Andrew Keen, of course.
thoreau|1.14.08 @ 4:11PM|#
I think Google and Wikipedia are perfectly fine places to start
an investigation, as long as the limitations are kept in
mind.
It's sort of like anecdotes and correlations: No matter what some
internet commenters say, those are perfectly fine starting points
for a scientific investigation. Every hypothesis is initially
unsupported, so the suggestion will have to come from
somewhere. The important thing is to recognize the
difference between suggestion and proof.
Bingo|1.14.08 @ 4:12PM|#
Hrm, so the "experts" hate technology because it makes competing
with them easier, who would have thought.
Bonus points to the first of her students that shoves the stack of
papers into an OCR scanner, uploads it to some webspace and indexes
it with Google. I'd be damned if I'm going to shuffle through 200
extracts worth of paper to do research.
|1.14.08 @ 4:15PM|#
In my own field (economics) there is a bit of this debate with the so-called "watering-down" of intellectual rigor in pursuit of applications, saying how we need more "pure theorists" like Keynes... I responded that, at the same time, the applied economists are drawing more attention to the field, such that, in the future, it may only take thirty days to prove a future Keynes wrong instead of thirty or more years :)
|1.14.08 @ 4:15PM|#
Y'know, the good professor could save time, money and trees by
placing all those extracts and stuff in a digitized format on some
sort of easily-accessed, public forum. The students could probably
even print it if they really wanted to.
I'm pretty sure there's something that would work perfectly, but
the name eludes me...
|1.14.08 @ 4:19PM|#
Obviously, when dealing with the fact that today's children have more information at their fingertips than ever, the best way to prepare them for the future is to make said information inaccessible rather than to teach them to critically process said information...
|1.14.08 @ 4:21PM|#
Stage Coach Tilter Union Rails Against Horseless Carriage Industry: Praxinoscope at 11.
|1.14.08 @ 4:23PM|#
I could not do my job without Wikipedia and Google. Whatever the faults of information acquired through either, I still suspect I know more about the sugar industry in the Caribbean of the early 1700s than this professor.
Bingo|1.14.08 @ 4:24PM|#
shecky: that's a good point. She's failing to teach them how to
conduct proper research using modern tools. Students need to learn
the concept of research, how to identify good and bad sources.
Handing someone a stack of paper and saying "the internet sucks,
these are good sources" doesn't teach them anything. In the real
world you have to judge information that is given to you, and you
rarely get a stack of information deemed entirely legit.
It's akin to an engineering prof demanding that the entire class
use a sliderule just because he doesn't like that newfangled
calculators fail to take uncertainty into account.
Jennifer|1.14.08 @ 4:24PM|#
When books had to be handwritten by carefully trained monks, you knew that what you were getting had been properly vetted and peer-reviewed. But if if this newfangled "printing press" allows any Tom, Dick or Harry to get published, there will no longer be anything reliable about the printed word.
Elemenope|1.14.08 @ 4:25PM|#
ClubMedSux --
I generally agree, but by the time college rolls around, that
battle is either already won or (more likely) already lost. BS
detectors are learned early or not at all.
What primary and secondary schools really need are an education
curriculum that rewards effective use of all relevant tools
(including the Intarwebs!). Since we're still working on the
evolution thing, I'm not holding my breath.
|1.14.08 @ 4:30PM|#
Professor Brabazon [of the University of Brighton] does not
blame schools for students' cut-and-paste attitude to study.
"We need to teach our students the interpretative skills first
before we teach them the technological skills. Students must be
trained to be dynamic and critical thinkers rather than drifting to
the first site returned through Google..."
Maybe she should be blaming the schools. Her students were supposed
to have learnt critical thinking skills in high school, if not
before. People who believe everything they hear have no business in
university at all.
Of course if she just wants her students to believe everything they
hear from her, taht would explain much of her
grumbling.
highnumber|1.14.08 @ 4:30PM|#
No way! Somebody thinks that internet may contain unreliable
information? I think the prof has a point.
