The article is full of FUD, but Khan himself probably shouldn't be teaching humanities (like history) or social sciences (other than for his own specialization, economics) or the life sciences (and any other discipline he is not too familiar with).
The Dangerous Mr. Khan
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Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#72I 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.
In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job A great job of what, exactly?
Of getting you into the narrative, interested enough to wonder – "what led to the cold war?" or things like that. I haven't seen the video, I've only read the article, and from what the author writes... it seems he goes directly into events without building / contextualising too much. But events are interesting (like the space race) to children, and they will probably be more interested once they've got a timeline of a few anecdotes, than if they started with a dense lesson for each topic.
I see it as investigative learning: you get some facts, a few events, a few ideas... and you're curious. You want to get more knowledge or discover the truth behind something, then you try to fill those gaps with evidence (in this case, with more historical facts?).
I wouldn't dismiss Khan just because he doesn't go into detail with aspects. For example, the holocaust... it that the only thing that we remember from the WW2? In fact, Allies and Russia did not go to war because of the holocaust, so why is it so important that he mentions it? Is everything else so "not" important in WW2? If I were giving an account of it, I would even be praising Germany's technological advancements as a nation and comparing them to their contemporaries.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#73If the Khan Academy were the final station in someone's education, as the author silently presumes, that would be bad. It's simplified and sometimes wrong as the article points out (though no educating institution gets everything right) .
If on the other hand Khan Academy were the FIRST station in education: igniting passion for a subject - as it does for some people in math and economy - inspiring people to explore further and read more about it, mending the damage done by our institutional education!
Than that would be a great achievement regardless of the mistakes, simplicities and even the ideological leaning.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#74Has 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…
I totally agree with you. I don't think history and many of the humanities can be distiller into 10 minute chunks. I don't think it would be fair to distil World War II into 15 minutes, much less the last 100 years. Trying to distil romanticism into 15 minutes seems just as impossible, since to understand romanticism, you need to understand the changing, industrializing world that birthed it. My daughter's history cl…
Couldn't you also say that its impossible to condense calculus into 10 minute chunks because you have to understand Algebra first? All learning requires context, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether can break it up into courses, books, chapters, lectures, or 10 minute chunks.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#75The 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…
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.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#76It seems a bit strange that Mr Clemens [1] who is a English teacher that teaches online courses is commenting on issues concerning online teaching in history. Regardless he does bring up some very valid points that have plagued history scholars for centuries, but offers no real solution. I suppose the title "The Dangerous Mr. Kahn" that suggests that Mr. Kahn is dangerous to history education is a bit too sensationalist to suggest that he is any more dangerous than today's media, school teachers, disagreeing historians, and countless other attempts to present historical information in a categorical way. Everything is up to interpretation.
My interpretation of his overall point is that "no one person should control the messages of history". There is definitely some work to be done by Mr. Kahn in this regard and given his very open mind I don't doubt he already has considered this.
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#77The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture . A brief summary, a TL;DR, an idea, an answer to questions like "what does it mean?" or "why should I care?". My experience with education is that for most of the time, we are being taught 'the form', not 'the contents'. It was after I've watched SICP video lectures that I finally und…
The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture. What do you think the learner's responsibility is in the educational process? I am a teacher, and I do attempt to provide both big-picture ideas and detailed supporting facts and examples as I teach my students. (I try to elicit a lot of those from my students themselves, with a discu…
Thanks for the link to "Cornell notes".
I don't think we should assume that learner has any responsibility in educational process - at least not when talking about kids. Keep in mind that from their perspective it looks more like them being locked up in classroom against his will, and it's only up to school to try not to kill his interest in the world around him.
I agree that if a learner cares enough to actually think about what was told on the lecture - to come up with his own understanding, to summarize on his own, etc. he will benefit greatly. One can't really understand anything without doing some mental work on his own.
If we talk about mature learners, than yes - they have a big responsibility in the educational process and they take it (sometimes in spite, not because of their tutor). But still, we can help them by conveying our ideas well. And it is especially important when dealing with children, as they don't give a damn about anything until proven interesting. It's actually quite understandable. Because, well, why should they care?
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#78A visit to the wikipedia entry on the National Association of Scholars may help you understand the author's perspective. The first half of this article makes a reasonably convincing case that Mr. Khan is a much worse history teacher than math tutor. The second half of the article makes a totally convincing case that the author understands the Internet worse than Khan understands anything. I guess in his nightmare sce…
Exactly: NAS "opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action and seeks to counter what it considers a 'liberal bias' in academia"
Quotes from this article:
"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"
"A MoveOn.org liberal,..."
This article can be safely ignored, including the author's other article about how "Online education should serve as a home for orphaned liberal arts and "boutique" courses."
There are actually more substantive and constructive criticisms of the Khan Academy out there. But ultimately, we should make sure we don't ignore the great parts of it, either. After all, one guy recording screencasts and sharing them on youtube has helped millions of students now with understanding and doing math and other topics. With no budget and no formal training.
Imagine if we had 1000 or 10,000 Salman Khan's teaching the public online, with perhaps a little more pedagogical content knowledge (http://www.tpck.org/tpck/index.php?title=Pedagogical_Content... ), and using other tools in addition to just video (simulations, assessments, etc.).
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#79While I think that the criticisms in this piece were misplaced, its very possible that there are better free history resources out there. I've very much enjoyed the History According to Bob podcast series, for instance, but those would probably be too in depth for teaching kids, except the overview episodes.
http://www.summahistorica.com/index.htm
Re: The Dangerous Mr. Khan
#80Earlier 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?
Have you never heard the phrase "History is written by the victors"? The problem is trying to determine what is objective fact - you often end up relying on witness statements, some of which will be lies or misremembered. And then you have to decide which facts are "most important", which events were the prime causes of a second event. Unfortunately there is an unquestionably large amount of perspective and subjectiv…
Yet the stated goal of history is not to in any way attempt re-telling of The Great Truth© .
The goal is not to determine what is objective fact. There is no such thing, not even in natural sciences such as physics. Dont forget that.