To address our challenges, we need to do what every other successful country has done: invest in professional development; give teachers more time to collaborate; and provide them with resources that help them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them.
You could have copy/pasted that conclusion without altering a word from the debate about every other educational reform: school choice/vouchers, NCLB, high-stakes testing, teacher testing, etc etc. It's invariant under every proposal because the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct.
It is also just as false that the US lags peer nations in professional development / collaboration time / pointless frippery ("resources that help them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them") than it was the last 47 times this was brought up as a panacea.
> the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct.
This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking, albeit less eloquently, as I read this article. The entire article, while it made good points, always had an undertone of "Khan Academy is dangerous to me, therefore it's dangerous for everyone."
It could just be a difference of perspective - the author is a teacher and has been trained in a certain way of educating students, so any idea that isn't the way they were taught seems weird, scary, and wrong.
I'm not saying that Khan Academy is entirely the right direction to take - I haven't used it enough to say, and I'm too old to be able to stand in the shoes of its target demographic - but the entire time I read the article, I felt a bias underpinning the entire thing.
Been in the classroom for 17 years in higher education. I'm much better at my job now than I was 17 years ago. I've learned a lot in the intervening 17 years. Wisdom and experience count for something and imparting this onto other is useful.
Professional development can be helpful and to suggest that the goal is simply to employ teachers is ignorant and naive. I've never met a single teacher who has proposed an innovation with the goal of employing teachers. There are people who do care about teaching and some of those people are teachers and educational leaders. It does not appear to me that your cynicism is rooted in reality.
This is an incredibly depressing post. The discussion over educational reform has devolved into one side begging for teachers to stop being treated like cattle and the other saying, essentially, "if you cared about the kids, you'd be happy being treated like cattle."
Doctors go through significantly more schooling and receive significantly more professional development — yet they are still perceived with respect as professionals who care about their patients. Why can't we do the same for teachers?
You seem awefully cynical considering that you sell software to teachers (which they themself pay for) so that they can teach their children more efficiently.
I mean I have no love for unions and I am well aware that they have no great love for the students but even so, isn't your point a bit to cynical?
"the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct"
For an example of this -- look at the amount of times the Student-to-Teacher ratio is brought up. Which is such an interesting statistic because it implies that time with a terrible teacher is preferable to having the good teachers handle a few more students.
The US does not spend anywhere near tour nations in professional development nor build in the same collaboration time. It does not have as much coaching and other "frippery" . There is plenty of great research on this and while you are right that many pay lip service to improving these areas of US education, little is ever done to meaningfully invest in said improvements.
Also the article did not bring these up as a panacea. These kinds of complicated, cultural, and meaningful improvements will not be made easily, in a short period of time, etc.
Khan Academy provides a low-overhead, on-demand learning environment. The format is good, but it's not novel, and the format isn't the point.
Khan Academy allows me, with no overhead whatsoever, to pick (or refresh a skill), whenever I want. If my math skills aren't up to snuff for a hobby project I'm working on, Khan Academy is there. If I can't remember how a transistor works ... Khan Academy has me covered.
Compare this with the incredibly high overhead of high school and 4 year degree programs. If I just want to take a refresher engineering class at the local University or Community College, I have to go through the full admissions process, provide a full academic history, justify my reason for being there, and then work at a preset pace and on someone else's schedule. If I'm stuck at the undergraduate level, I have to take a slew of general ed courses totally unrelated to what I actually want to do.
Contrast this with frictionless learn on-demand education.
There are, obviously, downsides:
- Not all topics are covered.
- The depth of coverage is not on par with a university education.
- No access to very expensive university equipment
- No one-on-one access to a professor
- No student discounts on expensive software
Despite those downsides, the format has worked great for me.
In my ideal world, formal K-12 and college education would be comprised of:
1) Elective projects that rely on a broad swath of skills.
2) Courses to be taken in concert with the projects to provide requisite skills, as those skills become necessary.
I think you're overstating the friction. After I graduated, I wanted to learn Mandarin. I signed up for a course at the University of Minnesota through the Continuing Education department.
I didn't have to apply, it was really trivial. I took one course, and they were happy to let me do so.
"Khan Academy and its donors may preclude better products from coming along"
I just don't understand this. KA, Udacity, Coursera, Codecademy, MITx, teachontablo.com, this list goes on. I don't see how KA has done anything but prove the possibility of traction. When professors like Thrun and Norvig and investors like Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, and Peter Thiel are excited about the educational space, I believe the students will eventually win. It's no secret that many of the above have been inspired by Sal in one way or another.
The more products competing here, the better education will be. Yelling at Khan Academy because it's "the only thing that [exists]" feels...oddly misplaced.
Where Khan Academy has the distinct advantage to me is not in its content or teaching style (both of which seem good) but in the ability for the student who does not grasp the subject to be able to replay the lesson over and over without fear of holding up the class or causing the teacher inconvenience thereby allowing the students who do understand the ability to move on to the next subject without having to "read ahead". The overall content covered can be greater overall in a shorter amount of time.
Kids don't want to seem different from other kids. If a child has to ask the teacher to repeat the lesson or stay after for extra help he may be perceived by his peers (or feel as though he is being seen as) as slower or stupid. With KA on the other hand the student can learn at his own pace...something that just cannot be done in a class of 30+.
Khan Academy does not get upset if a student does a search and finds another method to solve the problem at hand (I don't know how many times I was told "I don't care if you are getting the right answer, we want you to do it our way" when I was in school).
