They sure will not be taught to detect left-wing bias. Interesting how the UK now has a CamRE as well as a CamRA now, too.
G B is lost. Can we be far behind?
Willing to bet that the IT Contractor was known before the council issued the contract. Probably not a direct connect but likely the friend of a friend of a friend type.
Even after the questions about whether this should be taught, one question was completely missing from the article: “How many students?” If you are teaching thousands of students with the £30,000 then it seems like a reasonable figure. On the other hand if it costs £30,000 for a couple dozen students then a lot of money is being wasted. Any time you see a headline with an amount of money which is supposed to outrage you, always ask for the divisor.
As a history teacher with a definite conservative bent, I think this is a good idea - although the cost of it seems rather high. Kids are going to use Wikipedia whether we like it or not, and teaching them how to tell the difference between reliable factual information and how to detect bias is something I spend a couple of lessons on at the start of every year. And once you can do that, it’s an extremely useful site in many ways. It often contains information that isn’t in many more traditional sources.
I’m a big supporter of the Campaign for Real Education and have been for a long time, but on this issue, Chris McGovern has completely missed the point. These are not lessons in ‘how to use Wikipedia’ in the sense he seems to think they are. They are lessons designed to teach kids to be critical of Wikipedia and identify its flaws. And students in Singapore and Taiwan are most certainly getting lessons in how to do this (I can’t speak for Hong Kong, given the influence of the Chinese government) and that’s actually a large part of the reason they are ahead of students in Britain, because it’s about teaching them how to learn for themselves, and think for themselves, rather than expecting to be spoon fed a list of facts deemed acceptable by the people who wrote the curriculum.
99% of my students perform above the 80th percentile each year compared to other students in my state. 95% perform above the 92nd percentile. I’m a good teacher, but I’m not that brilliant - my kids do it because I’ve taught them how to extend themselves beyond just what I teach them. By teaching them how to use all the tools they can find around them. I also do lessons on how to use traditional encyclopedias, how to use a library catalogue, how to use Google and other search engines effectively, and how to search databases of journal articles.
Hmmm....what kind of bias I wonder?