Why do schools ban Wikipedia?
Shane May 12th, 2008
Wikipedia, in my opinion, is about as important a tool for truth and democracy as anything ever conceived. Some schools have banned, or tried to ban its use. Recently though some schools are working with it, not against it.
I wouldn’t try to say that everything on Wikipedia is absolute truth… but I would bet it does better than many text books, or at least high school text books. A book I recently read “Lies My Teacher Told Me” explains in detail how censored our high school history text books are. The author feels most of the censorship is due to the idea that editors and publishing companies don’t want to offend anyone and so will not include any controversial information.
For example: Helen Keller was a Socialist, and actively campaigned for a Communist government, using her celebrity status to be heard. She felt that Communism was the only way for the average US citizen to be treated fairly. The author points that after reading twelve high school history books (these twelve books are responsible for almost all history taught to American high school children) only one even mentions her Socialist views, and yet it was really who she was. How can this be ignored? As the author points out, high school history books only discuss her life up until she graduated college. Obviously the people in power in the US hate Communism, but not because it was a military threat. Theoretically, Communism means that all people share their wealth, no one is any richer than anyone else. Is it any wonder that rich and powerful people feared Communism?
Putting this information into text books is likely to offend some idiot that thinks we should only be patriotic cheerleaders, even if it means omitting important information. As you can see the Wikipedia entry, unlike high school textbooks, contains this information.
As long as Wiki articles cite sources, why would schools its use?
What is really interesting is that Wikipedia, to me, shows how companies and the government fight for information, for people’s minds. How? Try Wikiscanner.virgil.gr. This is a site that scans Wikipedia entries, logs their IP addresses, and then finds out where those edits came from. After setting up this site, people found that corporations and governments were editing Wiki entries to hide information, or change how things were worded to make them less damaging. Some examples:
- Diebold, the company that makes electronic voting machines, removed all criticism and controversy about their company.
- “Somebody from the Turkish Treasury removed the part on the Armenian genocide.”
- Someone at the NRA added that Iraq was involved in 9/11 to a 9/11 entry.
- “Dow purges an entire section labeled ‘Environmental and human rights controversies’ that included information about the Bhopal disaster, Agent Orange, and silicone breast implants.”
- Someone at Fox News edited Al Franken’s entry, with respect to his problems with Fox News
- Someone in the Republican party changed the word ‘occupying” to “liberating” in an entry about Iraq. “Over two years after the invasion of Iraq, someone from the Republican party edited the entry on the Baath Party from “In June 2003, the US-led 2003 occupation of Iraq occupying forces in Iraq banned the Ba’th party” to “In June 2003, the US-led 2003 occupation of Iraq liberating forces in Iraq banned the Ba’th party.”"
In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” the author talks about political pressure can change what appears in high school text books. Would Texas allow text books that openly criticized religion, or presented studies that promoted gun control? Would any of the heavily Republican states allow a negative (honest?) presentation of the US “occupation” of Iraq? I doubt it.
But Republicans are not only to blame, and not just politicians either. America is very patriotic, almost Nationalist, and unfortunately a lot of people would take issue with children learning the truth. Like say… how Christopher Columbus was so brutal to American Indians, that women often killed their newborn babies, so that they would not grow up under Columbus’ rule. If an American Indian failed in his gold quota, he cut off fingers or hands.
I would say that Wikipedia is a better tool for children to use. Do any history books talk about the US overthrow of Guatemala in 1954? I posted about this event here, and had thousands of visitors read it. (It was voted up to the front page of Reddit.com) If it was common knowledge that the US had overthrown a *democratically* elected leader of a country, and installed a brutal dictator, why did so many people read my article?
They did because it is NOT common knowledge, except to people who seek out this type of knowledge, or happen to take a college history course that discusses it. (Is there a connection that *government run schools* seem to censor information, but private universities are more open? Possibly because politicians cannot, or at least have a harder time, swaying what books and information a University teaches?) Why is this not taught in high schools? Would our country be so full of blind patriots Nationalists if more of us were taught how the US government REALLY treats poor countries?
