Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

Comment by musicale | Hacker News Reader

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> asked to "do research" for their school projects

What is the educational goal of such an assignment?

Certainly researchers and graduate students need to perform literature searches to understand the state of the art (as well as the research frontier) and also to uncover related work (so-called "novelty" being important for publication, etc.)

But for most of K-12, isn't the subject matter fairly well established and written up in a more useful, tutorial format, in textbooks?

I suppose there could be exceptions, perhaps current events or popular culture, or maybe developments in particularly fast-moving fields. But in this case I think students would be well served by a curated collection of sources rather than being cast off in the deep end without guidance. If the goal is to expose students to primary sources (which can be very interesting) I think a curated collection would also work well.

Encyclopedias are great though, for both random and focused reading. Both subject-based and alphabetic organization can be good for browsing and discovery.

Sure, the subject matter is in the textbook, but that's not necessarily the only thing being taught—research skills (source evaluation, comparison, synthesis, etc.) also need to (or should) be taught at some point. And teaching material in multiple ways (and having student participation) is beneficial for learning and retention.

Now some parts of the case mentioned above obviously aren't great, but there are absolutely good justifications for this from an educational perspective.

As you suggest with source evaluation, there is something to be said for trying to teach some methods of verifying whether something is true (for some definition of "true") including methods for assessing (to some extent) the accuracy of various sources of information, finding information that may have been omitted, identifying underlying assumptions and viewpoints, etc.

Unfortunately, as dang has noted, fact checkers tend to find facts that support their position and to ignore or discredit those that do not. It's even a problem for scientists and researchers.

I still like the idea of a curated collection of sources.

When I was growing up, my family always had World Book Encyclopedias. My grandfather was a salesman for them (and later a regional sales manager), so he always made sure we had a relatively recent complete set.

I would spend hours and hours on some nights, just reading through the books. They fascinated me.

By the time I was in sixth grade, I was reading at college level. The teachers didn’t know what to do with me. One time that year, I took Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy as my subject for a book report. I couldn’t understand why the other kids and the teachers didn’t feel the same way about those books.

By the time I was in high school, the dedicated bookcase for them got moved into my bedroom. I was well above average for my academic performance in high school.

In college, I helped pay my way through school by working at the main library on campus, shelving books and various other tasks. I ended up working there for over five years, as I took a lighter class load to try to help keep my grades up. And I was on the Dean’s List, with a GPA above 3.5, etc….

Encyclopedias taught me how to read, and how to study, and how to organize my writing.

I think I probably owe much of who and what I am today, to those encyclopedias.

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