I can't stand that Keen character.
|1.14.08 @ 4:31PM|#
If you haven't read "Everything Bad is Good for You" by Steven Johnson, it's an easily digestible read on this and similar subjects. I can also say that my own company - IBM (standard disclaimer regarding how I don't represent them here) - did a study that showed Wikipedia is more accurate that the Encyclopedia Britannica. That may or may not be true, but it hints at the power of putting many millions of brains to work on a subject.
Mister DNA|1.14.08 @ 4:32PM|#
It was only a decade ago that editorial columns were hyping some new gizmo called "the information superhighway". Of course, that was before they had to compete with the damn thing.
|1.14.08 @ 4:36PM|#
""""It's akin to an engineering prof demanding that the entire
class use a sliderule just because he doesn't like that newfangled
calculators fail to take uncertainty into account.""""
Only if calculators were not reliable would that analogy be valid.
That is the claim against Wiki. But like thoreau said, it's a good
place to start.
Jennifer|1.14.08 @ 4:38PM|#
Maybe she should be blaming the schools. Her students were
supposed to have learnt critical thinking skills in high school, if
not before.
Teaching critical thinking is not allowed in high school. No
exaggeration.
Episiarch|1.14.08 @ 4:38PM|#
"the information superhighway"
Shhhh. You will attract LoneWacko because it sounds like "NAFTA
Superhighway". Oh shit, now I've done it.
|1.14.08 @ 4:43PM|#
Just a quick "second" to all those saying that this is
abdicating her responsibility to help them learn that elusive
quality of "judgment" and critical thinking that will enable them
to distinguish the better from worse sources. The technology is
just a tool. Before the Net, people still had to distinguish among
better and worse sources, or to smoke out the perspectives they
brought with them, peer-reviewed or not.
As someone who has spent over a decade teaching a first-year
seminar course designed precisely to teach college students how to
acquire and use these research skills, banning them from Google or
Wikipedia is not the solution. Getting them to understand the
limitations of both places and that they can be the beginning but
far from the end of good research is the way to go.
Should we have prevented students from using a paper card catalog
or Reader's Guide back in the Good Old Days because some books or
magazines they might find weren't very reliable?
Teach them the knowledge production process and how to sort better
for worse rather than making up silly rules.
Bingo|1.14.08 @ 4:43PM|#
TrickyVic: In scientific and engineering fields calculators aren't 100% reliable. They are only reliable up to a certain digit. The numbers you input into your calculations determine the accuracy of the results, and you need to know how accurate (+/-) those numbers are. It's the professor's job to teach you how to determine accuracy because its a critical part of the field.
NoStar|1.14.08 @ 4:43PM|#
"The information superhighway"
Is that the conduit that will be filled with illegal aliens with
unsafe machinery stealing knowledge from Americans?
Fenevad|1.14.08 @ 4:43PM|#
On Saturday I was translating obscure seventeenth-century
Hungarian poetry (don't ask) and came across a word I didn't know.
Turned out that the author I was translating is the only person who
ever used the word (which referred to a kind of Turkish siege
engine) and the only reason I could find the modern Hungarian
equivalent was because of Google, which pointed me to some fellow
who had put a glossary of this author online. Did it represent some
sort of laziness to find this on Google? I don't think it did.
Without Google (or the equivalent) I never, in a thousand years,
would have found this fellow's list. Nor would his list have ever,
in a million years, made its way into a peer reviewed article (I'm
probably one of about three people in the world who have looked at
it or would care).
So long live Google, the best place to find information that would
otherwise never be found...
|1.14.08 @ 4:43PM|#
...yes, but if the point of a class, as was the case when I
taught history, was to teach the fundamentals of sound research
practice in all its various strategies, then banning the use of
Google and Wikipedia is a great way to start.
The idea is, if you make students learn how to find information
creatively using all available resources, and then learn to
thoughtfully vet those sources for accuracy, bias and the main
dialogs of the field, once they loop back to using the Web for
research they'll be much better equipped for the task than if they
Googled their paper's sources.
