3quarksdaily: Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

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August 11, 2012

Salman Khan: Let's use video to reinvent education

Posted by S. Abbas Raza at 11:56 AM | Permalink

Comments

Maybe higher education, but not American Public education. I have watched many Khan Academy videos, and they are very good for motivated, intelligent students who are driven to extract information from what is essentially a lecture where you can only see the chalkboard. Anybody that thinks that this will substitute for a classroom experience for anybody with the slightest special need or educational disadvantage is fooling themselves and has never been in a real classroom with real students.

The quality of the presenters varies wildly, and simply saying the words does not guarantee that the material will be learned. As I said, motivated, skillful listeners, who make up about twenty to thirty percent of education consumers at best, will find video lectures a good way to master material, but then again, most of those people could probably learn it from the textbook anyway, which they could have been doing for the last one hundred and fifty years.

Posted by: Mike Auerbach | Aug 11, 2012 5:11:04 PM

Mike,

I don't think that is a valid criticism. If you read the letters on the Khan Academy site, you'll see that not all the learners are in that 20 to 30% you mention. Many could not learn in public school classrooms. But Khan Academy helped them in math and other subjects.

http://www.khanacademy.org/stories/

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 11, 2012 7:50:57 PM

The Khan Academy addresses several problems the current crop of students K-12 have. Not being able to read with concentration and proficiency is a big problem for many kids -- but most kids can follow a TV program and are video-friendly. Math and science do not depend as much as history and literature on high language skills to be intelligible or teachable, so in teaching math and science the Khan Academy is meeting these kids where they are -- always a good idea. Many otherwise educable children are harder for teachers to reach in a typical classroom -- all that's necessary to make classroom culture a disaster is bullies who mock kids with any motivation at all. Not every good teacher can control bullying like this, and many teachers find it easier to submit to it than fight it. Whoever has not tried to learn -- or teach -- in a classroom like this should not really speak of the difficulties of holding onto, or developing, motivation.

It's best not to look at The Khan Academy in comparison with a great classroom experience. Everyone knows it isn't that, but that experience is increasingly uncommon, and the effort to "get it back" would take decades if the work started tonight. Please look at The Khan Academy as a brilliant partial solution for kids who bid fair to finish their public eductions without the skills to support themselves.

As for the familiar argument that real love of learning is nowhere on this scale, I beg to differ. Rather than needing to love learning to succeed in school, you may first need a little success in school to inspire your love of learning.

Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 11, 2012 9:36:58 PM

Written on Richard Feynman's blackboard at the time of his death: "What I cannot create, I do not understand."

Yet video lectures put students in the role of knowledge consumers, rather than knowledge creators.

The problem is that scientists are creating, exploring, discovering, and reasoning, yet students in science classes are consuming, verifying, watching, and recalling. Khan Academy sustains this problem rather than solves it.

For some more insight into the problems I see with the Khan Academy model of education, here are two videos I highly recommend watching:

And this article has a great analysis:
The Wrath Against Khan: Why Some Educators Are Questioning Khan Academy

Your thoughts?

Posted by: Frank Noschese | Aug 11, 2012 10:37:17 PM

In assessing the virtues of a teaching method, you have to be careful that what you are really testing is the efficiency of the method and not just the effectiveness that results from the extra effort and time that teachers and students end up putting in when they use it.

There's was this guy named John Saxon who invented a method of teaching basic mathematics that involved a tremendous amount of review. Every problem set in Saxon textbooks not only covered the material in the proceeding section but all the material in the course. Teachers and students typically hated the endless repetition; but if they, or more often their principal, was sold on the idea and enforced the necessary effort, good results were indeed obtained. Thing was, though, it was not clear if the results reflected the methodology or the great commitment that everybody had to make to implement it. It certainly proved to be much harder to get the system to work from year to year. (Saxon himself used to go from math education meeting to math education meeting selling his textbooks with testimonials and a lively, rather ideological pitch. I ran into him a couple of times. He was the Professor Harold Hill of the math ed circuit.)

It will be interesting to see if the Khan method keeps getting good results when the novelty value wears off. Aside from the technology, after all, the method has a remarkable similarity to the worksheets that had a vogue in math ed 50 years ago when operant conditioning was a hot idea.

