This post is a propos of nothing, except a book on Michel Foucault in the “Routledge Critical Thinkers” series sitting on my desk…
Even in this age of Wikipedia, I think a good teacher still performs the “filtering and assembling” feature we used to do. It’s just that now so much information is available on the web that some students, and perhaps some teachers, think they are less needed. This might make the teachers nervous and the students cocky. But even Wikipedia is wrong sometimes though my point is much bigger than that
How so? Well, when I give each philosophy lecture series talk, I too go first to Wikipedia. Unlike (some) kids, though, I go to related articles as well as the main topic; I read them all thoroughly; and I go to other sources/sites besides just those referenced in Wikipedia. With all that information, it cannot be presented in the 20 min I allot myself for the talk, so I have to make judgments about what to include and what not, order things in terms of importance for this talk and this audience (which might be different for a different audience or a longer talk), and so on. In order to make these judgments, I of course draw on my own prior knowledge and skill in teaching in order to decide what to include and what not.
Student “research” talks tend not to be too well done in US in my opinion partly because they rely way too heavily on single sources (that these are now online encyclopedias instead of paper ones is not all that relevant except the online ones are not always edited as well–the “single source” issue was a problem when I was in fourth grade and just learning to do encyclopedia research, and I see little evidence that it’s not still an issue).
Also, we US teachers don’t for the most part teach them how to make judgments of merit of sources nor how to consider audience and time constraints explicitly in giving talks. Nor do we give them a great deal of practice in so doing. But even when/if we do so, they will still need us/me to evaluate their results and help them learn how to improve. Wikipedia does not replace me (no matter who thinks or fears so); it simply helps shift what my role can be.
Just thought about that for some reason…