Moreover, you tell ME how many of the holdings at the American
Antiquarian Society (whose goal is to have a copy of every single
publication printed in the USA from Jamestown to the Jamestown
massacre) are online and searchable. There's still places in this
world that require old-school methods, and there's definitely worth
in teaching students in those disciplines how to do things the old,
slow way.
So suck on that!
;)
|1.14.08 @ 4:46PM|#
Episiarch,
He's headed here anyway. Didn't you know that IllegalMexicans use
WikiPedia to violate our NationalSovereignty by defacing the
entries of patriots like him? You can read all about it at his
blog.
(Click at own risk)
|1.14.08 @ 4:46PM|#
""""It's akin to an engineering prof demanding that the
entire class use a sliderule just because he doesn't like that
newfangled calculators fail to take uncertainty into
account.""""
Only if calculators were not reliable would that analogy be valid.
That is the claim against Wiki. But like thoreau said, it's a good
place to start.
Better analogy would be the notebook vs. tape recorder in
Journalism.
Just sayin'
B|1.14.08 @ 4:49PM|#
I'm a working scientist (PhD and everything) and I've used
Wikipedia to help me figure out how to do something
today.
By all means, learn to use primary sources, but banning the use of
information miracles like Google and Wikipedia completely isn't
just stupid...it borders on educational malpractice.
|1.14.08 @ 4:50PM|#
This issue reeks of "if it's not controlled, I'm afraid of it." It's the same reason people increasingly can't accept dynamic systems. If we can't control the outcome with 100% certainty, HOLY ****!
|1.14.08 @ 4:53PM|#
The idea is, if you make students learn how to find
information creatively using all available resources, and then
learn to thoughtfully vet those sources for accuracy, bias and the
main dialogs of the field, once they loop back to using the
Web
Wait...you say all available resources, and then want to limit an
available resource?
Wikipedia has some awesome entries on logic.
Rimfax|1.14.08 @ 4:54PM|#
"...each seemingly equally valid and worthwhile."
If Professor Brabazon and Andrew Keen really can't judge the
different values between "truths" on the Internet, then they are
too stupid to use the Internet.
|1.14.08 @ 4:58PM|#
"To-day's media is shattering the world into a billion
personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and
worthwhile."
Oh noes! The responsibility...I can't handle it. Please experts,
save me from discovering what life is about on my own!
On a serious note, as if the old method of "There's One Truth but
there are a billion different ways to get there" is any more
comprehensible or rational. Pfft.
|1.14.08 @ 5:00PM|#
If you take the internet with a healthy dose of cynicism, a
dollop of skepticism, and the judicious use of the aforementioned
BS detector, you will sometimes get fooled. Not often, but
sometimes. Conventional research methods also can occasionally lead
you astry. Just because it's printed and bound doesn't make it
automatically authorative.
Discriminating users of this convenient and powerful tool are at an
advantage relative to those that can't use it properly. Yeah
there's a lot of disinformation on the internet. There's a lot at
the university library as well.
|1.14.08 @ 5:01PM|#
Rimfax -
I know, it struck me as a dumb statement as well. If they really
think their students are that gullible, maybe they're
teaching students who shouldn't be in college in the first
place?
It sounds to me like "but pills look like candy," only they're
talking about 18-year olds.
|1.14.08 @ 5:02PM|#
Piltdown man, anybody? How long till that was purged, including derivative work?
dhex|1.14.08 @ 5:03PM|#
I think Google and Wikipedia are perfectly fine places to
start an investigation, as long as the limitations are kept in
mind.
the issue seems to be, at least in part, is how do you teach people
to build a good bullshit detector?
(this is more of a concrete problem for my wife, who has had to
explain several times why wikipedia is not an acceptable paper
source to college freshmen.)
Jennifer|1.14.08 @ 5:03PM|#
...yes, but if the point of a class, as was the case when I
taught history, was to teach the fundamentals of sound research
practice in all its various strategies, then banning the use of
Google and Wikipedia is a great way to start.