To me it is not about KA at all...but more about self education. The best teacher is you, the lecturer may be giving you the information but how you perceive and use it is entirely based on you. It is a simple fact that teachers cannot at the same time be paid more and have smaller class sizes...the funding is not there. Students are going to fall behind unless they are taught early on to not rely entirely on the teacher to show them "everything". We have at our disposal the most powerful learning tool in the history of man...The internet. No longer are libraries bound to the confines of a building down the road that you may or may not have access to. This is the most amazing thing to me, decentralization of learning, and those who profit from learning in the old system obviously are going to be worried about their future income.
I work in a small start-up making educational software, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want to achieve.
A couple of months back I read John Holt's famous book 'Why Children Fail' which had a profound effect on me and my work. What he says, and what I agree with due to my own experience and observations is that school can be a fundamentally scary experience for children. Self-esteem is so central to learning, because how you react to failure and your own progress (or lack thereof) defines the way you learn. Kids who are afraid of looking stupid, of being compared to their peers, and of having to work hard without the promise of success are the ones who are branded as lazy, unimaginative, or just 'stupid', when in fact they are just afraid of trying hard.
The internet and self education offers an opportunity for kids to escape that fear, and to truly experience the joy of learning. I'm sure many HN readers will relate to my belief that the greatest joy of hard work is not when you appear smarter or harder working than others, but when you achieve something for yourself, or learn something new. Many programmers get to experience that joy all the time.
Holt became so disillusioned with the inability of schools to provide a comfortable and secure learning place for children that eventually he became an advocate for home schooling. I believe in schools' potential and what teachers have to offer, and my company's software is built accordingly, but we have reached a point where there is too much focus on comparing students; through frequent nation-wide testing, intense competition for prestigious colleges, and through insecure parents who push their children an unhealthy amount. To balance that, the schooling system has lost sight of the original reasons for its existence. The judgment-free zone of the internet and self directed learning is giving us a chance to undo the bad learning habits of our current students, and ensure that the next generation of students do not ever need to learn them.
The Khan academy is not about taking the power away from schools and administrators, it is about putting the emphasis back on why we have them in the first place; which is because for all the good of self education, the greatest help you can give a student is a teacher who understands them and the way they learn.
In particular, he doesn't present the Khan Academy as a full replacement for primary education, but as an enhancement. In the second half of the video, he illustrates the teacher as maximizing the amount of useful interaction between themselves and the students.
Instead of spending class time lecturing and producing examples (things that technology can handle easily, and in some cases better than a human can), teachers use their class time to interact with students individually, helping them better understand the content and meaning behind it. This time becomes even more useful because the application gives statistics on how students are performing, and what directions they're moving in; it arms teachers with better data and more time to use it.
This is a good point that touches on what seems like a communication disconnect. While Khan advocates using it as an enhancement, many in education think it's more than that and use it accordingly (disclaimer: based on my experience, totally anecdotal). Perhaps decision-makers are viewing Khan Academy as THE SOLUTION, which is what the author takes issue with.
Silly article. It offers no proof to their statement that students learning through Khan are on a "wild goose chase" for correct answers except for a 1973(!) paper. I believe it to be the opposite, the chances of you just guessing 10 correct answers in a row is ridiculously low. It encourages you to make sure every answer is correct before submitting it, otherwise you would have to start over again.
It doesn't address the issue that each student can learn at their own pace, which is the main part of Khan. It ignores people that had success with KA except for a quick mention. It also ignores the fact that Khan is a great teacher, and with this model anyone can learn from the best teacher there is.
It ignores the tools it gives teachers to see the progress of the students. It ignores the fact that teachers can give personalized assistance. it ignores that more advanced students can teach less advanced students.
It dismisses the achievement system while every single educator knows they work and have worked since the first teacher decided to give students gold stars. It only mentions it in passing to say that it doesn't work without offering any proof.
The truth is: There are a LOT of people who have their own idea of what the "perfect" teaching system is. When something comes around that challenges that, as with everything else, those people will try to say that it won't work. Let it be field tested, let's see the results. THEN we can say if it works or not.
EDIT: I forgot to say that it also ignores the fact that students can only advance once they completely mastered the subject. It doesn't mention that it puts the power in the hands of the students and let them take control of their own education by deciding which classes to take and when to take them. And as someone mentions, the author is also biased.
> I believe it to be the opposite, the chances of you just guessing 10 correct answers in a row is ridiculously low. It encourages you to make sure every answer is correct before submitting it, otherwise you would have to start over again.
That's not the point. You can learn to solve ten math problems in a row by simply memorizing algorithms to solve the problems, rather than learning the underlying concepts. The author criticizes Khan Academy because its methods emphasize the algorithms, rather than the concepts.
There's a good bit of research suggesting that the ability to solve quantitative problems isn't necessarily related to underlying qualitative understanding. Students could benefit from teaching methods designed to promote understanding.
The article is pointing out that the Khan Academy is very similar to previous pedagogical attempts. You are also not presenting any evidence that the ways in which it differs are significant. I fail to see why you can claim that the article, which raises a valid objection to the Khan Academy, is silly, but your own arguments, also without data to back them up, are not.
But yes, let us get more data, that I can always get behind.
