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The Dangerous Mr. Khan

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Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#161

Post by tomsaffell »

jpadvo wrote: post #125
pg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't. Yes, that's what I was thinking. The stuff the author quotes sounds bad, but probably better than you'd get from some teachers I had. Plus on the Internet kids can watch these videos at any age. His simplified version of history could be way better than what e.g. an 8 year old might otherwise have access to.

In this case, it doesn't matter that Khan is displacing worse things. These videos are still a dis service to their viewers. Better for people to know that they don't understand history, then to wrongly think they do know it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

>A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

For a pilot of a Boeing 747, yes, it is. For an eight year old learning history, a little knowledge is probably the very best first-step on the path to a lot of knowledge.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#162

Post by afy »

troutwine wrote: post #126
saraid216 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That smells like a rhetorical question. But my answer would be yes.

Interesting; can you elaborate? Surely it would be folly, say, to teach some children _wrong_ things simply for diversity. I doubt this is what you advocate, no?

In mathematics there is a well defined right and wrong, but in history there are often competing viewpoints of which none can be dismissed easily. I would say that to pick one as true and discard all the others is folly.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#163

Post by chem21st »

salmankhan wrote: post #144
chem21st wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sal, The only thing novel about Khan Academy is accessibility. Its the same old teacher-centered lectures we've endured for the past hundred years, with a somewhat more charismatic instructor. Most of the criticism I've seen of your work isn't "pseudo-intellectual babble," its merely pointing out what I've stated above, and that it isn't in line with what research tells us about how students learn. Your challenge for…

This "Effectiveness of Science Videos" video that you refer to doesn't even use Khan Academy videos. Also, don't you think it is ironic to use video to explain that videos can't explain things? You're entitled to your opinions. Our #1 priority is the millions of students who use our content and testify that it is measurably helping them. And to be clear, they aren't deluding themselves--read our comments and you'll s…

I never said that you "can't explain things" with video. I said that your videos work very well for review. The medium has changed, but you're doing the same thing that has always been done. If the goal is to get past a test or quiz, then I'm sure students love it. But will they understand it in a month? Two months? A year? They won't come back to leave those comments on youtube.

I simply ask you to watch the video, and respond to it. I think it makes valid points, and it agrees with the research I've read on how students learn (Available for free here: http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126).

If you truly want to build, and learn (which I certainly want to), don't flippantly dismiss critiques. Just because all forms of effective teaching don't go viral on YouTube doesn't mean that they're invalid.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#164

Post by pjscott »

chc wrote: post #131
DrCatbox wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if history is presented as a perspective, why choose Khans perspective? Why not choose another perspective? You missed the bigger picture of the article, which is that a single entity never should control re-telling of events. There should not be one perspective. One person, one entity, can not provide different perspectives, due to echo chamber effects and such, it is almost impossible.

Isn't this kind of a straw man? Salman Khan is not a fascist dictator who prevents you from getting information anywhere else. He's just a teacher. I don't see how learning from him is more of a problem than learning from other teacher.

You could make your point even stronger: since the barriers to entry on the internet are so low, it has the potential to be a lot less intellectually constraining than an ordinary classroom, where typically there will be one teacher, with standardized lesson plans, teaching from a relentlessly bland textbook that passed through the censors in Texas and California.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#165

Post by kstenerud »

afterburner wrote: post #159
chc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this kind of a straw man? Salman Khan is not a fascist dictator who prevents you from getting information anywhere else. He's just a teacher. I don't see how learning from him is more of a problem than learning from other teacher.

The complaint is that he seems to be getting attention from a major donator and source of influence, which might get his "lessons" far more play than any random teacher. Which is a problem for the author since he feels the quality of the lessons is low. I agree with him; these look like "make me look not stupid in casual conversation" lessons, they don't seem to impart a real understanding of history, of these major…

And does anyone with a high school level education in history even understand WHY the archduke of Austria was assassinated? Or WHY none of the powers at the time could pull out of the resulting domino effect? Or the onerous terms of the treaty after the first war? Or the discontent it sowed, leaving fertile ground for a dictator to emerge? Without this context, how could WW2 ever be understood? And even this is glossing over a lot of important stuff, such as the various nations' foreign policy, public sentiment, local politics, and how it affected pretty much every operation of the war.

Who even remembers operation Market Garden or why it was significant?

Does anyone even know why and how bombing of metropolitan centers even started? Of course not! Easier to say goodies vs baddies and forget the details.

History is already taught without any useful context in school. It's rendered so dry and boring and detached from humanity that I'm surprised ANY learning happens at all.