The idea is, if you make students learn how to find information
creatively using all available resources, and then learn to
thoughtfully vet those sources for accuracy, bias and the main
dialogs of the field, once they loop back to using the Web for
research they'll be much better equipped for the task than if they
Googled their paper's sources.
If you want to teach how to "carefully vet sources for accuracy,"
then Wikipedia would be an excellent place to start. Actually, I
can think of a great lesson plan for that: find a
Wikipedia article which you know damned well is a combination of
fiction and fact, give students a copy of it, and have them seek
out and correct the false information.
|1.14.08 @ 5:07PM|#
(this is more of a concrete problem for my wife, who has had
to explain several times why wikipedia is not an acceptable paper
source to college freshmen.)
Dhex -
I admire men like my dad for not just standing up and yelling "I
spent the entirety of this weekend grading your papers and
EVERYBODY FAILS! Get out!"
Wonder and Sunbeam|1.14.08 @ 5:07PM|#
What is wrong with our bread?
Why limit yourself to the cardboard texture of peer reviewed whole
wheat?
|1.14.08 @ 5:08PM|#
The smart kids are going to use Wikipedia anyway, they'll just go to the footnotes and look for the more "acceptable" sources, like the books and scholarly journals and such that Wikipedians will use as reference material.
Ashley|1.14.08 @ 5:08PM|#
"To-day's media is shattering the world into a billion
personalised truths, each seemingly equally valid and
worthwhile."
Only to be expected College professors have been setting the
precedent for at least 3 generations now.
|1.14.08 @ 5:15PM|#
Yeah, the Innernette includes useless things like almost all new
physics research since 1992 for free:
http://arxiv.org/
But I only believe stuff that's printed on paper. That's why I have
a laser printer.
KMW|1.14.08 @ 5:17PM|#
Moreover, you tell ME how many of the holdings at the
American Antiquarian Society (whose goal is to have a copy of every
single publication printed in the USA from Jamestown to the
Jamestown massacre) are online and searchable.
Actually, I was just at AAS, Johno, and their electronic media
projects are really impressive. Not everything in their stacks in
online yet, but it will be.
See, for example, this incredibly cool project on early American
elections:
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/fdp.htm
Click \'n\' Learn|1.14.08 @ 5:31PM|#
As I point out at one of my sites, the major problem with WP
isn't what's in it. It's what's missing (sometimes intentionally
so). Unless you're familiar with a subject, you'll never know
what's missing.
I don't expect a site like Reason to point out that WP is in many
ways a wonderful DisinformationTool, so let me be the first. Let me
also suggest looking into how WP shares its link love with other
sites, with a very small number receiving the majority of the
lovin'.
For a small example of one of the things that's missing, see the
bit about the quote here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Bill_Richardson#controversies
Fluffy|1.14.08 @ 5:38PM|#
This article seems to be written from a perspective that says
that the reason the internet is a "problem" for research is that
"just anyone" can post on it, and that makes it impossible for
students to determine which information is valid and which is
not.
I think this effect would not really be helped by better vetting of
sources, because the problem isn't really the quality of
information, it's the quantity of it. If you had access to every
last peer-reviewed article on every last subject, and no other
information whatsoever [thus removing the "amateur factor"],
you would still have a completely unreviewable morass of
information which would be internally self-contradictory.
Previous methods of research appeared to "work" because
students had access to a much more limited set of sources. That
appears to be what the prof who is handing out mimeographs of a
handful of sources is trying to duplicate. But the research work
she receives in response will be just as flawed as work containing
references to wikipedia, if the standard we're using is "aware of
and making use of all the relevant peer-reviewed work".
GILMORE|1.14.08 @ 5:48PM|#
dhex | January 14, 2008, 5:03pm | #
the issue seems to be, at least in part, is how do you teach people
to build a good bullshit detector?
Mikey gets a cookie. :)
This is basically the point as far as i see it. Bullshit detection
is a declining skill.