This guy should probably come out and say Khan Academy is eating his lunch and he is pissed about it. The passive aggressive approach to talking about companies with better lessons and teaching styles gets completely undermined when you realize that this guy is selling math lessons[0] and you conclude that he thinks his stuff is better than Khan's. Yeah, maybe it is, but it looks really pretty weak to write an article like that and not mention the fact that you are selling a competing product. Where's the Chutzpah? Just say "Khan sucks, we are better, here's why".
Of course, the context is missing here in the writing, and Hacker News probably wasn't the intended audience, so maybe it was assumed people would make the assumption that Mathalicous' stuff was the better solution the author was talking about. But so far, the overall response has been pretty poor[1].
For many of us teachers, this is somewhat disconcerting. Gamification is fine when students are trying to save Zelda, but it’s more problematic when math becomes an obstacle, and eighth grade just another “level.”
The author is delusional. That's exactly what 8th, or any other grade, is. Get enough points, proceed to the next grade. Score high enough on the leader board, proceed to the college you want.
Agreed, this was exactly where I started to get suspicious.
Author: "Gamification is bad when applied to eighth grade."
I kept looking for the support for that claim, didn't really find any. The IPI study was tossed in, but it dealt with a tangentially related educational program, and seemed to endorse methods focused education over memorization of answers. This article was attacking process focused aspects of Khan, so I'm not sure IPI was the best study to cite.
It's a drawn out article, and light on evidence. I wouldn't look to the author for advice on teaching others critical thinking.
That would improve on the current system, which passes failing students along as well, right up until they hit university and find out they need a few years of remedial classes.
I disagree. Gamification is the application of game design techniques to non-game situations to make them more interesting and engaging, in order to encourage people to do things they might otherwise not do because they find them boring or uninteresting.
You can't just take something people don't like and don't want to do, and stick in arbitrary "levels" and have that motivate them. The levels have to represent some achievement that is desirable to the person.
The more invested and successful you are in some arbitrary game, the more you seek to justify the (nonexistent) purpose of the game. It's pretty scary.
Part of school is playing the game. But if you reduce education to a game, you are losing something of incredible value. School and education are not always the same thing. And education is not a game. It's purpose is freedom. And it is fundamentally important to the human experience in a way that points and rewards simply aren't.
I think this piece would be more effective, or at least somewhat effective, if its author had described a vision for online learning that takes the best of Khan's approach and combines it with, well, something interesting. The author never really explains what that something is. I don't think Khan Academy is perfect. Its gamification techniques will not work for all students. But it is an alternative for some students. If a kid who is ahead can stay with her peers at the same grade level while watching Khan videos at night, great. If a kid who is behind can stay with her grade level by using Khan to catch up without the shame of remedial math, even better.
Unfortunately all evidence so far seems to indicate that online approaches to learning, on average, do not work very well. To be clear, meta-analyses continue to reveal that schooling, as it exists now, works as well or better than tech centered or online education. I do not find this surprising, if you do not change the philosophy and pedagogy, no repackaging will overcome the serious inherent flaws in the approach. This is particularly pronounced in math Ed and I encourage anyone to dig into the research on what good teaching and learning of math is characterized by.
Very interesting and thoughtful. But I think the author gets it dead wrong.
"the budget cuts he seemed so giddy about invariably mean fewer teachers, and to argue that this is somehow beneficial to learning is to argue against years of research and practice" -- this is exactly the argument that Khan Academy is making: that we can cut teachers in favor of lessons taught by computer. The actual reason why "this time is different" is that we now have the power to create excellent lessons, through the power of computers, the internet, and crowds.
Maybe Khan Academy isn't good enough to replace teachers yet. (I would be surprised if it weren't already better than 75% of teachers, though. Most teachers aren't very good.)
Another claim the author makes: "Khan Academy makes it difficult for something better to come along" -- I would be SHOCKED if this were true. Sure, it's hard to compete with free, but KA is creating a new ecosystem of people who are looking to the internet for teaching materials! So if KA is really as bad as the author claims, then it's going to be MUCH easier than it is today to get better materials in the hands of kids.
Its weird that he complains that khan teaches the same that has been failing for generations, then goes and slams him for not hiring teachers (the people who have been teaching the same way for generations).
The article was super long and I bet most people won't make it down to the bottom where he goes on to explain that he actually likes khan academy and how it's a great thing. Too bad.
It's a contradictory rant and it's not obvious what the author wants from the reader beyond us purchasing his product. Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh but I honestly don't know what the takeaway is. Maybe it's the realization that KA isn't the answer to all our educational challenges, but that seems like a straw man. Given how many problems KA has solved for so many people, I think it has more than justified its existence, educational approach, and resource pools and funding.
The one concrete criticism I could see in the article (aside from vague handwaving about "pedagogical underpinnings") was about providing a step-by-step series of instructions for solving a problem without real understanding.
But Khan doesn't actually do that. In my experience, he's very good at emphasizing why something works. He encourages people to remember the "why" well enough to work out the actual formulas for themselves, rather than just memorizing the formulas.
Personally I don't understand how one would go about teaching math without using step-by-step instructions, especially considering his example of teaching slope. He never says what would be a better way to teach slope than the textbook/Khan methods, he just claims (without submitting any proof) that those methods are completely ineffective. Well, it seems to be working for KA students, and it seems to be working for other countries.
I agree with pinchyfingers: Students are getting worse at math because they don't want to put the work in. And I don't think it should necessarily be the educator's burden to make each individual math topic more fun and exciting to try and trick students into using their brains. We need to find a way to get kids motivated about learning in general again.
