Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Dangerous Mr. Khan

nas.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 253 posts

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#241

Post by da_dude4242 »

salmankhan wrote: post #69

Hi Everyone, This is Sal here. I wanted to respond directly on the author's page, but they seem to be having a problem taking comments. The reason why I make history videos is that many people I know (many of whom are quite educated) don't even have a basic scaffold of world events in their minds (or the potential causality between events). Most American high school and college students would find it difficult to giv…

>The reason why I make history videos is that many people I know (many of whom are quite educated) don't even have a basic scaffold of world events in their minds (or the potential causality between events

I think this problem can be generalized. There's a predisposition for lopsided development across intelligence domains. Like the cliche nerd that has the social intelligence of a rock and viceversa. Modern society re-enforces this tendency by rewarding people to specialize into increasingly narrower intelligence domains. This sort of tunnel vision bias just isn't sustainable in a modern democracy.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#242

Post by strayer »

glenra wrote: post #188
rubergly wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the site's current form, I think the fact that a viewer of any age can watch a history video is actually a bit problematic. For mathematics, all of the material is broken down into the very basic components, so it's easy for a video to have a set of prerequisites which any viewer should understand before watching (with a set of links to the videos corresponding to those prerequisites). For a subject like history,…

To me, that a viewer of any age can watch is practically the whole point of Khan Academy. Kids learn at different speeds and are interested in different subjects at different ages. Whatever subject you're talking about, there are some 8-year-olds who could benefit from it. The traditional approach of having grownups decide what material is suitable for what age is guaranteed to produce a mixture of kids who are bored…

Agreed. Watching Carl Sagan´s Cosmos at age 9 was fascinating, even though a second viewing, years later, was much more informative.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#243

Post by blahblahblah »

blahblahblah wrote: post #207
salmankhan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 million unique students are viewing our videos every month by choice (as opposed to being forced to attend class by the state). Read any of the thousands comments on our YouTube or Facebook page and the underlying feedback from students is that they are finally getting the "why" at the Khan Academy as opposed to the "memorization-paint-by-numbers-what" in their classrooms. Do we think we're ideal? No, we're constan…

"2 million unique students are viewing our videos every month by choice" Page hits isn't a very good metric if you're trying to get feedback about what viewers actually thought of the videos. A lot of people have heard of Khan Academy through the news or may land there via a search engine. How many of them watch the video all the way through? How many stick around and watch parts II, III, etc.? I could be totally wro…

Wow. Here comes the bury brigade to crush my dissenting opinion without bothering to address anything that I said... How dare I criticize the sacred cow? How dare I challenge conventional wisdom? Conform, conform, conform. Everybody loves Khan Academy.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#244

Post by Rustee »

After reading the article I feel it 'attacks' Sal individually and not the KA as a whole, quoting vocabulary used by him. "Historical velocity is achieved through words and phrases such as “essentially,” “fast forward,” and “as you can imagine.”

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#245

Post by jcarreiro »

nsomaru wrote: post #59
jcarreiro wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Can one change history simply by deciding to view it differently, somehow? It's often the case that history is not repeated as a mere sequence of events, but also as an interpretation as to _why_ those events occurred, and how factors at the time contributed to their occurrence. Maybe we can admit that their is then also an element of conditioning to history as well as one of 'fact'?

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree completely; history is both what actually happened in the past, and the narrative that we construct for ourselves from those events.

What scares me about postmodernism is that many of its adherents seem to reject the idea of objective truth completely. That way madness lies.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#246

Post by Jconverse »

ThomPete wrote: post #230
telemachos wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the quote you refer to speaks for itself. With all due respect, you're missing my point. My point is that the quote doesn't speak for itself. It leaves all the really hard questions unanswered. Here are some of the hard questions that I have in mind: 1) Are any statements concerning history not perspectival? (If so, why and what kind or kinds? If not, wow: not even (putatively) factual statements like 'Worl…

1) To answer that fully we will need to dig into what is a factual statement. I would gladly discuss the nature of facts but don't find this to to be the forum. But my basic believe is that facts are true in context. Relative not objective. Facts (reductional interpretations of reality) are described from the vantage point of the observer. We can experience what we call reality in a certain way but not in all possibl…

1) Facts exist. Often we have an incomplete understanding of facts, and there is something like a working mental model of facts. An educated mind allows for the possibility that the facts are sometimes subject to new information which can sometimes change them. Without these facts, we couldn't make buildings stand up, and they do. They do because we have an understanding of how to make them do so based on facts. Homicide detectives and heart surgeons have a notion of facts based on evidence and very very often they get it right because there are knowable, searchable, demonstrable facts. If you doubt objective reality then imagine sleepwalking in front of a train: your perspective is irrelevant. The train is coming whether you know it or not. 2) Sometimes people are wrong. Sometimes people aren't interested in facts because it conflicts with their agenda. Some people don't want to work to find the truth. That's why proof and evidence are so important. "When did WWI start?" might require years of study to understand the complexities of what touched off that where and provide a nuanced "answer". Hearing different voices on this topic is part of an education, but being able to differentiate credible voices from those who attempt to instrumentalize the past, or worse yet, provide some kind of hard and fast sense of history by omitting important facts, is NOT a good way to educate the populace.

