Being with Jimmy Wales here in Cape Town reminds me to tell a story about walking the dog in Harvard Yard. I peered through the window into one of the classrooms where the children of the American aristocracy learn the big ideas for $40,000 per year. What had the professor prepared for these eager young minds? What secrets were they going to learn that poor public school and public university kids would never have the fortune to hear? For 15 minutes, she taught from a video projection of the Wikipedia page on Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
3 thoughts on “Wikipedia at Harvard”
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Having Stephen Greenblatt read you the Wikipedia page on Shakespeare is going to have value. There might even be value in seeing which parts of a generic encyclopedia entry a professor might skip over.
There are, as far as I know, no secondary schools in the United States that are meritocracies. That distinction is bestowed on only a few schools at all, Stuyvesant High School being one. Work hard, be smart, get in and you can work hard to get smarter and get out.
I don’t think anyone is fooled that Harvard is anything like that. As a friend put it, “It’s the Nike swoosh. You’re paying for the name which you pay for because people are willing to pay for the name.” You meet a lot of other people who believe that meeting people is important, and since you meet them you are part of the network of people who believe that a network of people is important and how you get things done.
Add your own recursive idea here.
And isn’t it a wonderful thing. Those $40,000 per year students will all be fine simply because they studied at Harvard. The world (unlike Wikipedia) is not a meritocracy. Students from Harvard will get $200,000 per year jobs simply because they studied at Harvard. The same can’t be said about a Romanian kid who spends years reading Wikipedia. But at least that kid will have that knowledge and perhaps that will enhance their ability to get ahead.
At Bryant U in Providence, RI where I’m a grad student, using Wikipedia citations is generally frowned upon. One professor suggested we use it as a starting point, trace back the information to the original sources, and then use it (which seemed like a reasonable way to use Wikipedia, while still maintaining the sanctity of references).