What's the difference between KA's videos and something written? If I don't know something, can't I just look it up on wikipedia or some other website? Or, a book?
Here's what I'm getting at: NOTHING about KA is revolutionary. Nada. You can read a book as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you don't understand something, you go back.
"Ah, but these are videos. It's an actual human speaking." Well, yeah, the recording of an actual human speaking. Problem is that there's no pedagogical theory that supports the idea that a passive recording is especially effective when it comes to learning.
People don't like being told that they have misconceptions, especially about subjects that they take themselves to be experts in. And smart people consider themselves experts about learning. But the truth is that there's a research science concerning learning, and there are some surprising findings. Further, the truth is that smart people are resentful towards this science, because it challenges their views, and that teachers are more likely to be experts in this science than anyone else.
Fact: Passive learning techniques aren't especially effective at the kinds of learning that matter most. Listening to a video is passive learning.
The problem with Khan Academy is two-fold: (1) the pedagogy is lousy and (2) the delivery actually isn't that revolutionary. The ability to move at your own pace is provided by a book. To the extent that Khan's videos are easier on a person than reading, that's because they're less effective (because they're more passive).
There's a way to use the web to revolutionize education, but it's not by making material more accessible. It's by making people -- teacher, tutors and students -- more accessible to each other.
I've been wondering about this myself. Why are videos supposed to be better than the same content presented as a textual tutorial (with some multimedia content like animations)?
I can think of several advantages of textual content over video:
- you can compare different parts of the text (for example, to discover an analogy) more easily
- you can read at your own pace (you can't slow down the video)
- skipping between different places is easier (just move your eye instead of using a slider)
- it's easier to find the exact place you want to read
- textual content can be easily revised by the author, which enables gradual improvement and error correction
Can someone please explain to me what the big deal about video is?
Khan Academy blew my mind when I heard the TED talk on it, no doubt this and software like it has a massive part in the future of education.
More recently I started learning a different language (the human kind) and it drove home even further how much more useful software can be to pickup problems with my understanding.
Let's assume you have an A+ class teacher the best of the best. They still have limited time with an entire class of students. It's simply not possible to diagnose and fix the little or big parts individuals are missing.
An awesome teacher with infinite time could, but that is not a possibility, it just doesn't scale.
About the article, haters going to hate, sounds jealous to me.
Ok point about still teaching using abstract examples, but hell that's a simple fix, throw in some real life ones. How does he use "millions of students across the world have used it" in his opening paragraph and then go on to try and say it's doing it wrong lol.
I agree that KA is a wonderful site, but not a panacea.
What I miss from the article is to present the solution for it.
My girlfriend is a teacher and she tells me about her days. Generally it's like taming lions many times. Kid's don't get the stuff they are being taught, because it's endlessly boring and they don't care. Not a bit. I assume they generally hate math classes.
And I can see why: they don't actually accomplish anything, have no context, just pound on basic formulas (which the article actually highlights well in the beginning).
So, I think that the solution is to package the knowledge in creative tasks. Give the kids assignments that they can creatively engage in. Give some leeway on the solutions. Let them work in small groups. This would give a bit of cooperation in the groups and competition between. Give good grades to the most efficient solutions. Structure the tasks so that the students need a basic understanding of the current topic that has to be learned and add them the resources (like KA). Then you might end up with them actually learning something.
And knowledge that is acquired during the solution of particular problems actually tends to stick longer than the next test.
I'm in fulltime work, and for years have wished I could go back to university and get another degree. It isn't a qualification I want - I don't need it to get on in my career, for example - but knowledge. Now the internet is bringing me and thousands like me the opportunity to learn at our own pace for free.
I'm currently taking the Khan chemistry course and loving it. When you criticise Khan for not helping kids as much as a real teacher does, I think you miss the bigger picture. It's enabling people of all ages to broaden their knowledge, not just people in formal education.
This, to me, is the real revolution: free lifelong learning.
This is something I wish universities would provide: open enrollment for adults without the cookie-cutter bureaucratic undergraduate track and the 18-year-old-focused high-bar on-rails admissions process.
The "continuing education" programs that do exist are generally stunted and poor.
Would it be so terrible if I spent 10 years gradually taking classes in engineering and sciences, perhaps never earning a degree? Why is college something you do only once, when you're arguably too young to genuinely appreciate it or even know what you want?
This is why I find Khan Academy to be so fascinating.
The author dismisses Sal's videos as "ineffective instruction":
"This paint-by-numbers method of instruction emphasizes procedures — how to do math — but ignores the conceptual understanding that’s central to authentic learning: what math means."
This comment by the author is enraging. It is great to be able to understand things abstractly and use conceptual understanding to apply knowledge, but this rarely comes first.
- No one understands the nuances and implications of language and communicates with a high -level of skill without first mastering the basic mechanics of their native tongue.
- No one perceives a chessboards as a whole system and identifies critical components until they've mastered the basic movement of pieces and trained basic tactics.
- No one programs complex applications without first mastering basic programming constructs like loops and conditionals.
The fact is that understanding math takes work, and the real reason students perform poorly is that they're not interested in doing the work. This isn't a bad thing. Forcing children to be detained in all day in an oppressive setting is a bad thing. Actively stamping out imagination and then expecting people to want to learn is a ridiculous thing.