Khan is doing very high level, very loose connections at the moment which, I'll admit, contain even less information than the school system pulp. However, I'd be interested in seeing how deep he goes with subsequent videos before passing judgment.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#166

Post by JoeAltmaier »

wazoox wrote: post #120
eyko wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 may…

I think it's more complex than that; in his point of view, History of WWII shouldn't be taught this way, in large (huge?) brush strokes. He argues (IMO successfully) that you must go deeper in details to get at least a basic grasp of these important events, and give them some meaning. Said differently, a simple list of loosely related facts simply doesn't constitute history; and to make the narrative compelling, unde…

The history section is sketchy and just a beginning. Instead of latching onto the fringe of the Academy, History (perhaps because the math was beyond him), the author might have constructively suggested how to beef it up, present multiple views, talk about morals vs perspective.

Instead he chose to bash a popular figure. Probably because it gets hits on his blog, but who knows, I'm cynical.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#167

Post by pjscott »

alain94040 wrote: post #139
archgoon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The 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. Are there no libraries? I believe that if you are truly self motivated enough to learn US history on your own (which is what the Khan academy is supposed to do), you'd be better off actually looking up a syllabus online and reading about the topics yourself. A 15 minute summary of…

+1 for libraries. It's funny that on HN, where people constantly insist that text is a faster way to convey information, opening a history book is not even considered. To me, it goes back to the goal of the Khan academy: is this meant for pop culture consumption, or more in-depth knowledge? How does reading the diary of Ann Frank compare to Khan's video?

There's a lot to be said for learning something in multiple passes. A fifteen-minute overview video can give a vague notion of what happened when, and lay the ground work for more detail later -- as well as, perhaps, piquing a student's interest. There aren't that many students who will voluntarily go read through a history book. There are considerably more who will watch a 15-minute history overview video, which may make them more likely to study more history later.

So, watch a video, read a book, read a bunch of books. None of this stuff is mutually exclusive. Rather, I would say its complementary.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#168

Post by mark_s_h »

salmankhan wrote: post #148
joshg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you want to pay great teachers to produce science videos, I would start by offering this guy a lot of money. Or at the very least, please watch the whole video because it explains one massive problem with video science lessons and how to partially fix the problem. http://youtu.be/eVtCO84MDj8

He shows someone video not produced by us. Then does a small interview of a handful of people who watched those non-Khan Academy videos. Then he uses their lack of understanding to impugn Khan Academy. The person who made this video clearly cares more about their agenda than real science. The irony is also thick with him using a video to try to explain that videos can't explain things.

My goodness, I think you are missing the point entirely. Or perhaps you mean to. If you watch the video, he says that videos CAN be effective. You sound so defensive here, it's starting to make me doubt your sincerity.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#169

Post by joshg »

salmankhan wrote: post #148
joshg wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if you want to pay great teachers to produce science videos, I would start by offering this guy a lot of money. Or at the very least, please watch the whole video because it explains one massive problem with video science lessons and how to partially fix the problem. http://youtu.be/eVtCO84MDj8

He shows someone video not produced by us. Then does a small interview of a handful of people who watched those non-Khan Academy videos. Then he uses their lack of understanding to impugn Khan Academy. The person who made this video clearly cares more about their agenda than real science. The irony is also thick with him using a video to try to explain that videos can't explain things.

Wait ... what? Did you even watch the whole video?

First of all, he says all kinds of positive things about the work you're doing. "Impugn Khan Academy"? Really?

Second, he is explaining physics education research that he himself did for his Ph.D thesis. He's using examples from his own work to make comparisons in technique to what worked and what didn't work in his own, actually objectively tested research. This is not "a small interview of a handful of people".

Third, he's not saying videos can't explain things - he's saying that they often fail to make students question their own pre-existing misconceptions.

I hope you actually watch the whole video and catch the research context? I mean I am handing you a research-tested science education technique that you could easily incorporate into your own videos if you actually wanted.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#170

Post by drhodes »

One of the author's gripes:

   Unfortunately, he does not explain what a Bolshevik
   is nor how or why the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian 
   empire, nor why it matters but no dilly-dallying, just
   fast forward and bingo...
This is a limitation of the 1-way set in stone nature of video. It could be addressed by augmenting the lecture with an interface similar to an interactive-movie-game at the arcades circa 1993 called Dragon's Lair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Lair). A concept similar to "pick your own adventure" books but with video.

For instance, if some lecture L is about ideas A, B, C, D, and there is another lecture B+ in the library that specifically targets B in detail, then there could be an option presented to the user around the timestamp B to divert to B+ in depth, then come back to C. The important part is that the material is relevant as decided by the user. If they decide B+ isn't what they wanted, they could cut right back to C immediately.

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