I've spent the last 11 years as a research analyst, and i can
observe that people trained for this kind of job pre-internet and
those post-internet differ in this respect.
People who grew up with a more 'paper based' source-identification
training tend to be better when it comes to evaluating the utility
or relevance of any given piece of information. Those who grew up
with an internet-based research approach tend to be more 'flat' as
far as how they evaluate information. Whatever they find tends to
be included. Or, they'll weight information inappropriately based
on misperception of significance.
It's more like trolling vs. fishing. Volume or 'availability' often
equates to significance. They have a lot of trouble seeing the gaps
in information and understanding how to go after them or see
between them. They have a lack of appreciation of the difference
between regurgitating 'existing consensus' vs. analysis, where you
are connecting dots between related pieces of information.
I also have a lot of contact with teachers - my friends and family
being almost exclusively acedemics - and they share the same
feedback about highschool/early college kids these days. they are
more savvy about baseline use of internet to gather some facts, but
slower at developing filters that allow them to critically evaluate
things.
I certainly dont blame wikipedia, and think that it's all
invaluable stuff, but the problem may lie less in the
'transferability' of information sources, as much as the ability to
read and understand things.
to cut it all short... to quote 2 of my highschool-teacher friends
= '60%+ of the papers they receive share whole paragraphs of
identical information' - because kids are more 'cut and pasting'
than reading and writing.
the 'cut and paste' idea is the problem. There is a declining focus
on ability to digest, internalize, and create a unique argument
based on sources you find yourself that are specially-suited to the
question asked. The exercise of defining a goal, reviewing and
vetting sources, and writing critical analysis is sometimes
ultimately more important a pedagogical exercise than simply
"churning" data gleaned from a few hours in front of a
computer.
Of course, those few hours in front of a computer a necessary as
well... but there's nothing like the satisfaction of being the one
person who actually read the 'footnoted' book, as opposed to simply
quoting/referencing it.
|1.14.08 @ 5:57PM|#
I think Google and Wikipedia are perfectly fine places to
start an investigation, as long as the limitations are kept in
mind.
Some days thoreau is worse then joe...
Perfectly fine place?
Jesus...how about a reality check. The best place ever implemented
by man in all of history to start an investigation is more like
it.
It is funny to watch these little fiefdoms scream when their power
is threatened.
|1.14.08 @ 6:02PM|#
the issue seems to be, at least in part, is how do you teach
people to build a good bullshit detector?
Easy...feed them a ton of bullshit but with equal access to
non-bullshit and let the sorting begin.
If we honestly believe that we need some sort of hierarchy to what
and how people consume information then we might as well call it
over and end this whole libertarian thing.
(That is right mofo I said it. Now drink!)
|1.14.08 @ 6:09PM|#
People taking a media studies class at university deserve whatever ill treatment they get, and more besides. In higher math, at least, you can get your information from your morning bowl of Rice Krispies if you like, but if you can't prove it, you can't use it.
R C Dean|1.14.08 @ 6:13PM|#
Easy...feed them a ton of bullshit but with equal access to
non-bullshit and let the sorting begin.
Combined with a healthy dose of RC's First Law:
You get more of what you reward, and less of what you punish. To
wit:
to cut it all short... to quote 2 of my highschool-teacher
friends = '60%+ of the papers they receive share whole paragraphs
of identical information'
And every single one of those papers should get an "F".
|1.14.08 @ 6:25PM|#
Ayn_Randian,
On a serious note, as if the old method of "There's One Truth
but there are a billion different ways to get there" is any more
comprehensible or rational. Pfft.
Why you say this is irrational I am curious?
|1.14.08 @ 6:30PM|#
Would this prof have a teaching job if we used vouchers?
Ok, now that I've gotten that out of the way, here are a couple of
thoughts that occurred to me while reading this:
1. Keen illustrates what I'm going to call the successful dumb-ass
paradox. On the one hand, he's a dumb-ass. On the other hand, he
makes a living and it seems to me that it takes a genius to make a
living working with only the intellect of a dumb-ass.