Sal's contribution to education is remarkable because he is empowering learners, rather than threatening them. Schools threaten students with poor grades and the implication that those poor grades will lead to an unfulfilling life. This fear-mongering stifles creative growth and doesn't mix well with a population that harbors an extreme sense of entitlement.
Not everyone is going to care about math for math's sake, but empowering resources like the Khan Academy are heroes in the uphill battle of encouraging intellectual curiosity. To call out Khan Academy as "the most dangerous phenomenon in education today" seems like a reactionary statement rooted in the author's self-interest and fear.
You'll notice that I didn't actually say that Khan was the "most dangerous phenomenon," but rather our own obsession with it, and the misinterpretation of what it can do. Khan itself is great, but using it for what it wasn't intended to do is a real problem...and one that schools & districts are beginning to pursue more and more.
One thing I thought of: I think one way to really make education stronger, and cheaper, by utilizing technology, is to have your "point system" based on teaching people just under you. By teaching material, you also learn it more strongly yourself. And of course you have more "one-on-one" time with students while actually reducing the demand for professional teachers.
So maybe you could start with something like Khan Academy (it doesn't hurt to have the lines, dots, and steps documented somewhere). But then have some sort of social network (and I'm saying this as somebody who thinks that too many things have social networks) based on the ability to learn and teach skills.
I haven't viewed the KA videos yet, although I'm looking into them. So, while not versed in the math instructional set du jour at the moment, I have a vested interest in the subject -- my kids in 5th grade.
Several parents I know (and respect) have substituted the math instruction their kids are receiving from local schools to using the Khan Academy. While I would never throw my kids into any program without understanding it well ahead of time, I'm reasonably confident that KA would be a helpful addition to my kids' math instruction.
I don't claim to understand the best methods for learning math (or teaching it), but for my kids I follow simple results-based assessment with the eye test: do they understand problem sets, can they use math as a tool, are they confident when asked to do math-based exercises, etc. And, yes, do they score well when taking exams. In other words, while I care about the means...I'm really interested in the end.
In reading this article, I find someone critical of the KA approach on spurious grounds (very little in this critique is based on fact). That the original author also has a service that sells into the current education system that KA obviously threatens makes the argument that much weaker. I question the motivations of the author, especially with a comment like this:
"Of course, fans of Khan Academy — which, to be fair, includes many teachers, parents and administrators — say that their students are engaged and performing better than ever. Still, this may be a false sense of security."
The truth is that Khan Academy is helping millions of people - and I'm one of them - to learn topic that seemed out of their reach. Maybe KA hasn't understood all of the pieces of the educational puzzle, but given their resources and trajectory I think they can have the same kind of profound impact as Wikipedia.
[+] [-] patio11|14 years ago|reply
You could have copy/pasted that conclusion without altering a word from the debate about every other educational reform: school choice/vouchers, NCLB, high-stakes testing, teacher testing, etc etc. It's invariant under every proposal because the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct.
It is also just as false that the US lags peer nations in professional development / collaboration time / pointless frippery ("resources that help them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them") than it was the last 47 times this was brought up as a panacea.
[+] [-] AgentConundrum|14 years ago|reply
This is pretty much exactly what I was thinking, albeit less eloquently, as I read this article. The entire article, while it made good points, always had an undertone of "Khan Academy is dangerous to me, therefore it's dangerous for everyone."
It could just be a difference of perspective - the author is a teacher and has been trained in a certain way of educating students, so any idea that isn't the way they were taught seems weird, scary, and wrong.
I'm not saying that Khan Academy is entirely the right direction to take - I haven't used it enough to say, and I'm too old to be able to stand in the shoes of its target demographic - but the entire time I read the article, I felt a bias underpinning the entire thing.
[+] [-] yequalsx|14 years ago|reply
Professional development can be helpful and to suggest that the goal is simply to employ teachers is ignorant and naive. I've never met a single teacher who has proposed an innovation with the goal of employing teachers. There are people who do care about teaching and some of those people are teachers and educational leaders. It does not appear to me that your cynicism is rooted in reality.
[+] [-] jforman|14 years ago|reply
Doctors go through significantly more schooling and receive significantly more professional development — yet they are still perceived with respect as professionals who care about their patients. Why can't we do the same for teachers?
[+] [-] tomjen3|14 years ago|reply
I mean I have no love for unions and I am well aware that they have no great love for the students but even so, isn't your point a bit to cynical?
[+] [-] whatusername|14 years ago|reply
For an example of this -- look at the amount of times the Student-to-Teacher ratio is brought up. Which is such an interesting statistic because it implies that time with a terrible teacher is preferable to having the good teachers handle a few more students.
[+] [-] swcpg|14 years ago|reply
Also the article did not bring these up as a panacea. These kinds of complicated, cultural, and meaningful improvements will not be made easily, in a short period of time, etc.
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nupark2|14 years ago|reply
Khan Academy allows me, with no overhead whatsoever, to pick (or refresh a skill), whenever I want. If my math skills aren't up to snuff for a hobby project I'm working on, Khan Academy is there. If I can't remember how a transistor works ... Khan Academy has me covered.
Compare this with the incredibly high overhead of high school and 4 year degree programs. If I just want to take a refresher engineering class at the local University or Community College, I have to go through the full admissions process, provide a full academic history, justify my reason for being there, and then work at a preset pace and on someone else's schedule. If I'm stuck at the undergraduate level, I have to take a slew of general ed courses totally unrelated to what I actually want to do.
Contrast this with frictionless learn on-demand education.
