Wikipedia and the Battle Against Cultural Geneticism

Lindsey Marcus’s entry on the Wikipedia page for JohnBauer was informative and detailed, with high optimism for the credibility of the Wikipedia page process in general.  She suggests that many of the mistakes made on the page were simply due to a lack of reading over one’s writing, and does not take time to delineate the process of fixing the errors.  For example, she states at the beginning of the third paragraph that “The information in this article is very reliable, albeit the minor spelling error here and there but not every writer has the patience to re-read their work.” This is an example of the type of writing culture that Wikipedia is springing into existence.  

As Hood explains in her text Editing out Obscenity, “[the way Wikipedia works] demystifies the writing process and renders the idea of a final product obsolete.” The minor spelling errors are examples that the piece is a work in progress and that over time someone will come along and take the time to fix it. However, because Wikipedia as a whole is a work in progress, many teachers and professors are against its use in academic circles. “Most teachers assigning research projects either closely regulate the use of Wikipedia or prohibit it altogether,” Hood states in the “Revision in Thinking” section. This, Hood explains, is because such persons do not appreciate the “mediocrity of the people contributing.”  This comes out of the fact that Wikipedia has a global base of contributions, and therefore the individual editor may not have what academics consider proper credentials necessary to create an encyclopedia. 

Another point that I would like to make about Lindsey’s entry is the topic of the entry itself.  Prior to reading it, I had no idea who John Bauer was.  Granted, I am not an art major nor have I taken an extensive course on painters, but on reading more about Bauer, I was struck with how little I know, especially of people outside the United States. Of course there are the big names like Michelangelo and Shakespeare, but I know very little from modern history.  

Gates, in his chapter "Integrating the American Mind," expounds upon my problem. He explains that in the American education system there is a severe lack of diversity, and because of that the average college student is being taught on histories and ideals centered on the West-- or, as he calls it, “cultural geneticism.” “Americans know little of the world history because high schools and colleges in America focus on Europe,” is a paraphrase of his claim.  On page 347 he goes on to say“We need to rethink the notion of comparative literature. Most programs of the sort only work in comparing Latin, French, German, and perhaps one other. The western segment of a humanities course should only take up a quarter or a third...”  The wide scope that Wikipedia presents helps this cause.  With hundreds of thousands of intertextual entries and dozens of different languages, people can click their way from Francis Bogart to the Chinese history of fireworks.  

As Gates says in his closing statements, “Undigested eclecticism [is] posing as a bold new synthesis; but to read and write culture anew means additional demands for rigor and coherence, not emancipation from these things” (pp. 349).