2. Maybe Keen and Thomas Freidman could have a cage-match. Two men
enter and no man leaves, would be ideal.
3. Maybe I shouldn't drink and read.
|1.14.08 @ 6:51PM|#
"Google is "white bread for the mind", and the internet is
producing a generation of students who survive on a diet of
unreliable information, a professor of media studies will claim
this week...."
I suspect most of us spent too much time before the internet
listening to the ridiculous stories of our grandparents and uncles,
oh the homespun hell that is so many people's Thanksgiving!
Please! I'd put Google up against that any day!
|1.14.08 @ 7:11PM|#
how do you teach people to build a good bullshit
detector?
It's called teasing your children. Say complete bullshit with a
deadpan expression, and stick to your story. When they get good at
picking that out, move on to BS mixed with a grain of truth. It's
fun and amazingly useful in building critical thinking.
GILMORE|1.14.08 @ 7:25PM|#
prolefeed | January 14, 2008, 7:11pm | #
"how do you teach people to build a good bullshit detector?"
It's called teasing your children.
Wow, prole.
Thats pretty much what dad used to do to me all the time. Lie
through his teeth. And i'm not kidding. He tried to convince me a
dozen times of things i had enough basic understanding of to know
that something was fishy. It was a fun game.
I agree whole-heartedly. Children should be confused and misled
constantly :)
Paul|1.14.08 @ 7:30PM|#
Professor Brabazon's concerns echo the author Andrew Keen's
criticisms of online amateurism. In his book The Cult of the
Amateur, Keen says: "To-day's media is shattering the world into a
billion personalised truths
Idiots. I suppose they've forgotten that the New York
Times is on the web? Ok, bad example, but I think you guys
know what I mean.
Franklin Harris|1.14.08 @ 8:30PM|#
I'm all for the cult of the amateur. And I'm sure "talented amateur" Emma Peel could kick all of those experts' assess.
Neu Mejican|1.14.08 @ 8:56PM|#
I think this discussion of wikipedia is quite
insightful...
Not just the main essay, but also the responses
http://www.edge.org/discourse/digital_maoism.html
Wikipedia Templates|1.14.08 @ 9:47PM|#
{{lts|POV}}{{POV}}
{{lts|POV-assertion}}{{I}}{{POV-assertion}}
{{lts|POV-body}}{{POV-body}}
{{lts|POV-check}}{{POV-check}}
{{lts|POV-check-section}}{{POV-check-section}}
{{lts|POV-map}}{{POV-map}}
{{lts|POV-section}}{{POV-section}}
{{lts|POV-statement}}{{I}}{{POV-statement}}
{{lts|POV-title}}{{POV-title}}
Brian Carnell|1.14.08 @ 10:05PM|#
So the students learn to reflexively internalize that peer reviewed=inerrant. Oops..sorry..I need to go finish my thoroughly footnoted copy of *Arming America*.
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We also heartily recommend iceberg lettuce, Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer,
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Constitution.
|1.14.08 @ 10:16PM|#
So much to say:
1:
When books had to be handwritten by carefully trained monks,
you knew that what you were getting had been properly vetted and
peer-reviewed. But if if this newfangled "printing press" allows
any Tom, Dick or Harry to get published, there will no longer be
anything reliable about the printed word.
You may already know this, Jennifer, but your satire there comes
pretty close to the historical truth. I've read that when the
printing press was invented, the Roman Catholic Church was very
wary of it -- in fact, tried to have it suppressed -- because the
printing press made it so much easier to disseminate a particular
kind of minisinformation, which the church called
heresy.
Note to people who don't know me: This is not a gratuitous swipe at
anyone's church. I'm a Catholic myself. This is just to show that
some forms of human misjudgment are eternal.
In fact ...
2. At Saint Louis University, I took a course from a Jesuit named
Walter Ong. "Technology of the Word," I think it was called. About
how the technology used to store and and transmit information
affects the way a culture thinks.