3) Interpretation is also based on what you can back up. I can interpret "There are no aliens in Roswell New Mexico" to mean "There are DEFINITELY aliens in Roswell New Mexico". However, without some kind of proof behind that interpretation see number 1. A bad working model of the territory makes a bad map. Also, the claim that facts are neither interesting nor important is false and dangerous.

4)

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#247

Post by nsomaru »

jcarreiro wrote: post #245
nsomaru wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can one change history simply by deciding to view it differently, somehow? It's often the case that history is not repeated as a mere sequence of events, but also as an interpretation as to _why_ those events occurred, and how factors at the time contributed to their occurrence. Maybe we can admit that their is then also an element of conditioning to history as well as one of 'fact'?

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I agree completely; history is both what actually happened in the past, and the narrative that we construct for ourselves from those events. What scares me about postmodernism is that many of its adherents seem to reject the idea of objective truth completely. That way madness lies.

It is not an extremist position. Everything is experienced through the medium of thought which makes all experiences highly subjective.

To magnify, the world as experienced by a single-cell organism is vastly different from the world you or I experience.

No doubt there is "something", but it is the height of human arrogance to believe that our version of that "something" is the correct one.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#248

Post by mark_s_h »

dpatru wrote: post #181
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…

> Effectiveness of Science Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8 The biggest flaw in the "Effectiveness of Science" (EoS) video is that it criticizes khanacademy videos by showing that vastly inferior videos don't work. Khan videos are good because they make it easy to think: there are no distractions, just a blackboard and an intelligent voice "in your head" guiding you through the problem domain. In the…

The point of the EOS video is that trying to make it "easy to think" results in students retaining prior misconceptions, and therefore thinking they have learned when they actually haven't. Learning is hard.

I have seen some of Khan's physics videos. I can tell you from years in the classroom, students exposed to those videos as an initial learning experience will change absolutely none of their misconceptions. None. Not one, no learning, just a warm feeling of thinking that they agree with what's been said (even though they don't agree with it at all).

Now can a student who has already addressed her misconceptions (in a classroom, by doing experiments, then discussing, arguing, trying to predict new situations and then trying those situations) gain some advantage by using the videos as review? Perhaps so, and I wouldn't fault a student for making this part of her review. It's more likely my students would end up gleefully eviscerating the video.

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#249

Post by cma »

kia wrote: post #157
salmankhan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 million unique students are viewing our videos every month by choice (as opposed to being forced to attend class by the state). Read any of the thousands comments on our YouTube or Facebook page and the underlying feedback from students is that they are finally getting the "why" at the Khan Academy as opposed to the "memorization-paint-by-numbers-what" in their classrooms. Do we think we're ideal? No, we're constan…

And here is the problem: YOU ARE POPULAR. And because something is popular doesn't mean it's good. Take modern music. A lot of popular singers attract crowds of people and make tons of money. But very often the music just sucks. And people forget these pop idols as fast as they make new ones.

Let me guess, smarty guys like just like you should dictate curricula and taste?

Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan

#250

Post by ThomPete »

Jconverse wrote: post #246
ThomPete wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) To answer that fully we will need to dig into what is a factual statement. I would gladly discuss the nature of facts but don't find this to to be the forum. But my basic believe is that facts are true in context. Relative not objective. Facts (reductional interpretations of reality) are described from the vantage point of the observer. We can experience what we call reality in a certain way but not in all possibl…

1) Facts exist. Often we have an incomplete understanding of facts, and there is something like a working mental model of facts. An educated mind allows for the possibility that the facts are sometimes subject to new information which can sometimes change them. Without these facts, we couldn't make buildings stand up, and they do. They do because we have an understanding of how to make them do so based on facts. Homi…

You ar missing the point. Facts are not objective because interpretations are not. Man hit by train is not the only interpretation of two clusters of atoms hitting each other.

Death is not the only interpretation of the carbon based structure that is now smeared on to the front of the steel construction

Post reply on HN