A Penalty for Innovation
Here's why I never liked school that much. It's from a blog post titled You Say That Like It's a Bad Thing.
I never knew much about the workings of Wikipedia before I read Clay Shirky's description of it in his book Here Comes Everybody. Rather than being launched fully-hatched, a Wikipedia article can start as a very simple sentence or so. Then, given the collaborative nature of the site, others chime in adding to it, editing it, vetting it. The simple entry can grow into a full-blown, useful, accurate article in a short time.
In Betcha's post, a kid gets an assignment to write a paper, only he can't find much information about it.
Here’s what he did. He created a Wikipedia entry using the limited information that he did know. Over the next few days and weeks, the Wikipedia entry on the topic was edited, amended, added-to and improved by many other people. All of their individual little bits of knowledge gradually built up the topic until there was quite a comprehensive article written about it. The student then used this article to submit for his research project.
The teacher gave the kid an F! Other teachers the posts author talk to mostly supported the idea of failing the kid, some even talking about "cheating" by doing the Wikipedia thing.
So who would you rather have solving problems for you? Someone who searches for innovative solutions or someone who follows the rules?
I think it's really cool that you can take a first approximation cut at knowledge, and then other, more knowledgeable people contribute to fleshing it out. And it's even cooler that a kid can use it to his advantage.
There's a big gap here somewhere.
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