Dear Headteacher,

Dear Headteacher,

On behalf of all the students in the school, I am writing to ask you to reconsider your decision to ban Wikipedia from the school's computer network. 

Wikipedia has many advantages and benefits: information is available from millions of people worldwide and this information is more complete and unbiased. Moreover, the articles in Wikipedia are almost accurate like the articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica that you had referred to in your speech. Whereas the Encyclopedia Britannica is costly, Wikipedia is free, so those students who cannot afford expensive books or reading materials can at least benefit by accessing Wikipedia.

I suggest that access to Wikipedia in school is necessary for our education. We can deepen our knowledge and interpretation of certain concepts through the medium of Wikipedia. It also saves time because instead of searching for books in the library, which is time consuming, we can easily access the content in Wikipedia. It can help us in completing our assignments; I am not saying that we write the content in the same way that it has been posted, but rather, we can get a few ideas, understand and internalise them, then write our assignment based on what we now know after doing some research.

Furthermore, Wikipedia is certainly not a substitute for carrying out our tasks properly. On the contrary, it is an effective way of doing our work. We can do our work after doing some research, which means that there will be more ideas and knowledge, therefore the result will be better. Moreover, it is not certain that students only use information from Wikipedia, they also refer to other sites.

To conclude, I hope you will reconsider your decision. I think that Wikipedia can prove to be beneficial for us because even teachers can refer to it. I look forward to your response.

   

                                   Your Sincere Student,

                                    Ritu Karania,

                                     Year 11