
Khan Academy: It’s Different This Time - skrebbel
http://www.mathalicious.com/2012/02/04/khan-academy-its-different-this-time/
======
patio11
_To address our challenges, we need to do what every other successful country
has done: invest in professional development; give teachers more time to
collaborate; and provide them with resources that help them not only meet the
learning standards, but exceed them._

You could have copy/pasted that conclusion _without altering a word_ from the
debate about every other educational reform: school choice/vouchers, NCLB,
high-stakes testing, teacher testing, etc etc. It's invariant under every
proposal because the goal is to employ teachers and education of students is a
welcome-but-unnecessary industrial byproduct.

It is also just as false that the US lags peer nations in professional
development / collaboration time / pointless frippery ("resources that help
them not only meet the learning standards, but exceed them") than it was the
last 47 times this was brought up as a panacea.

~~~
tomjen3
You seem awefully cynical considering that you sell software to teachers
(which they themself pay for) so that they can teach their children more
efficiently.

I mean I have no love for unions and I am well aware that they have no great
love for the students but even so, isn't your point a bit to cynical?

~~~
patio11
One can have a lot of respect for teachers and still like education reform.

That said, I've also worked with big companies. This does not obligate me to
believe that big companies are universally properly managed collections of
competent, self-effacing employees who would never dream of advancing their
own interests at the stake of the job. It also does not obligate me to believe
that big companies cannot be improved, even radically improved, by measures
which would discomfit at least some people who work for big companies.

Indeed, if I hypothetically believed either of those two things prior to
working for a big company, working for them would have cured me of those
delusions, rapidly.

------
nupark2
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.

~~~
autarch
I think you're overstating the friction. After I graduated, I wanted to learn
Mandarin. I signed up for a course at the University of Minnesota through the
Continuing Education department.

I didn't have to apply, it was really trivial. I took one course, and they
were happy to let me do so.

~~~
toyg
That's usually the case for most Humanities disciplines (history, languages,
literature etc), because their overheads are really low and there is an
abundance of teaching professionals compared to actual audiences.

The opposite is true for "hard" sciences like chemistry, engineering or CS,
where expensive laboratory equipment is necessary and where teaching resources
are scarce (due to higher private-sector demand). There, courses are
expensive, demanding and small in number, so they are usually inaccessible to
the layman.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
That's not really true. It's not challenging to find CS courses online, and
the year I spent in a CS graduate program (through Colorado State), the cost
per course unit for CS was the same as any humanities course.

------
kamens
(Obviously biased member of KA here.)

"Khan Academy and its donors may preclude better products from coming along"

I just don't understand this. KA, Udacity, Coursera, Codecademy, MITx,
teachontablo.com, this list goes on. I don't see how KA has done anything but
prove the possibility of traction. When professors like Thrun and Norvig and
investors like Paul Graham, Fred Wilson, and Peter Thiel are excited about the
educational space, I believe the students will eventually win. It's no secret
that many of the above have been inspired by Sal in one way or another.

The more products competing here, the better education will be. Yelling at
Khan Academy because it's "the only thing that [exists]" feels...oddly
misplaced.

~~~
wlesieutre
I think it's a mistake for them to throw KA in the same category as
traditional K-12 education in the first place. At least from my experience
with it, people don't go on Kahn Academy to try to learn everything; it's more
valuable when you're looking for knowledge about a specific subject, and you
already have a reason for wanting to learn it.

The article's main criticism is that KA doesn't try to talk about all the
possible uses of the subject matter. I'd rather they didn't, or at the very
least kept it separate. Unless someone's being forced to sit down and watch
educational videos, that doesn't add enough value to justify the time spent.

It may be that other competitors (including the ones you've mentioned) will
try to fill the gap and take a more traditional education role. But saying
something's bad just because it's not occupying the exact niche that the
author wants it to? That's not a very useful criticism.

~~~
enjalot
I feel like KA frees up some of the time constraints of traditional educators
so that they can spend more time doing the motivation and the possible uses of
a subject matter.

I'm no teacher but if I was I'd much rather spend my time getting kids excited
about stuff and then point them to the resources they need to get going. I'd
also have more time to answer questions so the kids wouldn't get as frustrated
or stuck.

