Accessing a Free Education

For this week’s blog post I am stepping outside my usual realms of thinking about fiction texts by considering young adults’ use of a particular non-fiction text which is loathed by many people, but seen as a primary source of information by many others.

In contrast to the uncertainty which often surrounds the definition and purpose of children’s literature, Cory Doctorow (who describes himself as a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger) confidently labels his latest book, Homeland, as a Young Adult novel. With his implied readership defined, the novel includes a bibliography which explains how to go about finding out information on “cool stuff” such as pay phone hacking or using the Internet anonymously. While this would be a perfect opportunity to consider the ethical implications of such an instruction, I am going to save that for another time and wander in to the realms of non-fiction.

As part of his instructions, Doctorow sends people to Wikipedia in the following manner:

Wikipedia is an amazing place to do research, but you have to know how to use it. Your teachers have probably told you that Wikipedia has no place in your education, and I’m sorry to say that I think that this is a lazy and dumb approach.

As a teacher, I know that students are often told not to use Wikipedia; indeed, I tell my students to be wary of Wikipedia when I set them a research homework. However, I also know that such exhortations are a mite hypocritical as Wikipedia can be a useful means by which to confirm details or clarify the answer to a question. But, as any savvy online researcher knows, never rely on a single source (and having half an idea of the answer to the question before asking it can often count as another source).

While I tell my students to check elsewhere when they insist on using Wikipedia, Doctorow succinctly gives “two secrets to doing research on Wikipedia”, the first of which I have – to some extent and not consistently, I will admit – mentioned as part of my instructions to students:

1. Check the sources, not the article.
In an ideal world, all the factual assertions in a Wikipedia article will have a citation to a source at the bottom of the article. Wikipedia hasn’t achieved this ideal state (yet -- that’s what all those [citation needed] marks in the articles are about) but a surprising number of the facts in a Wikipedia article will have a corresponding source at the bottom. That’s where your research should take you when you’re reading an article. Wikipedia is where your research should start, not where it should end.

This puts the onus of the research back on the student as they need to follow up on sources. However, from conversations with them, I know that if they see a referenced comment on Wikipedia they are content to accept this as verified fact without bothering to take their research further.

In an age when students have nearly immediate access to such a wealth of information, this is more of a ‘lazy and dumb approach’ than teachers disallowing the use of Wikipedia. However, if following up sources is unlikely to happen, Doctorow’s second secret – something I had not really thought about before – is even less likely to happen:

2. Check the “Talk” link.
Every Wikipedia article has a “Talk” link that goes to a page where everyone who cares about the article discusses its state. If someone has a weird idea about a subject and finds a source somewhere on the net to support it, they might just stick it into the Wikipedia article. But chances are that this will spark a heated debate on the Talk page about whether the source is “reputable” and whether its facts belong in an encyclopedia.

The problem with both of these ‘secrets’ is that they take time. While the analogue days of searching in paper encyclopaedia for information for a homework have been replaced with Google, it has made people lazier (try Googling [google effect] or reading Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows if you need any convincing). The time taken to find and read a paper article is not inconsiderable, but its content (usually) rewards the researcher. Relying on Google’s first search result (which is very often Wikipedia) and taking the quickest path to a completed homework with an undiscerningly quick copy and paste is – unsurprisingly – the choice that most students will make.

It is inevitable that students will continue to use the Internet to do their homework, so rather than trying to fight it by dismissing Wikipedia (which means that students end up on risibly unreliable and unreferenced sites lower down Google’s results) teachers could do much worse than embracing Doctorow’s secrets and accepting Wikipedia as a valid source. If teachers can say that they have trained their students how to explore the world beyond Wikipedia, they are providing their students with skills that will be useful beyond the classroom, whether it is researching Shakespeare, black holes or lock picking.

It is a question of making technology work for you, rather than being moulded by the technology, and as Doctorow concludes,

Armed with the original sources and the informed discussion about whether those sources are good ones, you can use Wikipedia to get an amazing education.

Teachers (and I include myself in this): stop being so hard on Wikipedia and make sure you take the time to understand its power, and to model its use and show students how to use it critically.