If you look at the Wikiscanner page tracing edits on the page about the History of Guatemala you can see where people disagree and change information about Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA operation that overthrew the Guatemalan government.
You can see people ‘arguing’ over the causes of the coup. Was the United Fruit company’s political pressure to blame, or McCarthyism and the fear of Communism (Arbenz, the president that was overthrown, had allowed all political parties into the country, including the Communist party).
As the author of Lies My Teacher Told Me states: “History is not facts, history is furious debate.”
And most importantly, here on wikipedia, people are debating what forces were mostly to blame for the US overthrowing a democratic government and installing a brutal dictator. In high school text books, the fact that the US did such a thing is not even mentioned. If they DID, possibly more people would have questioned attacking Iraq, and the world would be a much different place. Possibly a nicer place…
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- Comments(34)
I too agree that Wiki’s are a powerful tool that should be utilized during the education process. That is a very liberal approach to teaching though and one that, while unfortunate, may not be adopted for quite some time.
Just curious what you mean by ‘liberal approach’? I never thought of teaching or education being defined that way, interesting. I guess I just see being open and honest about history as simply the best way, but using the phrase ‘liberal’ implies it is just one option, not the best option.
I use Wikipedia all the time to research topics or people to gain a quick understanding or context of something, and the website has never failed me. If schools do not want to let students cite information used in Wikipedia, they should at least be allowed to use the reference links from which the articles are derived. In any case, censorship is bad and promotes prejudice, but I don’t feel that Wikipedia will disrupt the social or academic norm of schools.
too bad the problem with communism is that not everyone is going to work as hard as everyone else. there will be lazy people who dont do anything and according to communism, will get everything all the working people get. therefore, effort will be minimized and progress as a nation will be stagnant.
-Jerry
Wikipedia is a great resource, but it isn’t allowed in my son’s school as a reference. Too bad, since it is usually up to date compared to other sources off line.
Being open and honest about history is definitely the best way to educate. Have you ever seen that be the case though? Schools just now starting to teach information on the holocaust shows the reserve we seem to have when it comes to “real education”. Having open access to wiki articles will have the ultimately desirable effect, community teaching. Unfortunately, it appears as though that might scare some.
Wow! I had no idea about Hellen Keller! That is very interesting to know.. And its so true that textbooks do not discuss that aspect of her life… Proved your point!
Funny, I’ve never heard of schools banning Wikipedia before. I think it’s the best resource out there and isn’t garbage like some people make it out to be. All the important articles have citations, you can see them right next to the sentence based on the little number by it. It’s a legitimate site that’s a great way to learn and expand your horizons.
I, like most of us in our 20s, never had Wikipedia in school. We had to use card catalogs and lexusnexus, you know, actual research. Eventually I got to college where in the later years, we finally got Wikipedia. The professors would say “no, you cannot use Wikipedia as a source.” However, on almost all wikipedia pages, there are resource links located on the bottom. You just source the links.
And in the cases where you could only use 2 internet sources, and 2 book sources, well, I would use Wikipedia, and for the two books, I would type my source into Amazon, and just cite two books I found that sounded right.
Interesting. Have you read the article? The problem is simply that the Wiki stuff being cited wasn’t accurate: that’s good enough to have some problem with Wiki, surely!
The main issue, when I read the article, wasn’t so much the lack of accuracy however, as citation issues. Again, reasonable for education, no?
Simon
@Simon - I couldn’t find the original article I had read, that said schools banned Wikipedia - so that children could not even get to the site at the school.
Of course wikipedia should be banned as quotation material in scientific papers. The information given there is just not trustworthy enough. Dont get me wrong, wikipedia is great and I use it a lot but you just cant use it and quote it when doing your homework. That would be unproper scientific work.
Tom, what IS trustworthy enough? The wiki entries cite their sources, why is it not trustworthy?
As I pointed out with the coup in Guatemala - wikipedia is more accurate than high school history books are. See what I mean?
I personally agree with you - Wikipedia is an important resource for all people. In many cases it contains more cited material than any book could ever contain.
