Why we Love Wikipedia

Requiring students to do research in my class can be a big pain in the neck. One of the reasons for this is that they are so uncritical about the sources they use. When they use non-internet sources, they are generally biased, but mostly they rely on the internet to give them the "facts" about the issue they speak about. They often use Wikipedia as a source without even questioning the information that is found there. This article provides an example of reasons Wikipedia is a less than accurate source of information.
Today in class we talked about picking a topic for speeches. Since I work at a Christian university, I figured that I needed to deal with abortion as a speech topic in case someone wanted to choose it to talk about. Thankfully I did because at least half of the class wanted to make that the problem they were solving in their speeches. I explained to them that, first, abortion is a bad speech topic for their class because it's one of the polarizing topics. You're either REALLY against it or REALLY for it. There is rarely an in-between. Second, it's a bad topic because most of the arguments you hear on either side of the issue aren't really dealing with the arguments on the other side of the issue. Third, it's a bad topic, because if abortion is outlawed, you're stuck with millions of babies born to (primarily) unwed teenagers and that leads to a whole heap of new problems. Thankfully, they understood my argument and so now, instead of 10 speeches on abortion, I'm going to get speeches on teenage pregnancy, poverty, birth control, etc. Trust me, it's much better this way!