------
swishercutter
Where Khan Academy has the distinct advantage to me is not in its content or
teaching style (both of which seem good) but in the ability for the student
who does not grasp the subject to be able to replay the lesson over and over
without fear of holding up the class or causing the teacher inconvenience
thereby allowing the students who do understand the ability to move on to the
next subject without having to "read ahead". The overall content covered can
be greater overall in a shorter amount of time.

Kids don't want to seem different from other kids. If a child has to ask the
teacher to repeat the lesson or stay after for extra help he may be perceived
by his peers (or feel as though he is being seen as) as slower or stupid. With
KA on the other hand the student can learn at his own pace...something that
just cannot be done in a class of 30+.

Khan Academy does not get upset if a student does a search and finds another
method to solve the problem at hand (I don't know how many times I was told "I
don't care if you are getting the right answer, we want you to do it our way"
when I was in school).

To me it is not about KA at all...but more about self education. The best
teacher is you, the lecturer may be giving you the information but how you
perceive and use it is entirely based on you. It is a simple fact that
teachers cannot at the same time be paid more and have smaller class
sizes...the funding is not there. Students are going to fall behind unless
they are taught early on to not rely entirely on the teacher to show them
"everything". We have at our disposal the most powerful learning tool in the
history of man...The internet. No longer are libraries bound to the confines
of a building down the road that you may or may not have access to. This is
the most amazing thing to me, decentralization of learning, and those who
profit from learning in the old system obviously are going to be worried about
their future income.

~~~
frasertimo
This. Right here. Upvote it now.

I work in a small start-up making educational software, and this is exactly
the kind of thing I want to achieve.

A couple of months back I read John Holt's famous book 'Why Children Fail'
which had a profound effect on me and my work. What he says, and what I agree
with due to my own experience and observations is that school can be a
fundamentally scary experience for children. Self-esteem is so central to
learning, because how you react to failure and your own progress (or lack
thereof) defines the way you learn. Kids who are afraid of looking stupid, of
being compared to their peers, and of having to work hard without the promise
of success are the ones who are branded as lazy, unimaginative, or just
'stupid', when in fact they are just afraid of trying hard.

The internet and self education offers an opportunity for kids to escape that
fear, and to truly experience the joy of learning. I'm sure many HN readers
will relate to my belief that the greatest joy of hard work is not when you
appear smarter or harder working than others, but when you achieve something
for yourself, or learn something new. Many programmers get to experience that
joy all the time.

Holt became so disillusioned with the inability of schools to provide a
comfortable and secure learning place for children that eventually he became
an advocate for home schooling. I believe in schools' potential and what
teachers have to offer, and my company's software is built accordingly, but we
have reached a point where there is too much focus on comparing students;
through frequent nation-wide testing, intense competition for prestigious
colleges, and through insecure parents who push their children an unhealthy
amount. To balance that, the schooling system has lost sight of the original
reasons for its existence. The judgment-free zone of the internet and self
directed learning is giving us a chance to undo the bad learning habits of our
current students, and ensure that the next generation of students do not ever
need to learn them.

The Khan academy is not about taking the power away from schools and
administrators, it is about putting the emphasis back on why we have them in
the first place; which is because for all the good of self education, the
greatest help you can give a student is a teacher who understands them and the
way they learn.

~~~
zopa
I used to tutor math at a community college. I did mostly the basics: lots of
algebra, very occasionally a little calculus. I learned two things.

First, it was usually the assumed knowledge that got them. They'd mess up at
calculus because of algebra; or get algebra wrong because they couldn't add.
When you don't know the basics, you get the wrong answer even when you do all
the new stuff right. The whole thing starts to seem futile, like climbing a
mountain of sand.

Second, just as above. Most of my students had no idea that math, like
weightlifting, is supposed to hurt a bit. They thought that heavy, stretching
sensation you get when you learn new concepts meant they were stupid, that
they couldn't do math. They didn't realize that every feels that, if only
briefly. If you're in the bottom third of the distribution, and a third of
people are, you never get to the other side of that feeling before the class
moves on.