There are, obviously, downsides:
- Not all topics are covered.
- The depth of coverage is not on par with a university education.
- No access to very expensive university equipment
- No one-on-one access to a professor
- No student discounts on expensive software
Despite those downsides, the format has worked great for me.
In my ideal world, formal K-12 and college education would be comprised of:
1) Elective projects that rely on a broad swath of skills.
2) Courses to be taken in concert with the projects to provide requisite skills, as those skills become necessary.
[+] [-] GuiA|14 years ago|reply
I agree with your general sentiment but I feel like your premise oversimplifies the situation.
[+] [-] autarch|14 years ago|reply
I didn't have to apply, it was really trivial. I took one course, and they were happy to let me do so.
[+] [-] jonnycowboy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamens|14 years ago|reply
"Khan Academy and its donors may preclude better products from coming along"
I just don't understand this. KA, Udacity, Coursera, Codecademy, MITx, teachontablo.com, this list goes on. I don't see how KA has done anything but prove the possibility of traction. When professors like Thrun and Norvig and investors like Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, and Peter Thiel are excited about the educational space, I believe the students will eventually win. It's no secret that many of the above have been inspired by Sal in one way or another.
The more products competing here, the better education will be. Yelling at Khan Academy because it's "the only thing that [exists]" feels...oddly misplaced.
[+] [-] swishercutter|14 years ago|reply
Kids don't want to seem different from other kids. If a child has to ask the teacher to repeat the lesson or stay after for extra help he may be perceived by his peers (or feel as though he is being seen as) as slower or stupid. With KA on the other hand the student can learn at his own pace...something that just cannot be done in a class of 30+.
Khan Academy does not get upset if a student does a search and finds another method to solve the problem at hand (I don't know how many times I was told "I don't care if you are getting the right answer, we want you to do it our way" when I was in school).
To me it is not about KA at all...but more about self education. The best teacher is you, the lecturer may be giving you the information but how you perceive and use it is entirely based on you. It is a simple fact that teachers cannot at the same time be paid more and have smaller class sizes...the funding is not there. Students are going to fall behind unless they are taught early on to not rely entirely on the teacher to show them "everything". We have at our disposal the most powerful learning tool in the history of man...The internet. No longer are libraries bound to the confines of a building down the road that you may or may not have access to. This is the most amazing thing to me, decentralization of learning, and those who profit from learning in the old system obviously are going to be worried about their future income.
[+] [-] frasertimo|14 years ago|reply
I work in a small start-up making educational software, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want to achieve.
A couple of months back I read John Holt's famous book 'Why Children Fail' which had a profound effect on me and my work. What he says, and what I agree with due to my own experience and observations is that school can be a fundamentally scary experience for children. Self-esteem is so central to learning, because how you react to failure and your own progress (or lack thereof) defines the way you learn. Kids who are afraid of looking stupid, of being compared to their peers, and of having to work hard without the promise of success are the ones who are branded as lazy, unimaginative, or just 'stupid', when in fact they are just afraid of trying hard.
The internet and self education offers an opportunity for kids to escape that fear, and to truly experience the joy of learning. I'm sure many HN readers will relate to my belief that the greatest joy of hard work is not when you appear smarter or harder working than others, but when you achieve something for yourself, or learn something new. Many programmers get to experience that joy all the time.
Holt became so disillusioned with the inability of schools to provide a comfortable and secure learning place for children that eventually he became an advocate for home schooling. I believe in schools' potential and what teachers have to offer, and my company's software is built accordingly, but we have reached a point where there is too much focus on comparing students; through frequent nation-wide testing, intense competition for prestigious colleges, and through insecure parents who push their children an unhealthy amount. To balance that, the schooling system has lost sight of the original reasons for its existence. The judgment-free zone of the internet and self directed learning is giving us a chance to undo the bad learning habits of our current students, and ensure that the next generation of students do not ever need to learn them.
The Khan academy is not about taking the power away from schools and administrators, it is about putting the emphasis back on why we have them in the first place; which is because for all the good of self education, the greatest help you can give a student is a teacher who understands them and the way they learn.
[+] [-] Osmose|14 years ago|reply
In particular, he doesn't present the Khan Academy as a full replacement for primary education, but as an enhancement. In the second half of the video, he illustrates the teacher as maximizing the amount of useful interaction between themselves and the students.
Instead of spending class time lecturing and producing examples (things that technology can handle easily, and in some cases better than a human can), teachers use their class time to interact with students individually, helping them better understand the content and meaning behind it. This time becomes even more useful because the application gives statistics on how students are performing, and what directions they're moving in; it arms teachers with better data and more time to use it.
[+] [-] Clanan|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] z0ot|14 years ago|reply
It doesn't address the issue that each student can learn at their own pace, which is the main part of Khan. It ignores people that had success with KA except for a quick mention. It also ignores the fact that Khan is a great teacher, and with this model anyone can learn from the best teacher there is.
It ignores the tools it gives teachers to see the progress of the students. It ignores the fact that teachers can give personalized assistance. it ignores that more advanced students can teach less advanced students.
It dismisses the achievement system while every single educator knows they work and have worked since the first teacher decided to give students gold stars. It only mentions it in passing to say that it doesn't work without offering any proof.
The truth is: There are a LOT of people who have their own idea of what the "perfect" teaching system is. When something comes around that challenges that, as with everything else, those people will try to say that it won't work. Let it be field tested, let's see the results. THEN we can say if it works or not.
