It was a day I will never forget. For some reason, that day has stuck with me throughout my whole educational career. Fifth grade wasn’t just the year of reading more aggressive books, having long puberty talks in the middle of class, figuring out what deodorant is supposed to do, and realizing that girls are actually kind of cool, fifth grade was when we had our first research project. Maybe I should clarify. Fifth grade was the first time we had to CITE ALL OF OUR SOURCES. Oh man… what a painful and confusing time that was. However, one thing that my teachers never stopped repeating: “Do not cite Wikipedia“, “If you cite Wikipedia, it is an automatic zero“, “We cannot trust Wikipedia”, “We do not want to associate our knowledge with Wikipedia”. It was like Wikipedia was some kid that my parents really did not want me hanging around with. It was like they were trying to make a giant divide of our population… too soon? Well all of those issues aside, I was taught in fifth grade that Wikipedia was an evil monster that should never be danced with.
Now I am almost 21 (*pretends to raise glass*), and I am still in this weird limbo of not trusting Wikipedia at all. Sometimes I wonder if this is how propaganda starts…fifth grade research projects. But is it just me? ^^In 2014^^, there were over 22.3 million users of Wikipedia with over 38 million articles on basically anything you can think of. There are over 800 articles added to Wikipedia each day. Side note: the most viewed Wikipedia page is “Lists of deaths by year“… questionable and a little depressing. But anyways, Why can Wikipedia be used by so many people in so many different ways when it is known that it could be false information? If you have the answer to that question, the government would love to talk to you. For you have solved the Fake News ‘crisis’. Now, to say Wikipedia is Fake News is probably a stretch, but there are similarities: Anyone can write it. Anyone can edit it. Anything can be written. However, ^^Wikipedia has a form^^ of checks and balances present that filter through the obvious garbage. But why is it used by so many people and I still don’t trust it and never use it? Because of my fifth grade teachers.
Can elementary/intermediate teachers be the change that this nation needs? The more I think about it, I never touch Wikipedia. Simply because that lesson was drilled into me when I was only if fifth grade. Think about all the useful topics and lessons that they could teach and ‘drill’ into our youth that would then lead to them growing into proper adults. All of these questionable ideas that come from different backgrounds and generations could be standardized in some way. I understand everyone is different. Everyone learns differently. But starting in fifth grade, right after learning about how we sweat and sweat makes you smell, so you should probably bathe, the teachers can teach about fake news, untrustworthy sources, diversity, and issues that we are facing right now.
This is probably already taking place in classrooms right now at a young age, but I am determined that these moral values are needed at a very young age. Even after over 10 years, I am seeing the lessons that my fifth grade teacher taught me. So lets take advantage of that and use it to take care of some of these minor but damaging issues in our society.
So fifth grade teachers… here is your calling. Fix the world.
**Links with ^^–^^ go to source with data or reading from class^^
Millennial Thoughts 