The answer isn't magic teachers. It's for kids to learn that learning is
possible. You do that with practice, and feedback, until they get it right.

~~~
swishercutter
I tutored some adult basic education for a bit...helping people get their
HSE/GED. Some of these people had tried to pass the pretest many times and
were stuck at fractions. Over and over they failed the tests. I kept hearing
"I just can't get this" or "It makes no sense". One of the other TA's and I
were discussing it and we realized that a lot of these people were people who
had "been around drugs" in their life. So we decided to handle things this
way. We went to them with a problem like "5/8 + 1/4"...to which they would
respond "I don't know"...then we said "You have bought weed before right?"
"yes" is the response. Well...if you have 7/8 of weed and you add another
quarter ounce what do you have. Every time...the got it immediately. The
teachers came back to us and asked what we had done differently...we
explained. They said they really didn't approve but it was working.

It is all about relating things and explaining in a way that can be easily
referenced in your mind.

By the way...several of these people who could not pass the TABE tests at the
time went on to get their GED's because of that one little step with
fractions.

------
Osmose
I think the best rebuttal to this article would be Sal's TED talk:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM95HHI4gLk>

In particular, he doesn't present the Khan Academy as a full replacement for
primary education, but as an enhancement. In the second half of the video, he
illustrates the teacher as maximizing the amount of useful interaction between
themselves and the students.

Instead of spending class time lecturing and producing examples (things that
technology can handle easily, and in some cases better than a human can),
teachers use their class time to interact with students individually, helping
them better understand the content and meaning behind it. This time becomes
even more useful because the application gives statistics on how students are
performing, and what directions they're moving in; it arms teachers with
better data and more time to use it.

~~~
Clanan
This is a good point that touches on what seems like a communication
disconnect. While Khan advocates using it as an enhancement, many in education
think it's more than that and use it accordingly (disclaimer: based on my
experience, totally anecdotal). Perhaps decision-makers are viewing Khan
Academy as THE SOLUTION, which is what the author takes issue with.

------
z0ot
Silly article. It offers no proof to their statement that students learning
through Khan are on a "wild goose chase" for correct answers except for a
1973(!) paper. I believe it to be the opposite, the chances of you just
guessing 10 correct answers in a row is ridiculously low. It encourages you to
make sure every answer is correct before submitting it, otherwise you would
have to start over again.

It doesn't address the issue that each student can learn at their own pace,
which is the main part of Khan. It ignores people that had success with KA
except for a quick mention. It also ignores the fact that Khan is a great
teacher, and with this model anyone can learn from the best teacher there is.

It ignores the tools it gives teachers to see the progress of the students. It
ignores the fact that teachers can give personalized assistance. it ignores
that more advanced students can teach less advanced students.

It dismisses the achievement system while every single educator knows they
work and have worked since the first teacher decided to give students gold
stars. It only mentions it in passing to say that it doesn't work without
offering any proof.

The truth is: There are a LOT of people who have their own idea of what the
"perfect" teaching system is. When something comes around that challenges
that, as with everything else, those people will try to say that it won't
work. Let it be field tested, let's see the results. THEN we can say if it
works or not.

EDIT: I forgot to say that it also ignores the fact that students can only
advance once they completely mastered the subject. It doesn't mention that it
puts the power in the hands of the students and let them take control of their
own education by deciding which classes to take and when to take them. And as
someone mentions, the author is also biased.

~~~
capnrefsmmat
> I believe it to be the opposite, the chances of you just guessing 10 correct
> answers in a row is ridiculously low. It encourages you to make sure every
> answer is correct before submitting it, otherwise you would have to start
> over again.

That's not the point. You can learn to solve ten math problems in a row by
simply memorizing algorithms to solve the problems, rather than learning the
underlying concepts. The author criticizes Khan Academy because its methods
emphasize the algorithms, rather than the concepts.

There's a good bit of research suggesting that the ability to solve
quantitative problems isn't necessarily related to underlying qualitative
understanding. Students could benefit from teaching methods designed to
promote understanding.

------
zackzackzack
This guy should probably come out and say Khan Academy is eating his lunch and
he is pissed about it. The passive aggressive approach to talking about
companies with better lessons and teaching styles gets completely undermined
when you realize that this guy is selling math lessons[0] and you conclude
that he thinks his stuff is better than Khan's. Yeah, maybe it is, but it
looks really pretty weak to write an article like that and not mention the
fact that you are selling a competing product. Where's the Chutzpah? Just say
"Khan sucks, we are better, here's why".

Of course, the context is missing here in the writing, and Hacker News
probably wasn't the intended audience, so maybe it was assumed people would
make the assumption that Mathalicous' stuff was the better solution the author
was talking about. But so far, the overall response has been pretty poor[1].

[0]<http://www.mathalicious.com/sign-up/>
[1]<https://twitter.com/#!/mathalicious>

------
aaronbrethorst
_For many of us teachers, this is somewhat disconcerting. Gamification is fine
when students are trying to save Zelda, but it’s more problematic when math
becomes an obstacle, and eighth grade just another “level.”_

The author is delusional. That's exactly what 8th, or any other grade, is. Get
enough points, proceed to the next grade. Score high enough on the leader
board, proceed to the college you want.