I cant imagine why would anyone wanted to ban Wiki. Especially schools? Wikipedia is one of rare places where there are objective informations. Stopping people from using Wiki means someone wants to impose other information. I am for truth above all.
Wiki is a good place to start, but that is it. While I was at uni some student actually used it as a reference - mad people.
I think it is sad how the schools dont teach the truth and paint this picture of inacurate history. If we don’t pay attention to what really happened in history, then we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. It’s too bad they’re trying to ban a source of accurate info. Thats why I think Im going to homeschool my kids.
School bans everything lol..
I am from Malaysia. Here they ban everything in my Uni.. everything… We cant even get access to hotmail, yahoo, myspace, friendster, you name it…
Great way is to use some websites that allows us to hide proxys lol…
I think this is kind of a good idea. Not all the information there is the most acurrate.
I don’t know. There are pros and cons to banning wiki in schools. I’ve seen a lot of misinformation on the site. On the other hand, there is a lot of good and up to date information on it as well. Maybe the school system doesn’t want to promote a website which can potentially be giving false info to students.
personally I would campaign for open source everything. Wikipedia is a great tool with loads of useful information, not only that…it is up to the minute too. Banning it from schools seems like a pointless exercise to me!
It’s sad to see that Wiki is being banned. It’s the most widely used encyclopedia in the net. There’s no such thing as net neutrality so there might be some biased facts but banning wiki is not the way to go.
lucky my school din ban the wikipedia
its helps me a lot in my assignment
[…] is ironic that I found this article. Just recently I had posted about my concerns that schools were banning Wikipedia, and a friend of mine commented here stating […]
People are missing the point. Yes, Wikipedia has tremendous potential. I love and support the idea of an open source encyclopedia. The problem, however, is that the information on Wikipedia is spotty. For instance, let’s say that a student is writing a paper about–oh, I don’t know–the 9/11 Truth Movement. If the student goes to Wikipedia, she will not receive a balanced and neutral treatment of the topic. This is just one example, but there are many more. I too check Wikipedia when i want quick info on something, but even in my cursory browsing of entries, the quality varies wildly. Some topics are clearly well-written and researched (probably written by scholars). Others leave out information, lack citations, or are amateurishly written. There’s also the problem of, even when an article is well-researched and cited, one has no idea who actually wrote the article. There’s little accountability. True, textbooks have agendas (though the Keller example is flawed because we don’t expect to get Keller’s entire biography in school, so the omission of her link with Socialism need not be interpreted as censorship), but Wikipedia entries often have agendas, too. Thus, the reason Wikipedia is censored in schools has NOTHING to do with censorship or hiding the truth (let the paranoia rest, kids). The reason we educators encourage students to go beyond Wikipedia is because if students take the extra step and visit their library to find authored books and articles written by respected scholars, they won’t fall into the trap of taking information at face value. There is no anti-Wikipedia conspiracy. Wikipedia is fine. It’s a good place to find quick facts. It has tremendous democratic, open-source potential. But by its very nature, that open-source potential results also in, at times, shaky information. The student must go beyond Wikipedia–just as one must go beyond watered-down general textbooks–to find rigorous scholarship produced by individuals whose work must pass the highest tests in order to be published by an academic press or a peer-reviewed academic journal.
Hmm. Good point David but… I was just reading in an ‘alternative’ history book about how one so called ‘respected academic’ portrayed Christopher Columbus. When talking about the mass killing of American Indians, the author just stated - once - that ‘most would call it genocide’.
That’s it. The author of the book I was reading noted that the other author had to mention it because other authors and academics would attack the book as inaccurate if he did not. He noted genocide after a long paragraph that basically softened up the reader for the stunning fact that Columbus killed thousands and thousands of American Indians. He basically made excuses for Columbus.
The reason I like Wikipedia is that it opens up each topic for debate. Each side can cite their sources, etc.
When reading one book on a subject, you always have to worry about the author’s bias, and the possibility that he or she is glossing over some facts, etc etc.
bah I have no time, sorry. What I am trying to say is that I will take Wikipedia over most books because at least I know many people debated/argued over the content of that article. As James Loewen says “History is NOT facts, it is furious debate.”
