The Dangerous Mr. Khan • Hacker News Board

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#31

Post by chaostheory » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #25

chaostheory wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sounds to me purely like a bashing exercise. For the record, I like the Khan Academy and they do a lot of good; but I still think that's really unfair to say that given that the article brings up a really important point (regardless of its style of writing): Khan Academy history lessons are so abbreviated, that key, important points and figures in history are skipped. Why is this not good? One of the major key reas…

"One of the major key reasons we study history is so that major mistakes of the past are not repeated in the present or future." And yet we learn nothing from history even when we know what is considered factual. The things we learn from history that are important become implicit part of our culture, our DNA not our curriculum.

> The things we learn from history that are important become part of our culture, not our curriculum.

How does it become part of our culture if it's not part of our curriculum? Given my own personal tastes (when I was a child), I would have skipped everything in history except for WWI, and WWII. Even with WWI and WWII, I probably would have only focused on the battles and not the social issues if given the chance. I wouldn't have learned about things like the Trail of Tears, the Japanese Internment camps in Hawaii, and so on.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#32

Post by jswinghammer » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

maukdaddy wrote: post #7

The comments thus far show exactly what is wrong with HN. HN has become an echo chamber where we all love certain people/companies/ideas and immediately dismiss any counter viewpoint. Instead of immediately discrediting the linked article because they're "haters" or "threatened", try reading it and understanding their point of view. I love Khan's work and what he's doing, but at the same time the article raises some…

I'm with you but some of this article is just hyperbole. The quote from 1984 seems out of place at best given the context.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#33

Post by spicyj » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:48 PM UTC

jlgosse wrote: post #19

The only real problem I have with the Khan Academy is that they appear to be using a mouse to write notes on the digital chalkboard. This is incredibly messy and really hard to understand. For example: In the first video on motion, Sal is going on and on about the topic, and is doing a wonderful job. At the same time, he's writing notes. This would be fine, except the first '=' he writes looks like a 'c', and then in…

The newer videos have more sophisticated drawing and recording software; he simply hasn't redone the old ones. Example:

http://www.khanacademy.org/video/object-image-height-and-dis...

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#34

Post by joshaidan » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:50 PM UTC

"Imagine the consequences if his videos did become the DOS or Windows of education: tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of young minds, all fed by Mr. Khan’s fizzy version of history. Not only would all students absorb the same value judgments, goofy comments, and cultural relativism, they would also conclude that Mr. Khan’s factoids constitute knowledge of history. "

Isn't the simple solution to this problem is to hire other teachers than just having Mr. Khan do everything? In addition to Mr. Khan, hire some Japanese, Germany, and Russian history teachers so we get another perspective in addition to an American one.

Perhaps Khan Academy should become the universal platform for teachers from around the world to deliver their curriculum. Then we would have a much richer education system with a plethora of perspectives--which would even beat our current system of one teacher teaching everything in a classroom.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#35

Post by bstar » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

I agree strongly with the Author's issues with presenting history in this manner. History is a living document of clues that are merely interpreted by us- very little is fact.

I've been studying Egyptology for about 6 years now and it's amazing what perspectives have changed in that time. We're even starting to see stories now that are challenging the "Out of Africa" theory. Whenever I hear a teacher/lecturer describe something historical as fact, it makes me cringe because so much is left to interpretation.

Khan doing history in this manner is dangerous. But at the same time, the ways our schools do history is dangerous as well. Presenting singular perspectives and presenting them as fact only breeds misinformation.

I believe khan academy is superb for math and sciences, especially for quick overviews of concepts. But the format is absolutely terrible for presenting historical topics. Understanding history requires reading from many resources and coming to logical conclusions. A copy/paste job from wikipedia is simply pathetic.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#36

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

jlgosse wrote: post #19

The only real problem I have with the Khan Academy is that they appear to be using a mouse to write notes on the digital chalkboard. This is incredibly messy and really hard to understand. For example: In the first video on motion, Sal is going on and on about the topic, and is doing a wonderful job. At the same time, he's writing notes. This would be fine, except the first '=' he writes looks like a 'c', and then in…

[deleted]

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#37

Post by tokenadult » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:51 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #12

The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture . A brief summary, a TL;DR, an idea, an answer to questions like "what does it mean?" or "why should I care?". My experience with education is that for most of the time, we are being taught 'the form', not 'the contents'. It was after I've watched SICP video lectures that I finally und…

The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture.

