https://web.archive.org/web/20171022101730/http://schools-wi...
I never did that but it sounds a really fun to get into technology and programming. The difference is that I'd use different languages and maybe also allow them to draw images (with paint) and such. Everything offline and simple.
Giving kids accessed to a curated experience online sounds much more feasible than keeping them offline all together, but most parents don't really have the technical know-how to do this themselves (and tech giants like Google, FB, etc. are not interested in providing these capabilities).
But if you download your own separate offline version, it can be whataver you want it to be, and that will be all your users get - whether your goal is to ensure access to the ‘right’ parts, or to disappear the ‘wrong’ parts. You could even start out with the former objective, but end up with the latter situation, depending on how things go.
That isn’t quite the same situation with the definitive version of Wikipedia live on the World Wide Web.
If anything, children should be taught that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, meaning citing a Wikipedia article in a bibliography for a paper should never be allowed by any responsible educational institution.
I didn’t appreciate this until a few years ago when I got into the habit of going on deep dives to find primary sources. Easily half of all the sources I checked were either paywalled, out of print, or simply didn’t say what the Wikipedia article claimed they said.
If no one produces such a device I may need to make one myself by the time my toddler gets old enough to go online.