Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time

Khan Academy provides a low-overhead, on-demand learning environment. The format is good, but it's not novel, and the format isn't the point.

Khan Academy allows me, with no overhead whatsoever, to pick (or refresh a skill), whenever I want. If my math skills aren't up to snuff for a hobby project I'm working on, Khan Academy is there. If I can't remember how a transistor works ... Khan Academy has me covered.

Compare this with the incredibly high overhead of high school and 4 year degree programs. If I just want to take a refresher engineering class at the local University or Community College, I have to go through the full admissions process, provide a full academic history, justify my reason for being there, and then work at a preset pace and on someone else's schedule. If I'm stuck at the undergraduate level, I have to take a slew of general ed courses totally unrelated to what I actually want to do.

Contrast this with frictionless learn on-demand education.

There are, obviously, downsides:

- Not all topics are covered.

- The depth of coverage is not on par with a university education.

- No access to very expensive university equipment

- No one-on-one access to a professor

- No student discounts on expensive software

Despite those downsides, the format has worked great for me.

In my ideal world, formal K-12 and college education would be comprised of:

1) Elective projects that rely on a broad swath of skills.

2) Courses to be taken in concert with the projects to provide requisite skills, as those skills become necessary.

I haven't viewed the KA videos yet, although I'm looking into them. So, while not versed in the math instructional set du jour at the moment, I have a vested interest in the subject -- my kids in 5th grade.

Several parents I know (and respect) have substituted the math instruction their kids are receiving from local schools to using the Khan Academy. While I would never throw my kids into any program without understanding it well ahead of time, I'm reasonably confident that KA would be a helpful addition to my kids' math instruction.

I don't claim to understand the best methods for learning math (or teaching it), but for my kids I follow simple results-based assessment with the eye test: do they understand problem sets, can they use math as a tool, are they confident when asked to do math-based exercises, etc. And, yes, do they score well when taking exams. In other words, while I care about the means...I'm really interested in the end.

In reading this article, I find someone critical of the KA approach on spurious grounds (very little in this critique is based on fact). That the original author also has a service that sells into the current education system that KA obviously threatens makes the argument that much weaker. I question the motivations of the author, especially with a comment like this:

"Of course, fans of Khan Academy — which, to be fair, includes many teachers, parents and administrators — say that their students are engaged and performing better than ever. Still, this may be a false sense of security."

Hmmm, where have I heard this pitch before? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

The author dismisses Sal's videos as "ineffective instruction":

"This paint-by-numbers method of instruction emphasizes procedures — how to do math — but ignores the conceptual understanding that’s central to authentic learning: what math means."

This comment by the author is enraging. It is great to be able to understand things abstractly and use conceptual understanding to apply knowledge, but this rarely comes first.

- No one understands the nuances and implications of language and communicates with a high -level of skill without first mastering the basic mechanics of their native tongue.

- No one perceives a chessboards as a whole system and identifies critical components until they've mastered the basic movement of pieces and trained basic tactics.

- No one programs complex applications without first mastering basic programming constructs like loops and conditionals.

The fact is that understanding math takes work, and the real reason students perform poorly is that they're not interested in doing the work. This isn't a bad thing. Forcing children to be detained in all day in an oppressive setting is a bad thing. Actively stamping out imagination and then expecting people to want to learn is a ridiculous thing.

Sal's contribution to education is remarkable because he is empowering learners, rather than threatening them. Schools threaten students with poor grades and the implication that those poor grades will lead to an unfulfilling life. This fear-mongering stifles creative growth and doesn't mix well with a population that harbors an extreme sense of entitlement.

Not everyone is going to care about math for math's sake, but empowering resources like the Khan Academy are heroes in the uphill battle of encouraging intellectual curiosity. To call out Khan Academy as "the most dangerous phenomenon in education today" seems like a reactionary statement rooted in the author's self-interest and fear.

> Get enough points, proceed to the next grade.

That would improve on the current system, which passes failing students along as well, right up until they hit university and find out they need a few years of remedial classes.

"the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct"

For an example of this -- look at the amount of times the Student-to-Teacher ratio is brought up. Which is such an interesting statistic because it implies that time with a terrible teacher is preferable to having the good teachers handle a few more students.