Truth: Can You Handle It?

Knowledge is different. Knowledge is about context -- about knowing what to do with accumulated information. Knowledge is saying, "Dude, based on what I know of Alaska, it's never95 degrees in Anchorage."

Joining librarians as trench warriors for truth are some teachers, from grade school through college.

Mike Grill, who teaches Advanced Placement government at Wakefield High School in Arlington, describes the progression when he makes his students do a research paper.

"At the beginning of the year their sources will be some crank blog," Grill says. "Or they'll cite 'The Daily Show' as a source -- 'Jon Stewart said so.' " Grill says his students quote opinions as facts, and rarely consider whether the source is a person of authority.

For the six-week research project, he puts them through detox: limiting their online sources to a maximum of three, making them use library reference desks, dealing with their assertions that anything found in a book couldn't be very useful -- wouldn't the information be, like, way outdated?

He accepts Wikipedia as a starting place, but encourages his students to think and not memorize. Grill says he "cannot in good conscience" let his students graduate without knowing how to conduct good research. "When they go off to college, that's when they really get their hands caught in the cookie jar."

At least, that's what he'd assumed, but he has had some troubling visits from former students. "They say, 'Oh, Mr. Grill, I've never been in a library in college.' "

'Growing Impatience'

Anna Johnson is a George Washington University freshman from Iowa, who can sympathize with Grill's students: "I got through my first semester without ever checking out a book," she says sheepishly.

But during her second semester, she had the mandatory freshman seminar, which partners each section with a librarian to combat the decline of information literacy and is all the rage in liberal arts programs these days. At first, "I got really overwhelmed" by all the information, says Johnson. "The idea of having original thought completely terrified me." Once she realized how much information was out there, the idea of synthesizing it seemed impossible.

Ultimately, she finished a paper about homelessness and women that was strong enough to be selected for a writing symposium held recently on campus. Her work could have been even better: "Had I devoted a couple more weeks to research . . . " She trails off helplessly. "But I need to sleep three or four hours a night."

More on the search for truth, from two other students who had their papers selected for the symposium:

"Some professors require at least one source in a book," Dhruv Choudhry says with a shrug. "If you want me to find a book, I'll find a book to get an A. But it's just a formality." He points out that many academic journals are available online, anyway.