Re: Finding information on the Internet

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

On 04/08/2003 11:50 AM, Richard L. Bowman wrote:
> objections to the Berkelely library tutorial's suggestions are
> obviously worthy concerns.

:-)

> As professionals in an area, we can legitimately ask the
> ultimate question, "Does it all add up?" And we know enough of our subject
> area to be able to answer this question. From my experience with
> non-science majors and even our majors in a joint math-computer
> science-physics senior seminar course, many students do not have this
> experience or skill.

What Richard says is descriptive, and I'm not
disagreeing with his description.

Some of what I'm saying is normative.  I have
a strong opinion about how things _ought_ to be.

Let us not confuse the descriptive with the normative.
But perhaps the following parable will allow us
to make contact between the two:

Suppose some student wants to attend class despite
having a broken leg.  It may be very appropriate to
provide crutches.  Crutches are generally preferable
to immobility. (There are exceptions but let's not
worry about that;  this is only an analogy.)  And it
is wise to provide instruction in the proper use of
crutches;  if you use them wrongly you can seriously
injure yourself.

But let's keep some perspective here:  proficiency
with crutches is by no means a substitute for
proper therapy for the broken leg!!!  If properly
treated, we normally expect people to recover from
a broken leg.  They discard the crutches after a
few weeks.

The meaning of the parable is this:

Judging a book by its cover is a crutch for the
intellectually incapacitated.  If the student cannot
think clearly enough to evaluate the _content_ of a
document, then I grudgingly concede that judging
by its cover (or by appeal to authority) is better
than no judgement at all.

But all involved must keep in mind that such
methods are crutches.  Over-reliance on crutches
leads to atrophy of the muscles that, normatively
speaking, should normally be used.

Crutches are never ideal and sometimes injurious.
It is alarming that the "guidelines" in question
do not warn about this nor even distinguish between
crutches and normal healthy methods.

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
http://campusgw.library.cornell.edu/t/help/res_strategy/evaluating/evaluate.html

Crutches are possibly helpful in the short run,
but they must not be a substitute for vigorous
remediation of the fundamental deficiency.

If a student needs crutches it should set off all
sorts of alarm bells.

Normatively speaking, one would hope that students
who sign up for a "senior seminar course" would be
able to think for themselves.  It ought to be a
prerequisite.  But evidently, descriptively speaking,
we can't assume that.

So, normatively speaking again, one would hope that
being able to think for themselves would at least be a
requirement for completion of the course in particular
and a requirement for graduation in general.  If not,
it raises serious questions about the meaning of
"college education".

The agenda should be to teach people to know what's
a crutch and what isn't, and to get 'em off crutches
as fast as possible.