What do you think the learner's responsibility is in the educational process? I am a teacher, and I do attempt to provide both big-picture ideas and detailed supporting facts and examples as I teach my students. (I try to elicit a lot of those from my students themselves, with a discussion format with lots of questions and answers as I present new concepts.) But I would hate to be in the position of my high school American history teacher, who was frequently interrupted by one of my classmates who would ask, "How am I supposed to write that down in my notes?" When I was in university studies, I read a very interesting book called Speaking and Listening

(It may be this book on Google Books, but I am not completely sure:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sOp5MbE6-jYC&q=Speaking...

as it has been a long time since I read the book)

in which I learned about the style of note-taking that many people call "Cornell notes"

http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/c...

http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/cornellnotes.html

http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/printer/cornellnotes.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes

in which it is the note-taker's responsibility to sum up what the lecture means and what the main points are. Taking that approach was very helpful for me in my university studies and especially in my postgraduate professional school studies. I think Einstein too would agree

http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html

that ultimately it is up to the learner to seek understanding of the main points of any subject.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#38

Post by bbg » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:53 PM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #21

bbg wrote: post #17

+1 for the idea that history is more than an "incoherent torrent of factoids" I heard Khan say recently on the Colbert Report that he read the Wikipedia article on the French Revolution as his source before making his video on the subject. That's fine for his purposes, but somewhere up the information food chain someone must actually read the sources, weigh them, interpret, compare, and do all the other work of under…

his math and finance videos might be quite good [...] But I haven't watched them You may want to try watching a few first. Based on the amount of praise Khan received on HN, I had high hopes. So I did watch a few, and I was disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I think on HN a lot of people love the concept of online education that Khan represents, but many have not bothered to seriously try it.

Yes, good point. Now that I look over the comments, everyone seems to say the same thing. That's enough to lead me to believe it should be re-examined. Truth is, I once watched half a video but got bored.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#39

Post by ThomPete » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:54 PM UTC

chaostheory wrote: post #31

ThomPete wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One of the major key reasons we study history is so that major mistakes of the past are not repeated in the present or future." And yet we learn nothing from history even when we know what is considered factual. The things we learn from history that are important become implicit part of our culture, our DNA not our curriculum.

> The things we learn from history that are important become part of our culture, not our curriculum. How does it become part of our culture if it's not part of our curriculum? Given my own personal tastes (when I was a child), I would have skipped everything in history except for WWI, and WWII. Even with WWI and WWII, I probably would have only focused on the battles and not the social issues if given the chance. I…

And many people don't learn about those things because they are brought up in difference cultures. But to claim that some history books are better than others is just wrong. (I know you are not claiming that)

You will naturally learn your countries history albeit not to the point where you can become a history professor but it's not the end of the world.

History is perspective it can't be anything but perspective. There is no right or wrong teaching in history. Only survivors to tell the tales.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#40

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jun 08, 2011, 3:55 PM UTC

alain94040 wrote: post #21

bbg wrote: post #17

+1 for the idea that history is more than an "incoherent torrent of factoids" I heard Khan say recently on the Colbert Report that he read the Wikipedia article on the French Revolution as his source before making his video on the subject. That's fine for his purposes, but somewhere up the information food chain someone must actually read the sources, weigh them, interpret, compare, and do all the other work of under…

his math and finance videos might be quite good [...] But I haven't watched them You may want to try watching a few first. Based on the amount of praise Khan received on HN, I had high hopes. So I did watch a few, and I was disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I think on HN a lot of people love the concept of online education that Khan represents, but many have not bothered to seriously try it.

I've tried it. Or rather, my students did.

Back when I was teaching, I know many of my students found Khan more understandable than me (or at least complementary to me). I started encouraging everyone to go watch Khan videos and see if they liked them. Many did, and learned quite a bit from them.

I didn't like Khan that much - his style didn't work well for me. But it worked for many people. It's a lot to expect a single lecturer to be perfect for everyone.

What would be really great is if we had multiple Khans, each teaching in different styles.