Students: stop being so lazy! You have access to an amazing free education that no-one in the history of mankind has had before: learn how to use it and don’t waste it.

(The whole text of Homeland can be found at http://craphound.com/homeland/Cory_Doctorow_-_Homeland.pdf, and the Bibliography start at page 277)

Originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today.

Twenty-first century implications for the implied author

Imagine the scene: as a teenage reader in 1991 you are particularly taken by a particular contemporary writer’s work. Having diligently paid attention in your library lesson at the start of Year 7, you turn to an encyclopaedia to try and find out more about them. Unsurprisingly, you draw a blank. Where else do you turn? Beyond the briefest of biographical information on the dust jacket or – if you are lucky – a magazine interview with the author that a friend of a friend of your grandparents’ neighbour remembered seeing some time last year, you can find nothing else out about your newest idol. You return to the books, scouring them for clues as to who the author, the implied author is.

Now, bring yourself twenty years forward: back to the present. You are particularly taken by a writer’s work and you sadly reach the final page of the book. As the finished book lays closed on your lap, you take out your smartphone and either google the author’s name or visit the web address printed on the book's back cover. Within seconds, you have accessed articles, interviews, blog posts, tweets, and Facebook pages which can give you a CSI Cambridge-like forensic insight into your newest idol. The book falls from your lap; you know who the author is, the real author, and their feelings about and motivations behind their writing.

In an age when books live beyond the page and authors are in a position to interact directly – both out of choice and necessity – with their readership through new media, new opportunities are afforded the reader to gain a deeper understanding of the text as texts’ boundaries and authors’ roles become less clearly defined. I believe that the changing concept of the implied author (and the question of for how much longer it can remain a valid concept through the real author’s increasing use of epitextual material) make consideration of an author’s intentions important.

For example, in Ned Vizzini’s Be More Chill (2004), the protagonist buys and ingests a black market 'squip'. This is a piece of nanotechnology, a quantum computer which, he is told, will help him achieve his aim of finding a girl friend by telling him what to do and how to behave. It is sold to him as a ‘cool pill’. The implant fails and the novel’s conclusion is ambiguous, but the impression the reader is left with is that messing with nature is not cool. However, in an interview reproduced on Vizzini’s website, he says that ‘in high school I would have tried out a squip. I was a pretty big dork. I would’ve tried almost anything’, and his FAQ says that as a teenager he was aware of ‘so many products advertised around me that promised to make people cool’. While he identifies recognisable social concerns of the stereotypical teenager in his novel, these admissions (and his collection of articles relating to implanted technology) show his belief that the human – especially the dork – can be improved – or made ‘cooler’ – by playing with untried and untested technology. The epitextual material guides the reader to a clear reading of the text and the real author can clearly be seen in his protagonist.

While Vizzini exemplifies the effect of epitextual material, peritextual inclusions (not only saving the reader the need to google) reveal much about authors too. Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (2008) is concerned with the ways in which technology can be used to control people’s lives, and the reader is left feeling wary about the prevalence of CCTV and records of electronic transactions in today’s society. If the reader goes beyond the final page of the novel they are presented with two Afterwords: one by the Chief Security Technology Officer at BT, Bruce Schneier, and the other by Xbox hacker Andrew Huang (to whom the protagonist refers in the course of the novel as a hero). Both Afterwords exhort the reader to question the world around them, but having the same idea repeated from two opposing ideological perspectives adds weight to Doctorow’s implicit warnings throughout the text. The exhortation to do further research is supported by a bibliography which provides a few lines’ explanation of why each text might (and should) appeal to an adolescent reader. Doctorow’s intentions in writing the novel are clear. Indeed, should the reader’s interest be piqued, a quick google reveals he describes himself as a ‘technology activist’, confirming his call to examine the ways in which technologies are used.

These are two brief examples from a particular genre of YA texts, but as critics continue to debate the concept of the implied author and the validity of considering an author’s intentions, it is now possible for the reader to consider the real author's authorial intentions in an informed manner. Indeed, in a time when books and authors blur the boundaries between media, and information is so readily available, it is difficult for the reader not to allow the way in which they read to be influenced by peritextual and epitextual information.


originally written for the Children's Literature at Cambridge blog and first posted there earlier today