Wikipedia: Enabling the “dumbest generation”
Mark Bauerlein, the Emory professor, Phi Beta Cons contributor, and author of The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future, takes aim at Wikipedia in this new Education Next column. He writes:
The site is criticized for its superficiality, erroneousness, and amateurism, but, in fact, Wikipedia provides ready access to a fact, definition, or overview. No, the real problem with Wikipedia is a stylistic one. Read a dozen entries on the similar topics and they all sound the same. The outline is formulaic, the prose numbingly bland. Sentences unfold in tinny sequence. Perspectives arise in overcareful interplay. If a metaphor pops up, it’s a dead one. Consider the entry on Moby-Dick:
Ahab seeks one specific whale, Moby-Dick, a great white whale of tremendous size and ferocity. Comparatively few whaling ships know of Moby-Dick, and fewer yet have knowingly encountered the whale. In a previous encounter, the whale destroyed Ahab’s boat and bit off Ahab’s leg. Ahab intends to exact revenge on the whale.
Compare that to a sentence from Collier’s Encyclopedia, first published in 1950: “As he makes very clear to Starbuck, his first mate, Captain Ahab envisions in Moby-Dick the visible form of a malicious Fate which governs man thoughtlessly...” Or the description of Ahab in the 1953 Encyclopedia Americana: “a crazed captain whose one thought is the capture of a ferocious monster that had maimed him...” Or even this in CliffsNotes from 1966: “Ahab’s monomania is seen then in his determination to view the White Whale as the symbol of all the evil of the universe.”
Pretty compelling. I’m sure literati Liam agrees. As for me, I’m just content that Wikipedia gets its facts straight—at least most of the time.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 9:04 am
Yep, our writing quality frequently sucks. Unfortunately, good writers remain rarer than useful casual researchers and summarisers!
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:11 pm
David, have you ever surmised that maybe the reason good writers stay away from Wikipedia is that the fruits of their labor will invariably be pissed on by some teenaged anonymous IP address, or worse, someone like SlimVirgin or Jayjg “tidying” up with their own POV pushing?
May 23rd, 2008 at 9:38 pm
There’s plenty of passionate prose on Wikipedia, just click the “discussion” tab and you’ll have more passionate but scholarly prose than you can devour in a lifetime. CliffsNotes be interesting, but if you disagreed with something it said, the best you could do was tell your teacher in an essay. With Wikipedia, you can talk directly to the community of fans who wrote the text.
May 24th, 2008 at 3:20 am
Rather than the “dumbest” generation, one have done better to reference the “dumbed-down” generation. The denizens of geekland do not believe in metaphor. Take away the metaphor from that which is arguably the greatest 19th century American novel, and you are left with just another story about a big whale.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Never mind, with David Gerard permanently banning IP addresses for ludicrous reasons, you can be assured that good writing, like good manners or good procedure, will be off the menu for the foreseeable future!