EDIT: I forgot to say that it also ignores the fact that students can only advance once they completely mastered the subject. It doesn't mention that it puts the power in the hands of the students and let them take control of their own education by deciding which classes to take and when to take them. And as someone mentions, the author is also biased.
[+] [-] capnrefsmmat|14 years ago|reply
That's not the point. You can learn to solve ten math problems in a row by simply memorizing algorithms to solve the problems, rather than learning the underlying concepts. The author criticizes Khan Academy because its methods emphasize the algorithms, rather than the concepts.
There's a good bit of research suggesting that the ability to solve quantitative problems isn't necessarily related to underlying qualitative understanding. Students could benefit from teaching methods designed to promote understanding.
[+] [-] archgoon|14 years ago|reply
But yes, let us get more data, that I can always get behind.
[+] [-] firefoxman1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zackzackzack|14 years ago|reply
Of course, the context is missing here in the writing, and Hacker News probably wasn't the intended audience, so maybe it was assumed people would make the assumption that Mathalicous' stuff was the better solution the author was talking about. But so far, the overall response has been pretty poor[1].
[0]http://www.mathalicious.com/sign-up/ [1]https://twitter.com/#!/mathalicious
[+] [-] aaronbrethorst|14 years ago|reply
The author is delusional. That's exactly what 8th, or any other grade, is. Get enough points, proceed to the next grade. Score high enough on the leader board, proceed to the college you want.
[+] [-] brownbat|14 years ago|reply
Author: "Gamification is bad when applied to eighth grade."
I kept looking for the support for that claim, didn't really find any. The IPI study was tossed in, but it dealt with a tangentially related educational program, and seemed to endorse methods focused education over memorization of answers. This article was attacking process focused aspects of Khan, so I'm not sure IPI was the best study to cite.
It's a drawn out article, and light on evidence. I wouldn't look to the author for advice on teaching others critical thinking.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|14 years ago|reply
That would improve on the current system, which passes failing students along as well, right up until they hit university and find out they need a few years of remedial classes.
[+] [-] tzs|14 years ago|reply
You can't just take something people don't like and don't want to do, and stick in arbitrary "levels" and have that motivate them. The levels have to represent some achievement that is desirable to the person.
[+] [-] zackzackzack|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamens|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wanderful|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swcpg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fdschoeneman|14 years ago|reply
Frankly its author sounds bitter.
[+] [-] swcpg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lincolnq|14 years ago|reply
"the budget cuts he seemed so giddy about invariably mean fewer teachers, and to argue that this is somehow beneficial to learning is to argue against years of research and practice" -- this is exactly the argument that Khan Academy is making: that we can cut teachers in favor of lessons taught by computer. The actual reason why "this time is different" is that we now have the power to create excellent lessons, through the power of computers, the internet, and crowds.
Maybe Khan Academy isn't good enough to replace teachers yet. (I would be surprised if it weren't already better than 75% of teachers, though. Most teachers aren't very good.)
Another claim the author makes: "Khan Academy makes it difficult for something better to come along" -- I would be SHOCKED if this were true. Sure, it's hard to compete with free, but KA is creating a new ecosystem of people who are looking to the internet for teaching materials! So if KA is really as bad as the author claims, then it's going to be MUCH easier than it is today to get better materials in the hands of kids.
[+] [-] RandallBrown|14 years ago|reply
The article was super long and I bet most people won't make it down to the bottom where he goes on to explain that he actually likes khan academy and how it's a great thing. Too bad.
[+] [-] arkitaip|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DennisP|14 years ago|reply
But Khan doesn't actually do that. In my experience, he's very good at emphasizing why something works. He encourages people to remember the "why" well enough to work out the actual formulas for themselves, rather than just memorizing the formulas.
[+] [-] wizzard|14 years ago|reply
I agree with pinchyfingers: Students are getting worse at math because they don't want to put the work in. And I don't think it should necessarily be the educator's burden to make each individual math topic more fun and exciting to try and trick students into using their brains. We need to find a way to get kids motivated about learning in general again.
[+] [-] mpershan|14 years ago|reply
Here's what I'm getting at: NOTHING about KA is revolutionary. Nada. You can read a book as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you don't understand something, you go back.
"Ah, but these are videos. It's an actual human speaking." Well, yeah, the recording of an actual human speaking. Problem is that there's no pedagogical theory that supports the idea that a passive recording is especially effective when it comes to learning.
People don't like being told that they have misconceptions, especially about subjects that they take themselves to be experts in. And smart people consider themselves experts about learning. But the truth is that there's a research science concerning learning, and there are some surprising findings. Further, the truth is that smart people are resentful towards this science, because it challenges their views, and that teachers are more likely to be experts in this science than anyone else.
Fact: Passive learning techniques aren't especially effective at the kinds of learning that matter most. Listening to a video is passive learning.
Important (free) reading: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853
The problem with Khan Academy is two-fold: (1) the pedagogy is lousy and (2) the delivery actually isn't that revolutionary. The ability to move at your own pace is provided by a book. To the extent that Khan's videos are easier on a person than reading, that's because they're less effective (because they're more passive).
There's a way to use the web to revolutionize education, but it's not by making material more accessible. It's by making people -- teacher, tutors and students -- more accessible to each other.
