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The Web -- Teaching
Zack to Think |
~ Written by Alan November for the September
1998 for High School Principal Magazine
Is your high school teaching students
to access the Internet for research? Then it is essential
that students also learn how to validate the information.
The Internet is a place where you can find "proof" of essentially
any belief system that you can imagine. And, for too many
students, "If it is on the Internet, it is true."
The following story is also true.
Fourteen year old: "I'm working on a history
paper about how the Holocaust never happened."
Long pause. "Zack, where did you hear
that the Holocaust didn't happen?"
"The Internet. It's on a Web page at Northwestern
University."
Zack found his "information" from a Web
page at http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html,
titled "Home
Web page of Arthur R. Butz." On his low-key home page,
Butz explains that he wrote "A short introduction to the
study of Holocaust revisionism" and that his material is
intended for "advanced students of Holocaust revisionism."
At the top of the page Butz identifies himself as "Associate
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern
University."
His article begins with the following:
I see three principal reasons
for the widespread but erroneous belief in the legend of
millions of Jews killed by the Germans during World War
II: US and British troops found horrible piles of corpses
in the west German camps they captured in 1945 ..., there
are no longer large communities of Jews in Poland, and historians
generally support the legend.
During both world wars Germany was forced
to fight typhus, carried by lice ... That is why all accounts
of entry into the German concentration camps speak of
shaving of hair and showering and other delousing procedures,
such as treatment of quarters with the pesticide Zyklon.
That was also the main reason for a high death rate in
the camps, and the crematoria ...
Look at the above from the perspective
of a 14-year-old untrained to think critically about information.
He's researching the Holocaust, and suddenly finds this
Web page. His teacher told him to find a unique topic, and
this certainly fits the bill - he's never heard these ideas
before. The page is simple and clear. It's written in a
calm, logical tone. The page is clearly intended for experts
in its field. Best of all is the source: Northwestern University!
And a professor to boot! Perfect.
I'm afraid that kids use the Internet
without being taught how to use the Internet. To
survive in the future economy, kids must learn how to research,
publish, and communicate working with the Internet and other
information tools. What skills will be important for kids
to learn and for schools to teach? Not how to use Windows
or Netscape.
Instead, the most vital skills will involve
applying knowledge to produce information and facilitate
communication. And one of the most important skills will
involve evaluating the resources you decide to use. As much
time as we spend teaching kids how to find things on the
Net, we need to expend 10 times more effort teaching them
how to interpret what they've found.
So how could Zack have applied those skills
to Butz's Web page?
Thinking About What We've Found
The fact remains that kids will increasingly
depend on the Internet for information. As they use the
Web, they need to evaluate their findings using several
techniques, which I will place into three main categories:
Purpose, Author, and Meta-Web Information.
Purpose
We should always try to ascertain a Web
site's purpose. What is it trying to do? Why was it created?
Most websites are designed to sell services and products,
present information, advocate ideas, or entertain. Many
sites do several of these at once.
A website's purpose will not always be
clear. Look at Butz's site. His purpose is surely advocacy,
although he comes across as an objective information provider,
especially in the closing sentence of his article: "Surely
any thoughtful person must be skeptical." Would that ring
any warning bells for a 14-year-old? Are ninth graders taught
how to distinguish between objectivity and advocacy? Make
sure that kids understand the purpose(s) of a website,
and that those purpose(s) may not be entirely obvious.
Author
The next step in validation involves the
site's author. We all know that it's easy to fool people.
Many people, especially kids, will believe someone if he
sounds authoritative. When I've talked to adults about Butz's
website, they never fail to point out that Butz is a professor,
sure, but he's an Engineering professor. How does
that qualify him to speak as an expert on the Holocaust?
It doesn't. But people see "Professor" and take what he
says as gospel.
Zack didn't know anything about Butz but
could have researched his background. ProFusion
(http://www.profusion.comhttp://www.profusion.com/) is a multi-search
engine that takes queries and searches several search engines
at once, including AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and
Yahoo.