Posted by: Jim Harrison | Aug 11, 2012 11:20:04 PM

No reason why Khan's videos can't be used as material in classrooms if that is the concern. Videos provide 3D animated illustrations which help to clarify concepts in a way that is not possible on a board or textbooks. Seems like some teachers feel threatened by technology.

Posted by: Raza | Aug 11, 2012 11:28:20 PM

Jim and Frank, I see your points very clearly, and I am in philosophical agreement with you. I have heard it said that The Khan Academy is to math education what the madrassa is to language education -- that is, after many years, you can recite the Q'uran perfectly but you haven't learned any Arabic. I don't think it's like THAT, but I see it as being about skills training, not about education in the fullest sense we might mean that, and I think it enables survival through higher earning better than what's going on in too many public school classrooms. For that, I believe it is a brilliant tool and will save lives and families. To quarrel with it because it isn't more than that is, almost, to say that clean water is no good unless it comes with a whole cholera treatment center.

Posted by: Elatia Harris | Aug 11, 2012 11:50:40 PM

How is it any different from MIT and Harvard and Yale open courseware? These courses have enabled people to get an education for free by attending online. I don't understand the objections to Khan Academy.

These courses could disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline for disadvantaged students and help many students struggling with learning problems.

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 11, 2012 11:58:31 PM

http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/school-prison-pipeline

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 12, 2012 12:05:30 AM

In nineteen states in the United States, corporal punishment is part of public school. Who'd want to go to a school like that and have their buttocks beaten with big wooden paddles?

Bill HR3027 would put an end to such abuse of school children in the United States.

http://www.aclu.org/impairing-education-corporal-punishment-students-disabilities-us-public-schools-html

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 12, 2012 1:02:45 AM

I don't have any problem with computerized course ware—I did some of MIT's chemistry courses last year and much enjoyed 'em. For that matter, I don't doubt that Khan's stuff has its uses. For that matter, people actually learned some math from the old programmed textbooks of yesteryear. What worries me, as somebody who used to be an editor of math textbooks and has lived through many a fad, is the way that technological fixes feed into America's insatiable appetite for easy answers to hard social problems. Experience has taught me to evaluate teaching devices in the light of how they fit in with our system of education on the cheap. In that regard, the sponsorship of Bill Gates is especially problematic since the Khan Academy fits so well with his rather industrial version of education reform. It's all very well to suggest, as Khan does, that his video lectures will actually allow education to be humanized. In fact, however, since his system emphasizes training by rote repetition, it is an obvious complement to teaching to standardized tests, the plague of modern American education.

Once again. I don't doubt that Khan's videos could be useful in the right context. I just don't think mass education in 21st Century America is the right context.

Posted by: Jim Harrison | Aug 12, 2012 1:43:58 AM

Elatia wrote: "To quarrel with it because it isn't more than that is, almost, to say that clean water is no good unless it comes with a whole cholera treatment center."

You're right. But my quarrel is that people (like Gates) and the media (like 60 Minutes) and even Sal himself are saying that Khan Academy is MORE than what it really is. If they just said, "Hey we've got some videos teachers and students might find helpful for review. And we've got some exercises for practicing calculations" I won't be quarreling with them. But to claim they are "Reinventing Education" is wrong.

Posted by: Frank Noschese | Aug 12, 2012 11:52:47 AM

Jim,

You write: "In fact, however, since his system emphasizes training by rote repetition, it is an obvious complement to teaching to standardized tests, the plague of modern American education."

I wonder how many public school classrooms also use rote repetition instead of individualized teaching methods?

And how can there be "mass education"? What exactly is mass education? Everyone learns differently, and Khan's videos seem to address or at least take into account those differences.

http://this-is-skimps.tumblr.com/image/27860008636

I'll spare you additional Ivan Illich or John Holt or Neil Postman quotes.

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 12, 2012 12:18:27 PM

Here's Paul Goodman:

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/why-go-school

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 12, 2012 3:04:08 PM

http://chronicle.com/article/Dont-Confuse-Technology-With/133551/

Posted by: nnyhav | Aug 15, 2012 1:53:52 PM

http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html

Posted by: Louise Gordon | Aug 15, 2012 8:41:24 PM

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