[+] [-] tszyn|14 years ago|reply
I can think of several advantages of textual content over video: - you can compare different parts of the text (for example, to discover an analogy) more easily - you can read at your own pace (you can't slow down the video) - skipping between different places is easier (just move your eye instead of using a slider) - it's easier to find the exact place you want to read - textual content can be easily revised by the author, which enables gradual improvement and error correction
Can someone please explain to me what the big deal about video is?
[+] [-] UK-Al05|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corkill|14 years ago|reply
More recently I started learning a different language (the human kind) and it drove home even further how much more useful software can be to pickup problems with my understanding.
Let's assume you have an A+ class teacher the best of the best. They still have limited time with an entire class of students. It's simply not possible to diagnose and fix the little or big parts individuals are missing.
An awesome teacher with infinite time could, but that is not a possibility, it just doesn't scale.
About the article, haters going to hate, sounds jealous to me.
Ok point about still teaching using abstract examples, but hell that's a simple fix, throw in some real life ones. How does he use "millions of students across the world have used it" in his opening paragraph and then go on to try and say it's doing it wrong lol.
[+] [-] Seth_Kriticos|14 years ago|reply
What I miss from the article is to present the solution for it.
My girlfriend is a teacher and she tells me about her days. Generally it's like taming lions many times. Kid's don't get the stuff they are being taught, because it's endlessly boring and they don't care. Not a bit. I assume they generally hate math classes.
And I can see why: they don't actually accomplish anything, have no context, just pound on basic formulas (which the article actually highlights well in the beginning).
So, I think that the solution is to package the knowledge in creative tasks. Give the kids assignments that they can creatively engage in. Give some leeway on the solutions. Let them work in small groups. This would give a bit of cooperation in the groups and competition between. Give good grades to the most efficient solutions. Structure the tasks so that the students need a basic understanding of the current topic that has to be learned and add them the resources (like KA). Then you might end up with them actually learning something.
And knowledge that is acquired during the solution of particular problems actually tends to stick longer than the next test.
[+] [-] summerdown2|14 years ago|reply
I'm currently taking the Khan chemistry course and loving it. When you criticise Khan for not helping kids as much as a real teacher does, I think you miss the bigger picture. It's enabling people of all ages to broaden their knowledge, not just people in formal education.
This, to me, is the real revolution: free lifelong learning.
[+] [-] nupark2|14 years ago|reply
The "continuing education" programs that do exist are generally stunted and poor.
Would it be so terrible if I spent 10 years gradually taking classes in engineering and sciences, perhaps never earning a degree? Why is college something you do only once, when you're arguably too young to genuinely appreciate it or even know what you want?
This is why I find Khan Academy to be so fascinating.
[+] [-] pinchyfingers|14 years ago|reply
"This paint-by-numbers method of instruction emphasizes procedures — how to do math — but ignores the conceptual understanding that’s central to authentic learning: what math means."
This comment by the author is enraging. It is great to be able to understand things abstractly and use conceptual understanding to apply knowledge, but this rarely comes first.
- No one understands the nuances and implications of language and communicates with a high -level of skill without first mastering the basic mechanics of their native tongue.
- No one perceives a chessboards as a whole system and identifies critical components until they've mastered the basic movement of pieces and trained basic tactics.
- No one programs complex applications without first mastering basic programming constructs like loops and conditionals.
The fact is that understanding math takes work, and the real reason students perform poorly is that they're not interested in doing the work. This isn't a bad thing. Forcing children to be detained in all day in an oppressive setting is a bad thing. Actively stamping out imagination and then expecting people to want to learn is a ridiculous thing.
Sal's contribution to education is remarkable because he is empowering learners, rather than threatening them. Schools threaten students with poor grades and the implication that those poor grades will lead to an unfulfilling life. This fear-mongering stifles creative growth and doesn't mix well with a population that harbors an extreme sense of entitlement.
Not everyone is going to care about math for math's sake, but empowering resources like the Khan Academy are heroes in the uphill battle of encouraging intellectual curiosity. To call out Khan Academy as "the most dangerous phenomenon in education today" seems like a reactionary statement rooted in the author's self-interest and fear.
[+] [-] mathalicious|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orblivion|14 years ago|reply
So maybe you could start with something like Khan Academy (it doesn't hurt to have the lines, dots, and steps documented somewhere). But then have some sort of social network (and I'm saying this as somebody who thinks that too many things have social networks) based on the ability to learn and teach skills.
[+] [-] jroseattle|14 years ago|reply
Several parents I know (and respect) have substituted the math instruction their kids are receiving from local schools to using the Khan Academy. While I would never throw my kids into any program without understanding it well ahead of time, I'm reasonably confident that KA would be a helpful addition to my kids' math instruction.
I don't claim to understand the best methods for learning math (or teaching it), but for my kids I follow simple results-based assessment with the eye test: do they understand problem sets, can they use math as a tool, are they confident when asked to do math-based exercises, etc. And, yes, do they score well when taking exams. In other words, while I care about the means...I'm really interested in the end.
In reading this article, I find someone critical of the KA approach on spurious grounds (very little in this critique is based on fact). That the original author also has a service that sells into the current education system that KA obviously threatens makes the argument that much weaker. I question the motivations of the author, especially with a comment like this:
"Of course, fans of Khan Academy — which, to be fair, includes many teachers, parents and administrators — say that their students are engaged and performing better than ever. Still, this may be a false sense of security."
Hmmm, where have I heard this pitch before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt
[+] [-] arkitaip|14 years ago|reply