If Zack ran a search for "Arthur Butz,"
he would find Butz's name on a page titled "Holocaust Deniers"
at a site called HateWatch (http://hatewatch.org/). Similarly, Zack
would find Butz's article listed on HateWatch: An Educational Resource Combating
Online Bigotry " (http://hatewatch.org/-follow Online Bigotry-Hate
by Category-Holocaust denial). Zack would find Butz mentioned
negatively in a March 1998 USA Today article titled,
"College anti-Semitism
on the rise, according to new report" (http://www.collegenews.com/headlines/news173.htm).
Zack would find Butz's book described as popular among "anti-Semites"
in a review
of Deborah Lipstadt's Denying the Holocaust found
at http://www.skeptic.com/02.4.siano-holocaust.html.
Zack would find Butz mentioned appreciatively on the "Aryan
Re-Education Page," at the frightening address of "whitepower.com"
(which contains a section for anti-hate sites labeled
"The Hall of Shame: JEWS SCUM.").
If Zack had run this multi-search on Butz,
he would have seen how other people categorize Butz.
Meta-Web Information
"Meta-Web Information" allows Zack to
look at websites as part of the Internet; in other words,
meta-Web information validates Web pages solely within the
context of other Web pages.
Let's start with the URL, or address,
of a Web page. Kids need to know when they're accessing
a personal home page. Most Internet Service Providers give
their subscribers a few megabytes of free space on a Web
server to use as they please.
Here are two sample URLs: "http://www.cdsinet.net/users/bartlett"
and "http://www.alphalink.com.au/~jdm/index.htm".
An experienced Web user knows that both URLs point to personal
home pages.
In the first example, the word "users"
is the tip off. "bartlett" is the user name of someone who
accesses the Internet through cdsinet.net. In the second
example, focus on the "~". A tilde -- the "~" -- indicates
a website created by someone given space on a Web server.
"stefan" is the user name of someone who accesses the Internet
through icon-stl.net.
Knowing the above, if Zack looked at Butz's
URL - http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html
- he'd see the "~," a dead giveaway that this is a personal
website. Instead of assuming that Butz's website was sponsored
by Northwestern, Zack would know that it was equivalent
to a bulletin board posted outside an office.
Just as Zack can read people by their
clothing, he can learn about a website by looking at its
URL. But even though clothing tells us a lot, the company
a person keeps tells us more. Learning how a Web page interacts
within the network of all other websites is valuable information.
Zack has a powerful tool that can place
a website in context - the link command.
To apply the link command to Butz, Zack
should go to AltaVista at http://www.altavista.com/, type "link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html"
(without the quotation marks and without a
space after the colon), and then click the Search button.
Zack will get nothing. It doesn't work.
I don't know why, and it could lead Zack to give up in frustration.
He should try this instead: "link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/".
For some reason, truncating the URL works. At AltaVista,
we find out that 879 websites point towards Butz's Web
page.
The 879 websites referencing Butz basically
fall into two categories: hate monitors and hatemongers.
Among the hate monitors, Butz is a shining example of a
Holocaust denier. Among the hatemongers, Butz is a shining
example.
One site particularly stands out. I doubt
if Zack would have had any problems evaluating Butz after
he went to "White Nationalist Links"
at http://www.crusader.net/resources/links.html.
Once you see who thinks Butz is a great source of information,
the game is up. Could there be any doubt when Butz is on
the same page as links to Online Fascist Resource Page,
Knights of Michigan KKK, White Power Central, and Texas
Aryan Nationalist Skinheads?
A Happy Ending
In the end Zack's high school arranged
for an interview of a Jewish woman who lived in Europe during
World War II. It is always a good idea to look beyond the
Internet for sources of authentic information.
This article can be found on the
Web at http://www.anovember.com/articles/zack.html
For more information about services Alan
November can provide, contact us at:
http://www.anovember.com/index.html
lelia@anovember.com
Phone: (781) 631-4333
Fax: (781) 235-5332
P.O. Box 812380
Wellesley, MA 02482-0018 |