And here I learned that Plato in his day was very critical of an
increasingly popular technology called writing. Because
people would use it as a crutch -- they'd keep track of knowledge
and facts by writing them down instead of keeping them in their
heads. And as a result, no one would truly "know" anything.
3. I am unconvinced that the Internet is significantly more prone
to error than any other medium.
Print has long enjoyed an unearned credibility. Because of all the
trouble it takes to print something, people have come to assume
that information is more credible simply because it is
printed.
But remember what George Orwell said: "Early in life I have noticed
that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper ... "
And my own experience with public relations confirms what Brian
Doherty once said: "Almost every time I read a newspaper story
about a topic of which I have personal knowledge, or about an event
that I've witnessed, I find errors--sometimes in minor details,
sometimes in key ones. Almost everyone I've asked about this says
the same. But our knowledge of journalistic error in a few specific
cases doesn't translate into a strong general skepticism."
I don't think the Internet is any more prone to error and
misinformation than the more traditional media. However, I think
the Internet is much, much better than the traditional
media at correcting misinformation. Online, it's much
easier to find a correction, a rebuttal, or a clarification of a
dubious statement. Newspapers and magazine, on the other hand,
acknowledge only a tiny fraction of their errors, usually in some
hard-to-find cranny in tiny type. And I don't think I've
ever heard a television news show issue a retraction of an
error.
4. Some skepticisim toward Wikipedia and other online sources of
information is always warranted, of course. But students should
learn to be no less wary of statements found in newspapers, books,
magazines, encyclopedias or broadcast media. Singling out Google or
Wikipedia for suspicion just gives those older media more unearned
credibility.
(Although I will say I was very surprised at this, while browsing
through Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion this weekend: I
read a description of some appalling behavior by GW Bush, mocking a
death row prisoner, and upon checking the footnote, I found that
Dawkins' cited source was a Wikipedia article. I would think he
could have cited other sources that are at least perceived as more
reliable.)
The key is to be aware that any source of information could be in
error, and the more important the truth of a statement is to you,
the more sources you should consult to verify it. The instructor
should give this admonishment to his students, and then turn them
loose on the Intertubes.
|1.14.08 @ 10:20PM|#
If you want to teach how to "carefully vet sources for
accuracy," then Wikipedia would be an excellent place to start.
Actually, I can think of a great lesson plan for that: find a
Wikipedia article which you know damned well is a combination of
fiction and fact, give students a copy of it, and have them seek
out and correct the false information.
That would be an excellent idea, Jennifer.
Something's wrong, that you aren't a teacher (any longer) and this
guy is.
|1.14.08 @ 10:25PM|#
prolefeed | January 14, 2008, 7:11pm | #
"how do you teach people to build a good bullshit detector?"
It's called teasing your children.
GILMORE | January 14, 2008, 7:25pm | #
Wow, prole.
Thats pretty much what dad used to do to me all the time. Lie
through his teeth. And i'm not kidding. He tried to convince me a
dozen times of things i had enough basic understanding of to know
that something was fishy. It was a fun game.
I agree whole-heartedly. Children should be confused and misled
constantly :)
Wow, my dad used to do the same thing to me -- starting at a very
early age:
"Where's Mommy? Where's Mommy?"
"I sold her to the gypsies."
I just now realized that my dad was teaching me to detect bullshit.
Maybe this is why I'm so skeptical of various sources of
information nowadays ... especially my dad.
Thanks, Dad!
|1.14.08 @ 11:06PM|#
By the time most kids in North America have reached 15, they
have seen tens of thousands of TV commercials.
If they don't have a BS detector by that point, they're too stupid
to be given the car keys.
My own feeling is, since the TV came along, each generation has
been more skeptical than the last.
Good thing, too.
The caveat is: skepticism is only one part of critical thinking.
Learning to weigh evidence, examine statements for internal
consistency, having the discipline to check the facts and a host of
other factors comes with experience, which is what the kids will
get in time.
|1.15.08 @ 7:38AM|#
My own feeling is, since the TV came along, each generation
has been more skeptical than the last.
