User:Miasharlise/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Sex education in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
Sex education is an incredibly important education issue, in my opinion, and also an extremely controversial topic. Because it is so contended, I was interesting to see if biases would be present in the wikipedia article. I have also long been an advocate of more comprehensive sex ed as opposed to abstinence-focused curriculum, as well as better LGBTQ+ inclusion in sex education. I mainly attended Christian schools, most of which solely taught abstinence-centric sex ed, so this topic has a lot relevance to me personally. I don't think that many people are aware of the specifics of different kinds of sex ed that are taught in the US (i.e. are only familiar with what they have been taught) so I think that having a wikipedia page that outlines the different kinds of sex education apparent in the United States, as well as academic and general opinion on them, is important to educate more of the general public.

My general thoughts on the article is that is a bit inconsistent in quality, not always aligning with what Wikipedia aims for their content to be. A few of the more prominent issues I notices was that certain subsections (especially a few in the beginning) weren't very well written, bounced back and forth between being too general and too specific within subsections, often lacked citations (especially for commentary/facts that appeared very biased), sometimes was clearly not "neutral," and sometimes used too many quotations. Most of these issues mentioned were mainly found in a couple of the subsections, however, many of them were located in the beginning, and took away from later work that upheld Wikipedia standards.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section:

I think one of the things this article does well is the lead section. It concisely breaks down US sex education into two main forms, and then briefly explains what those forms focus on in their curriculum. It also points out that this is a very contended issue, which is also a key aspect of US sex education. Although it is very hotly debated, the lead section allots the same amount of space/explanation for each form of sex education. I think the lead section should be longer though, as it only hits on a few of the main subjects that the later article goes into, leaving much of the rest of the page unmentioned.

Content:

While the content does remain relevant to the topic throughout, the quality is not always consistent. A few of the subsections appear a bit redundant in their presentation of information/opinion, and some of the subsections within subsections (such as the "public opinion" sub section in the curriculum section) don't discuss what they are titled to discuss. Also the quality of writing, level of neutrality, and whether they are appropriate backed up with sources/sourced varies greatly in a few of the sections. The content seems somewhat up to date, however certain sections such as the funding section only contain information from 2010, 2016, and 2017, so I think more information on recent funding years should be added. Also, many of the sources come from the early 2000s and 2010s, so seeing a few more recent studies and opinions would improve the quality and accuracy of the content. The content regarding policy only provides policy evident as of 2018, so updating that section would also be beneficial. Regarding representing underrepresented populations and topics, the article does a good job of outlining LGBTQ sex education and multiple view points on it, however much of this section lacked appropriate citations which is a significant issue. I also felt the section should have gone into more detail, as it was fairly short considering the large amount of content and debate surrounding it. I mainly took issue with the "Current position" section since it didn't do a great job of outlining what the current position was. I think it may have been better to make curriculum its own section, as opposed to a sub section, and added more information from reliable sources since the information didn't seem detailed enough. I also think an addition of a general history of sex education would be useful.

Tone and Balance:

The article is sometimes neutral, and sometimes very clearly not. While I think the sections "Comprehensive Sex Education" and "Abstinence-only Education" do a good job of outlining their specific form of sex education in a neutral way, giving space to viewpoints in favor and opposed to the form, many of the other sections include bias leaning towards Comprehensive sex education. Although, I think viewpoints against Comprehensive sex education should be more properly addressed. Randomly throughout the page commentary clearly in support of comprehensive sex education without proper citation and usually poor diction can be found. While I am a supporter of comprehensive sex education, wikipedia aims for neutrality, and I don't think these randomly interlaced commentaries uphold those standards, and detract from the page.

Sources and References:

I think a primary issue of this page was with citation of sources and references. Often, large sections would contain very few citations, and many important sections (such as those discussing LGBTQ+ sex education) almost entirely lacked proper citations. Also, certain sections would bounce between an overuse of quotations, to having almost not sources at all. However, certain sections (such as "Comprehensive Sex Education" and "Abstinence-only Education") did a good job of utilizing and properly citing a variety of reliable sources.

Organization and Writing Quality:

For the most part this article did a fairly good job of organization. As I mentioned earlier, alterations to the "Current Position" section would greatly benefit this page. But otherwise I think the other sections and subsections are appropriate, although a reordering of them may be beneficial (such as moving the funding closer to the section that discusses government policy since they are related). The writing quality was very inconsistent. It is very easy to tell when certain sections had different writers, due to the quality of writing and citations. This makes the article choppy to read, and also means certain sections have a greater chance of being inaccurate or doing a poor job of discussing the subtopic at hand.

Images and Media:

Only two graphics are included in the page, and both of them are charts containing a lot of information in small writing, making it very difficult to see, and don't necessarily seem particularly useful to the page. One of them is also not properly sourced, and outdated. I think a better use of images/media is definitely needed in this page.

Talk Page Discussion:

Not much discussion seems to be happening in the talk page. Most of it involves single comments under sections proposing revisions, without any response to what they recommend, or questions they ask. Much of the discussion is also dated back to 2011-2014, meaning this article has largely been abandoned since then. Much of the comments in the talk page discuss issues that I also found and outlined in my review, and recommended revisions that I agree would improve the quality of the page. But it seems that not all of these revisions have been made, given that I still saw that they were needed.

Overall Impressions:

Overall, I think this page needs a lot of revision before it is good enough to be distributed to the general wikipedia public. It does not uphold Wikipedia standards, as it is inconsistent with is bias, quality of writing, and citations. A lot of works seems to have been put into a couple of the sections (that I would consider almost fully developed) while others are still very underdeveloped and require a lot of alterations to content, sourcing, and quality of writing. Specifically, more source-backed information should be added to the curriculum section, as well as a general revision of the writing since it is often not well written and biased in commentary. Sections discussing funding and federal policy need to be updated to provide information on more recent years. Care should also be put into the revision of the LGBTQ+ sex education section which lack citation, and overall doesn't appropriately flush out the topic.