MOSCOW -- There could hardly be a tougher opponent for a struggling college professor than the Internet. You ask your students to write an essay about Moscow, and you end up with the papers based on sources like www.moscow-taxi.ripoff.com and www.moscow-hotels.dump.ru. When, fuming with rage, you inform the students that Moscow was not founded by Russian President Vladimir Putin and that Princess Diana was not Ivan the Terrible's fifth wife, they sound mildly apologetic, but by the tired look in their honest eyes you know that they will plunge into the same disastrous online search when they do readings for the next essay, too.
Young people are trustful; they take about five courses each semester and cannot be expected to be able to filter dubious sources accordingly, and that's why, in principle, they should be doing their research in a library. An editor cannot and wouldn't check all the facts piled up by an author in a book, yet, if an author wants to publish in the future, he will make sure that he has got them straight (give or take the inevitable number of minor mistakes). Unlike publishing, the world of the Internet is a floating one, and therefore it encourages error, illusion and misstatement.
Amateur historians are the worst. There is an amazing number of people out there posting their historical narratives of battles, wars, diplomatic conferences and space missions on the Web, cutting out facts, refurbishing them and sometimes boldly making them up. Students get lost amid these impostors, like children in a magical forest, and a bad grade as a reality check invariably comes too late.