Chapter 62.4: Conservative Truth?

Ok, a quick note -- but I'll need to read on. I can't believe what I've just read in the Los Angeles Times: a history teacher got angry because a student used the term BCE (before common era) rather than BC (before Christ), which the student got it off of Wikipedia?! And as a result of this anger, the teacher decided that conservatives needed to create a wiki-based encyclopedia that conveys the conservatives' perspective.

That's ridiculous! The point of an encyclopedia is to convey information in as objective a manner as possible. It should inherently be neither conservative nor liberal, Democrat nor Republican, western nor eastern. I recognize that objective truth is a matter of debate, but that's part of the point too. If this teacher wants to dispute BCE, wonderful! Go for it. But it's not as though it was created by Wikipedia. The term has been around for many years. Personally, I think it's an unnecessary attempt at political correctness: the timeline starts at the same point, so the Christian bias remains intact. But I think Muslims and Buddhists recognize the historical significance of Jesus, regardless of whether they agree with the tenets of Christianity. Jews have a different calendar than Christians; these things coexist without any significant problems, right?

If the teacher wants to complain about the potential for anonymous changing of Wikipedia entries, fine. That's actually being addressed in something called Citizendium. I'd rather complain about why a teacher seems to have a problem with a student venturing beyond the teacher's information in order to learn. The teacher should be helping to mold this student's mind, helping the student to think for himself and assess the veracity of sources of information. Just because a book is published, for example, doesn't mean it's accurate. Interpretations cannot be assumed to be fact. As far as I can tell, BCE is a term of art -- and not a particularly elegant one. But teaching students to only use one perspective is simply ugly.