It is a lot easier to write an essay critique than it is to sit down and fix the problem by recording your own set of video lectures that teach people what you know.
The Dangerous Mr. Khan
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Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#42The 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 read it and normally consider myself pretty open minded. But then you read things like this. "Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence. " And in my mind the author is exposed. I am hoping that my son grows up being taught by postmodernist that don't pres…
> I am hoping that my son grows up being taught by postmodernist that don't present history as fact
How else could it possibly be presented? Could you elaborate on what you mean when you say that history is "a perspective"? Can one change history simply by deciding to view it differently, somehow?
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#43The way the author writes, it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't.
Fact is, Khan's videos are considered good because the actual history education that most students take away from classrooms is even worse. Like most other subjects, that's what you get when you try to deliver a comprehensive, objective, detail-oriented education to students who (within a small margin of error) couldn't give a shit. Never mind the Bolsheviks or the timeline -- what percentage of randomly sampled American high school graduates would even know that there was a Russian Revolution if you asked them?
If we can replace zero history with a fifteen-minute-chunk version of history, I'm for it.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I welcome opposing opinions but this itself doesn't present both sides of the argument, nor any context to the one example given, and sounds to me purely like a bashing exercise.
> 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…
I seriously doubt a history lesson in 15 minutes that covered WWII to Vietnam is meant to be comprehensive. With that said, when I was in school we regularly covered a thousand years in a single page. And in many cases complete eras as pertained to geography were skipped altogether. To this day I don't think I could tell you the name of a single African King pre-1900.
With that said, one of the things I still prefer about Khan's lectures, even abbreviated ones like these stated, is that I can pause them at any time, and look up the Japanese oil embargo. And start right back up where I left off in the video. With live lectures at best you can take a note of it, and look it up later, but then other facts that build upon this in the lecture are missed -- and you may not even know that you missed them.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#45Oh no, a 15 minute summary of the history form WWII to Vietnam isn't thorough Well, I, never! In all seriousness, I am not sure what the author's point is. Summaries lack detail? Short things are short?
One of the author's points is that the essence of history is "who & why", not "what & when," and that Khan is completely omitting that essence in his summaries.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#46Has a point. The Khan Academy approach is very good for maths, and most sciences. These are cases where you can distil knowledge into a few examples and cases, and it works well. The viewer now has a working, and accurate mental model of whatever they were learning, without having to go through -everything- involved. However, this approach to history and other topics can be a problem. While some of the criticism is s…
"Either have the lesson be able to provide an accurate and correct mental model, or make the learner explicitly aware that what they are learning is incomplete/unprecise/whatever." Khan does the latter, it is called an overview. I think this aspect of the original critic's article displayed his lack of understanding of an incremental and iterative approach. If we waited until he had completed every lecture on history…
"Khan does the latter, it is called an overview."
It is an overview, but absurdly condensed. A skill like calculus can be thought in brief, clear overviews; you either understand _it_ or you don't.
History is no such _it_.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#47When presented with '1 + 1 = 2', some people will be interested enough to ask why, and others won't give a fuck. Same goes for 'Hitler invaded Poland'. It doesn't mean one person is better or worse than the other, they're just different.
The real problem will arise when people stop being interested. And when that happens it won't be the fault of the Khan Academy or wikipedia or the Internet or TV or video games or religion or .
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read it and normally consider myself pretty open minded. But then you read things like this. "Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence. " And in my mind the author is exposed. I am hoping that my son grows up being taught by postmodernist that don't pres…
That comment got me, too, but I don't think it invalidates the other arguments. History teachers need to teach students why history is important, and it's not so you won't be embarrassed when the press asks you about Pal Revere. History teaches us lessons that help us make better decisions today. (In case its not clear, I'm mostly agreeing with you. :)
It may not invalidate, but it puts them into perspective. Most of his rant seems to be about how in Khan's quick summary of WW2, the UHmericans aren't portrayed as the morally superior righteous warriors / soldiers that defeated the evil Hitler and stopped his wrongdoings. And the Bolsheviks shouldn't have been mentioned without the required nuances that would teach present-day students that communism is evil. Or maybe I'm just speculating, but that's how it got to me.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#49Khan's physics videos are no better. Excerpts below from my series taking a critical view of Khan Academy: http://bit.ly/khancritic ...
Ironically, Khan's TED talk is in stark contrast to two previous TED talks:
* Dan Meyer - Math Curriculum Makeover http://bit.ly/DanMeyerTED * Sir Ken Robinson - Do Schools Kill Creativity? http://bit.ly/SirKenTED
According to Dan, today’s math curriculum is teaching students to expect (and excel at) paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. How does Khan Academy foster problem posing and creativity?
If your philosophy of education is sit-and-get, i.e., teaching is telling and learning is listening, then Khan Academy (and flipping) are more efficient than in-classroom lecturing.
But why lecture at all? TRUE progressive educators, TRUE education visionaries and revolutionaries don’t want to do these things better. We want to DO BETTER THINGS.
Rather than instructing students with Khan’s videos, teachers should be inspiring them to figure things out on their own and learn how to create their own knowledge by working together. For example, instead of relying on lectures and textbooks, Modeling Instruction in Physics emphasizes active student construction of conceptual and mathematical models in an interactive learning community. Students are engaged with simple scenarios to learn to model the physical world. In comparison to traditional instruction, Modeling is extremely effective — under expert modeling instruction high school students average more than two standard deviations higher on a standard instrument for assessing conceptual understanding of physics.
Watch one Modeling class in action: http://bit.ly/ModelingPhysics . In the clip, the teacher says, “I don’t lecture at all. Instead, I create experiences for the students either in the lab or puzzles and problems for them to solve and it’s up to them to try to figure that out.” I’ve often wondered why this type of teaching hasn’t gotten more attention in the media. Maybe because the teacher is using simple things like whiteboards and bowling balls rather than shiny iPads and SmartBoards?
While Khan argues that his videos now eliminate "one-size-fits-all" education, his videos are exactly that. I tried finding Khan Academy videos for my students to use as references for studying, or to use as a tutorial when there’s a substitute teacher, but the physics ones aren't very good. They don’t use a lot of the multiple representations that are so fundamental to learning. Concept development is minimal, and he unknowingly plays into student misconceptions. His videos do not align with proper Physics Education Research. Teachers improve via reading up on pedagogy and getting feedback from mentors & students. Where is Sal's feedback? Where's the pedagogy?
The research that Khan chooses to ignore is summarized in this one book, now available as a free PDF: "How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom" http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#50I believe it's still a very good way to get students to actually read a book. In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job, and the author of the article... well, he fails to get that.
The idea behind it is getting children interested in history enough that they would pick up a book. It's not, as I understand it, the only account of history they're expected to have. And to think otherwise is to think stupid.