Paula Joseph-Johnson raised this question
His question to me: Does the educational value of Wikipedia outweigh the
potential pornography to which students *could* be exposed? With a
background in journalism and definite opinions about First Amendment
rights, I am conflicted at this point and would love input from others.
The only time there was an actual assessment of the ability of filters
to actually block porn - done by the Kaiser Family Foundation - they
found a 10% failure rate when intentionally accessing porn. That did not
take into account the ability of people to bypass the filter. Google:
"bypass Internet filter." So ask yourself what is the degree to which
students "could be exposed" to porn whenever they use the Internet. So I
do not have any statistics, but I would lay odds there is less
likelihood of students being exposed to porn on Wikipedia than just
surfing the Internet. And although there was apparently porn in the
Wikipedia Commons, this is different than Wikipedia - and with the
exposure and pressure by funders of Wikipedia, this is being cleaned up.
I have also heard about Wikipedia being blocked because of concerns of
credibility - because of the user-generated content. Let's think about
this. I found this interesting quote many years ago:
"The effort to pull ideology out of schools is evident in battles over
history textbooks. ... (M)ost students read carefully censored books.
The pursuit of 'neutrality' often leads to censorship. The American
Textbook Publishers Institute has counseled publishers 'to avoid
statements that might prove offensive to economic, religious, racial or
social groups or any civil, fraternal, patriotic, or philanthropic
societies in the whole United States.' Textbook manufacturers appear to
have responded in some cases by deleting materials reflecting cultural
differences that might have offended someone. Interest group pressures
from diverse ideological camps have resulted in the deletion of
materials that would undercut the perception of an American monopoly on
decency, as variously defined. Business interests have occasionally
intervened in textbook selection to remove materials considered hostile
to the "American system." American policy is sanitized. Books rarely
report questionable government action. ... Perhaps the most striking
feature of history textbooks is that they minimize the role of dissent
in our history. Government decisions that appear decent or beneficial
are often portrayed without any of the political controversy that
created them." Gottlieb, In the Name of Patriotism: The
Constitutionality of 'Bending' History in Public Secondary Schools. 62
N.Y.U.L.Rev. 497, 504 (1987).
This was before the Texas History Book Massacre.
Let's consider the credibility of material posted on web sites owned by
a company or organization. The only person who can post material on my
web site is me. The only people who can post material on the
MartinLutherKing.org web site is Stormfront. How do we help students
understand that they will always need to think carefully about the
credibility of material found ANYWHERE? Who is providing us with
credible information about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico?
Wikipedia has user-generated content. This is very different than the
kinds of sites where someone controls everything that is posted. But how
different is this from what students are going to face just about
anywhere they go in the Web 2.0 world?
Bottom line: assessing the credibility of information presented has
always been a challenge - will always be a challenge. It was a challenge
before the Internet. But lots of people never paid attention to this -
because of the presumption that textbooks are credible. The credibility
of information posted on sites established by individuals,
organizations, companies is only as good as their personal integrity and
"agenda" - which can range significantly.
Wikipedia presents a different kind of credibility challenge. Students
are going to rely on Wikipedia for research when they are working on
projects at home. They will rely on it at college. How the heck are you
going to teach them how to assess the credibility of this information if
you do not have access at school?
Did you know that the first "copyright" law was a grant by the crown to
publishers of exclusive rights to the books they published (not the
writers) in exchange for the right of the crown to review and censor
what got published?
Nancy
--
Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org
nwillard@csriu.org
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