Fred Wilson, a New York based venture capitalist who writes the A VC blog, has an interesting post about the policy of his daughter’s school to require some offline citations in the bibliographies of student papers.  This struck he and his wife as somewhat "antiquated."

His wife wrote a note about the "antiquated" policy to the school’s principal and he replied saying (paraphrasing the post’s paraphrase here) that the school’s policy was intentional because the internet was instant gratification.  By requiring student’s to use offline sources they felt there would be more thought and consideration given to the work.

I disagree.  Just because you can get sources faster online, or more slowly offline, doesn’t cause you to be more or less deliberate in your thinking.  That comes from the experience of having your conclusions evaluated and torn apart by others. (Fred addresses this in his post).

Schools shouldn’t concentrate on whether sources are online or offline. They should concentrate on teaching their students how to identify and evaluate legitimate sources, how to apply their own critical thinking to those sources and how to avoid the growing tendency to ignore sources that disagree or disprove their preconceived notions.

After all the National Enquirer could be considered an offline source.