[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia for education

Fri May 23 13:53:06 UTC 2003

Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> My old school textbooks never mentioned the genocide against Native
> Americans, and judging from Larner's account, it seems that this is
> something that ought to be mentioned when students learn about Mount
> Rushmore -- unless, of course, we think "history" should consist
> solely of self-congratulatory propaganda.

Right, well, that's exactly my point.  The example was just something
I heard in the news the other day and isn't essential.

My point, stated abstractly, is that outside of a few cases where
extreme ideologues (of whatever sort) have sway, or where most people
feel that children shouldn't have certain information *period*, NPOV
is likely to be satisfactory to most of the people who are concerned
about the content of school texts.  That more or less flows naturally
from what NPOV means and how the wikipedia process works to generate
it.

As a practical matter, it's easy to see a school admin blocking
wikipedia from student access at school if we have photos of
genetalia, or an article about 'fuck', no matter how NPOV.  But I
don't think we'll be blocked merely for having an NPOV article on
Mount Rushmore, including all the unsavory history that you cited.

For now, I'm not too worried about whether wikipedia is acceptable to
school boards.  That's not our primary mission, which is to create an
NPOV encyclopedia for adults.  But in the future, when we get ready
(possibly under the 'Nupedia' brand name or whatever) to produce an
"edited" or "finalized" or "certified" or "peer reviewed" version,
then it could quite possibly be a design goal to make sure that we
have a very good shot at school acceptance.

--Jimbo