With wikipedia, the debate is always ongoing….
Yes. Truly Wikipedia is useful for me. But there is once I have a subject call international relations. I really hope to get information from the website as like how I usually did. But my tutor didn’t allow any of us refer to that website. She said that info had been used by most of our seniors. So she wish to get fresh info from us. Bad luck me!
I’ve heard about this. Some school do banned wikipedia. It would help if wikipedia got some organization that would acknowledge it’s resourcefulness.
Wikipedia is a very good source of information. But the only negative thing is that it has little control over the facts. Rumors and “hear-say” could be included there and people would misunderstand them as facts. So its a little bit of a double edged sword.
Bee Hat / Jerry:
Congratulations on regurgitating the textbook response! In fact, we don’t have enough evidence of communism in any system to judge its merits. The “but people will be lazy” argument is a bit of a logical fallacy, because it suggests that a communist system must still maintain the same high-speed, caffeine-induced, competitive market that we see in capitalism.
The very concepts of work and productivity are arbitrary - Our perceptions of what a “job” really means is defined by our social structure and culture. The 8-hour workday is an arbitrary level of productivity that most people embrace as the norm, when it is not much more than a selected value.
Your “view” of communism and all its failures are based upon the belief that a communist system must still support a rote-memorization schooling system where students are selected by a status-quo of intelligence to be sent to universities where they will be further required to rote-memorize and regurgitate information. This education then enables a person to work daily for the rest of their life in a productivity-driven job with a limited scope. Henry Ford taught us that the most productive workers are those whose job is simplified to a few simple, mundane tasks.
Since our goal is productivity, this drone-like system is effective. However, it is not the only way to bring about productivity, satisfaction and personal welfare. When people are engaged in things they truly enjoy, they are more likely to be productive in doing them. If people are given freedom to move laterally to any job that piques their interest, they will gravitate to the tasks that interest them and do so productively.
To understand communism, you have to remove all preconceptions of education, labor, wealth and so on. A proper communist is not a flaky government applied to a superficially capitalist world. For communism to work effectively, an entire transformation in the human psyche must first occur.
Of course, we will never reach that point due to our biased view of what communism is (your response being a case in point)
PS. Sorry for derailing. In regards to the post itself, I agree fully that Wikipedia is an extremely useful educational resource. So what if there is the occasional error? It’s not like the education system has never taught wrong information to its students. Teachers should always emphasize the importance of skepticism in learning - If they have done so effectively, then a small error in an otherwise vast library of knowledge will not be detrimental to their students education.
Of course, the school system doesn’t teach skepticism because its job is not to create students who think. The main purpose of the education system is to create citizens that obey any rules that they are given. The rote-education on top of that is more a facade then anything.
Too bad.
We should all be grateful to the labor movement for having our workweek reduced from 60 hrs per week to 40. And I think it is high time we had another labor movement organized to get this reduced further to 30 hours per week plus free daycare for the children of all workers, plus free universal healthcare. Now that would be something to be proud of! Schools exist to pass on the status quo…to be sure nobody rocks the boat. I homeschool my children and intend on giving them the history that schools are afraid to.
While I’m not completely naive to believe everything I read on the Internet, I had no idea the amount of manipulation that goes on in Wikipedia. Still, banning Wikipedia is not the way to go. Every resource should be available to students. And for the students to exclusively use Wikipedia and their cited sources is just plain lazy. It’s good for a starting point, but just dig deeper.
One of the reason why school ban wikipedia is because students is relying on it way too much as the school management can see. Alots of the students bascially copy and paste wholesale from wiki without much rephasing and got caught for palargism. This is a serious problem in time to come.
I agree that Wikipedia is very revealing, but I still think that it’s an inaccurate source of information. It often is poorly edited and screened. Because it relies on user-generated content, I don’t think it’s a good source of eduation for schools. I concede that school textbooks are biased and don’t contain some necessary information, but I think that we can do better than Wikipedia.
On the communist point you make, people fear communism because . . . it simply doesn’t work and has been proven not to work.