The Printed Encyclopedia Was Pure Rubbish

Two cheers to Farhad Manjo for exposing the printed Britannica Encyclopedia as “Expensive, Useless and Exploitative”. But to me and to all parents out there, here’s the most important part of the article on why you should let your kids use Wikipedia instead of an encyclopedia written by experts:

It’s cheaper, it’s bigger, it’s more accessible, it’s more inclusive of differing viewpoints and subjects beyond traditional academic scholarship, its entries tend to include more references, and it is more up to date.

And here’s the really important point:

Britannica promotes blind trust. Wikipedia invites investigation. [Britanica’s] reliance on expert authority may yield mostly accurate information, but it teaches kids to believe everything they read. If you pay for this service, you’re building a cocoon of truth around students who’ll one day enter a world where everyone claims to be an expert — and where a lot of those people are lying. If you want to learn to suss out the liars, there’s no better training than Wikipedia

Amen to that.

Besides, Wikipedia is better. Here’s a small example. Want to learn more about the American University of Beirut? Here’s Britannica’s page about one of the region’s most important universities, and here’s Wikipedia’s . Really, which one would you rather your children use?