Oh, I dunno. Each generation that goes off to college seems to fall
for the same tired lefty anti-business, pro-state, eco-conscious
proto-Marxist BS just like the one before.
Personally, I think its having to earn a living that really tunes
up your BS detector. Its just fun and games before then.
Fluffy|1.15.08 @ 9:34AM|#
Has anyone ever considered that perhaps it is the university
model which is at fault, and not the internet?
After all, the university paradigm of study is extremely well
adapted to a cultural situation where the knowledge being imparted
to students is finite [say, the body of classical works salvaged
from antiquity that were still in existence by the time the
universities really started to get cranking in the 13th century].
The professor can hold all of the material in his head, can
therefore make a legitimate claim to being an "authority", and just
about every possible permutation of "research" a student might
undertake has already been seen before and can be graded in the
context of that experience.
The university paradigm of study is also very well suited to the
initial and intermediate stages of the scientific revolution, where
most discoveries are due to relatively simple experiments that can
be easily duplicated, and can be communicated to anyone who can
understand math that has been around since Newton - and where
empirical data is being collected and written down on a blank piece
of paper, due to the culture's previous lack of interest in
it.
It may not be well suited to a milieu where the pile of content
available in the humanities has grown from a small pile of Latin
works written on goat skins to...the internet, which is still
growing geometrically. It may not been well suited to a milieu
where the empirical data set we have has grown exponentially for
over a century, where the paper is no longer white but has been
written over, crossed out, erased, and used as a palimpsest for
about as long, and where the mathematics and methods of experiment
in "new" work is no longer remotely accessible to more than a small
handful of people.
Neu Mejican|1.15.08 @ 10:52AM|#
Fluffy,
That doesn't sound like any of the Universities I've spent time
in.
Neu Mejican|1.15.08 @ 10:59AM|#
Without the internet, would I know about this?
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2008/01/building-a-new.html
Admittedly this is not something I found with google or
wikipedia.
I also note that the professor has not banned her students from
using the internet, just google or wikipedia.
Means they will learn about resources like PubMed, and their
library search engine.
Fluffy|1.15.08 @ 11:24AM|#
Well, Neu, that's because the universities are pretending.
The fact is that not even professors can be "experts" at anything
more than a tiny and trivial slice of their discipline.
Has any Joyce scholar out there read each and every published
thesis on Joyce? No. There's too much material, and the slush pile
gets bigger every day.
This problem of content is "worked around" by ignoring huge swaths
of the content [even so-called professional content] and by
excommunicating other swaths [by declaring internet sources off
limits].
The "flat" perspective of internet-age students is a result of the
fact that they don't instinctively know which sources have been
arbitrarily declared fit and which haven't on the basis of academic
politics. The fact that no one is in a position to make such a
determination any more [because no one has any real handle on the
content, since it's beyond human capacity now] is glossed over. It
may sound silly for a professor to hand out photocopies of 200
approved sources at the beginning of the semester and tell their
students to ignore the other 100 million, but as a practical matter
that's a pretty good metaphor for the state of academic work in
general because of the human limitations involved.
|1.15.08 @ 11:41AM|#
Funny - very likely most of those peer-reviewed articles (and more) could be found and searched more easily on scholar.google.com, not to mention Lexis Nexis, EBSCO, JSTOR etc.
|1.15.08 @ 1:37PM|#
A professor of media studies complaining about unreliable information? And they say irony is dead.
|1.15.08 @ 1:59PM|#
And it may just be that those kids are cutting and pasting from
the internet rather than doing original research and critical
thinking because they're too over-tasked to do anything else.
Seriously, my high school kids do tons more homework, at a higher
level, than I ever did before I got to engineering school. Combine
that with my parenting peers' emphasis on external sports programs,
private music lessons, public service projects and the like (all so
you can get little Janie into Yale) and its a wonder you ever get
an original thought out of any of them.
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