The Dangerous Mr. Khan

On a more serious note, however, as a science educator, I appreciate the Khan Academy's work to make these very clear educational resources available to all. They definitely can be useful in many ways. Now if only my district would un-block YouTube...

However, I have to agree with many points Frank and others bring up. I have taught for 5 years--my first 4, I worked relentlessly to provide thorough and clear explanations for all the science concepts I taught. And I was baffled when I graded my final exams and found that my students learned little to nothing from 9 months of clear explanations and practice. Last summer, I learned about Modeling Physics (http://modeling.asu.edu/) and implemented it in my physics and chemistry classes this year. Now, my students have rocked their final exams and shown huge improvements from pre- to post-test on standardized instruments. This is simply my experience, but there really is significant physics education research which points to the same conclusions.

Educators are not trying to belittle or denigrate anyone. However, we have to protest when so many resources and media attention are being given to a method of instruction that has been shown to be rather ineffective, particularly in science, when incredible alternatives are available but are, unfortunately, largely being ignored and unfunded.

The choice of which facts to include, moreover, represents a fairly strong bias; it says that this set of facts is more interesting or important or whatever than most other sets, and enough so that you should ignore all the other sets for the moment and just look at this set.

Which, in the case of this particular book, presumably, along with the countless choices about which facts to include about each battle, also includes at least a) the choice of which 100 battles, and b) the choice that battles of any kind are important enough to talk about for a whole book.

So even if the author tries to stay away from expressing an agenda on the usual axes, I doubt he successfully avoids having one altogether.

Its interesting to see your reaction to the criticism, especially that of being defensive (understandable first reaction). But if you look at the article objectively there are a lot of opportunities it creates for Khan Academy to be even more impactful than what it is today.

You are certainly a great teacher, orator and have the understanding of math and finance. However, one person cannot be good at grasping, understanding and teaching ALL subjects. Thats where you have an opportunity to enlist the best the the brightest teachers from US to create videos for you on subjects they are most passionate about. Why not create a video contest to identify in a democratic way who are these top teachers??

Also, just to answer your point about a teacher's ability to put 20 video online rather than writing criticism. The thing is that you have already gained a lot of fame and respect for your work and its a very difficult thing to do. Its unreasonable to expect a teacher to gain the same level of viewership now like you have. Thats why I say that take the interest that you have developed around you to uplift other teachers to bring up education as a 'whole'.

Otherwise, Kahn Academy will remain a closet work... Just my two cents...

Cheers Ritu

I've had four different eight-year-olds in my household, while living in two different countries, over the years, and any eight-year-old who is literate can find better information about history than what's in the current Khan Academy videos in any country where there is a public lending library. There is the issue, of course, of some students not having access to libraries, but there is also the issue of some students not having access to the Internet. In the best case, Salman Khan will implement his plan of having subject matter experts who have specialized knowledge of various topics (gained, in part, from their years of using libraries assiduously) produce a broader array of Khan Academy videos, and curious eight-year-olds will go beyond both Khan Academy and their school lessons by seeking out other sources of information on a variety of subjects. That's what I encourage my four children to do. Khan Academy is one of a huge variety of sources we use in homeschooling. In my day, as a pupil in a typical public school, I avidly supplemented my school lessons by reading library books. If Khan Academy is part of encouraging more young learners to be more curious and to seek out a greater variety of sources for their learning, more power to it.