I don’t mean reading for fun, I mean people actually using Conservapedia for information.
I had nothing to do at work today, so I went to the SDMB only to find it was down. I needed entertainment, so I decided to poke around Conservapedia to see what they’re up to these days figuring it had to be close to death. While doing this, a cow-orker walked up behind me, looked over my shoulder and announced how much he loved the site and used it to teach his kid. Intrigued, I asked if he meant the political and social issue aspects, but no, he meant he uses it to teach his kid history and science*. I’ve never heard of anyone who uses it for anything but entertainment or, rarely, an echo chamber.
So now I’m very interested, does anyone you know actually use Conservapedia to research a topic with the intent of finding useful information? Or do I work with an extreme form of ‘teh stupid’ never before seen in the wild?
Bwah ha ha. You might inform him that the evil libruls often sabotage Conservapedia for shits and giggles, and he therefore might not want to trust it too much as a source.
At least that might make him think twice about exposing his kid too much.
Well I decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and check out some of the articles. But the first sentence of the entry on “Creation science” seemed a little fishy to me:
They’ve already lost me here. It continues:
I didn’t think science was supposed to “set out to show” anything.
Incidentally, this is my favorite argument to jump into from a Religious standpoint, as the Catholic Church opposes Intelligent Design because it rejects science (IIRC, if I misunderstood what I read, someone please correct me). The Church allows for a stance of Theistic Evolution (Evolution happened as one of God’s many acts.)
I always skip straight to the slap in the face. The fact that the world is full of people who are that implacably opposed to reality fills me with a sort of existential despair.
I was only dimly aware that Conservapedia even existed before this post.
Ideally, I think the greatest service a parent can do for their child is to teach them to be an independent thinker and question all forms of authority (rather than just saying to trust, say, Wikipedia over Conservapedia)…but since that would by definition lead to questioning the parents, of course that ideal is seldom put into practice. Even though the source he is using is dubious, in a way I think it’s good that this guy is trying in the best way that he knows how to engage his child’s mind and get the kid to think about these issues…to have an opinion on these issues.
I think apathetic people who don’t care about the issue at all are less likely to be persuaded to change their view than people who are interested in the issue but simply misinformed.
Most of us eventually learn that our parents don’t know everything and teenagers’ opinions tend to be formed more by their peers than their parents, so the odds are good that as the kid becomes his own person he’ll reject most of this stuff that his dad is trying to teach him anyway.
Unfortunately, this variety of attempted critical thinking generally leads to anti-intellectualism and other forms of stupidity. If you teach critical thinking, you have to start by teaching an unbiased evaluation of ideas. Teaching your kid with Conservapedia because you can’t trust what the liberals tell you is the exact opposite of that.
He’s supposed to be hauled off in handcuffs–right there on Inauguration Day, maybe even–by…whoever’s in charge of hauling off eee-vil Muslim sleeper agent socialistic terroristic subversives who weren’t even born in the United States but were actually born in Kenya to a radical Muslim Kenyan non-American father and a no-doubt far left socialist radical mother who’s renounced her American citizenship at some point, and are thus not themselves remotely American citizens; who have, in spite of all the preceding, illegally and unconstitutionally gotten themselves elected President–And then John McCain (we’ll slide right by Joe Biden for the moment; presumably anyone who gets himself elected Vice President on the same ticket as an eee-vil Muslim sleeper, etc., etc. is prohibted by something or other in the Constitution from being President himself. And we won’t even mention Nancy Pelosi)–Anyway, John McCain is then sworn in as our rightful President.
Although to be truthful, John’s always been just a tad pink. But Sarah Palin will be Veep! And McCain is old and she’ll probably wind up President soon.
This is generally along the lines of my thinking “at least he’s doing something”, hence asking him if he meant just politics and social issues. I am also of the opinion, from other conversations, that this coworker is trying to head off his kid at the pass(he’s nine). This is particually bad to me because I am of the school of thought that you should read everything with a grain of salt and investigate sources when needed.
He could be doing the same thing with similarly farcical left wing tripe, I’ve just never seen anyone actually using Conservapedia like this IRL. It’s like seeing bigfoot or aliens. You know its not real, but there it is, right in front of you.
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