The front page of The Guardian online today runs a story about Chris Parry, the chief executive of the Independent Schools Council next to a series of articles about animal research and in particular the use of monkeys and apes in experiments aiming at understanding the basic neural architecture of primates (including human) so that treatments for brain diseases even become a possibility.

On the one hand when asked if he thought that some children in state schools were unteachable Chris Parry replied, “Yeah, I think there are contexts within which some children can’t be controlled.” On the other, Marmoset Anna has learned which shaped button to press to get a tasty sugary drink.

No conclusion should be hastily drawn here but some concerns are legitimate if Chris Parry’s prediction “that pupils will learn via Wikipedia-type programmes in class, with teachers helping them to apply the facts they build up online” becomes reality (emphasis mine).

If tomorrow’s education is based on Wikipedia, an amateur encyclopaedia built on consensual beliefs rather than established knowledge, we should definitively worry that tomorrow’s youth will get many tasty sugary drinks, without much understanding of where they come from.

The problem is not that much that Wikipedia flattens controversy and originality or has the “anybody can contribute” at the heart of its philosophy but that without any critical sense it is a dangerous approach and understanding of knowledge. Education should not only be about acquiring knowledge and applying it, but about developing a critical sense that allow the questioning of this knowledge. This can’t be learned online (unless one bothers reading the discussion page of a Wiki article) and this is what teaching should be about and teachers should be doing.

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