'Crowd Sourcing In Cathy Davidson's Project Classroom Makeover'

After reading the chapter “Project Classroom Makeover”, readers may have spotted that expert knowledge and collective knowledge, as well as crowd sourcing, were mentioned in the story, and more importantly, were being labeled as two completely different forms of knowledge acquisition that are in constant battle with each other. In fact, Cathy Davidson, the author of the story, stated how “crowd sourcing is suspicious of expertise, because the more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we even conceive to be the problem, let alone the answer” (Davidson 51). Basically, she is trying to communicate the idea that crowd sourcing is the better alternative to expertise on a given problem. Collaboration with different people …show more content…
For example , take the instance when the author quoted Thomas Jefferson, in which he “advocated that America had to launch a ‘crusade against ignorance’ if the nation was to survive as an independent representative democracy” (Davidson 56). As a result, a reader can infer that Davidson agrees with Thomas Jefferson and believes that education should be more prioritized in all 50 states. While ignorance may be blissful as the saying goes, there’s only so much bliss one can have before the safe bubble a person placed him or herself in pops and lets in all the truths from the outside world. The person may have known enough knowledge to keep him or herself satisfied, but not enough knowledge to satisfy those around them who strive to rid as many areas of the world of ignorance as they can. Sadly, Cathy was in said bubble in a separate instance in which she read the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and found a small piece of information that brought her to an untrue conclusion. She learned that ADD is “characterized by distractibility, frequent switching from one activity to another” (Davidson 62), thereby concluding that “ADD almost never applies to all activities, only those in which the child is not interested. This isn’t a disability (a fixed biological or cognitive condition) but a disposition (sucsceptible to change depending on the environment)” (Davidson 62-63). Readers can see how contradictory Cathy is being in this instance, since she assumes the position of an expert in mental disorders such as ADD and can tell someone whether or not their child has a mental disorder or a lack of interest. She argues that it’s bad to include expertise when trying to find a solution to a problem, yet she