Dumb kids in Scotland are failing tests not because they’re dumb, or because they haven’t properly prepared, but because Wikipedia is evil and mean and “littered with inaccuracies.” Shucks, and I thought Wikipedia was to be trusted 100 percent of the time.
Right, so the Scottish Parent Teacher Council, which just sounds like a fun group, hated on Wikipedia the other day because Scottish test scores are going down and they’ve seemingly pegged Wikipedia as the culprit. Too much opinion presented as fact, too much out-and-out wrong information for the SPTC’s liking.
One comment on The Scotsman makes a fair, if tired, point:
Easier to blame Wikipedia than the fact that you’re poor parents and your children are out partying or playing video games.
Inaccuracies are found in standard encyclopedias (and newspapers) too. And besides, don’t your schools provide textbooks?
I’m both torn and not torn as it relates to this. On one hand, I couldn’t give a toss that a bunch of Scottish parents are upset because they think Wikipedia is making their kids dumb; I have Euro 2008 to watch. That said, Wikipedia was definitely an invaluable resource in school. As I said in my endorsement of the site some time ago, in an astronomy class I had to take, the textbook was written horrendously. Like, you simply could not understand what was going on. Hop on Wikipedia and look up the same topics, and it’s all explained in human-readable English.
via Drudge Report