~~~
brownbat
Agreed, this was exactly where I started to get suspicious.

Author: "Gamification is bad when applied to eighth grade."

I kept looking for the support for that claim, didn't really find any. The IPI
study was tossed in, but it dealt with a tangentially related educational
program, and seemed to endorse methods focused education over memorization of
answers. This article was attacking process focused aspects of Khan, so I'm
not sure IPI was the best study to cite.

It's a drawn out article, and light on evidence. I wouldn't look to the author
for advice on teaching others critical thinking.

~~~
swcpg
Sadly the majority of Khan videos are not process focused but rather focused
on memorizing procedures. This is a very big problem in math education
traditional and otherwise. Hard to fix, but KA makes no acknowledgement that
incorporating good mathematics pedagogy is even important. This is short
sighted and could be remedied.

------
fdschoeneman
I think this piece would be more effective, or at least somewhat effective, if
its author had described a vision for online learning that takes the best of
Khan's approach and combines it with, well, something interesting. The author
never really explains what that something is. I don't think Khan Academy is
perfect. Its gamification techniques will not work for all students. But it is
an alternative for some students. If a kid who is ahead can stay with her
peers at the same grade level while watching Khan videos at night, great. If a
kid who is behind can stay with her grade level by using Khan to catch up
without the shame of remedial math, even better.

Frankly its author sounds bitter.

~~~
swcpg
Unfortunately all evidence so far seems to indicate that online approaches to
learning, on average, do not work very well. To be clear, meta-analyses
continue to reveal that schooling, as it exists now, works as well or better
than tech centered or online education. I do not find this surprising, if you
do not change the philosophy and pedagogy, no repackaging will overcome the
serious inherent flaws in the approach. This is particularly pronounced in
math Ed and I encourage anyone to dig into the research on what good teaching
and learning of math is characterized by.

~~~
fdschoeneman
You wrote "...online approaches to learning, on average, do not work very
well..."

Huh? Listen my good man, we aren't talking about the average online approach
to learning, we're talking specifically about Khan Academy approach. And I
know Khan Academy works for some kids because I've seen some kids using, and
liking it -- both kids ahead of their peers and kids behind them.

Whether it works for all kids, on average, is totally irrelevant.

------
lincolnq
Very interesting and thoughtful. But I think the author gets it dead wrong.

"the budget cuts he seemed so giddy about invariably mean fewer teachers, and
to argue that this is somehow beneficial to learning is to argue against years
of research and practice" -- this is exactly the argument that Khan Academy is
making: that we can cut teachers in favor of lessons taught by computer. The
actual reason why "this time is different" is that we now have the power to
create excellent lessons, through the power of computers, the internet, and
crowds.

Maybe Khan Academy isn't good enough to replace teachers yet. (I would be
surprised if it weren't already better than 75% of teachers, though. Most
teachers aren't very good.)

Another claim the author makes: "Khan Academy makes it difficult for something
better to come along" -- I would be SHOCKED if this were true. Sure, it's hard
to compete with free, but KA is creating a new ecosystem of people who are
looking to the internet for teaching materials! So if KA is really as bad as
the author claims, then it's going to be MUCH easier than it is today to get
better materials in the hands of kids.

------
RandallBrown
Its weird that he complains that khan teaches the same that has been failing
for generations, then goes and slams him for not hiring teachers (the people
who have been teaching the same way for generations).

The article was super long and I bet most people won't make it down to the
bottom where he goes on to explain that he actually likes khan academy and how
it's a great thing. Too bad.

~~~
arkitaip
It's a contradictory rant and it's not obvious what the author wants from the
reader beyond us purchasing his product. Ok, maybe that's a bit harsh but I
honestly don't know what the takeaway is. Maybe it's the realization that KA
isn't the answer to all our educational challenges, but that seems like a
straw man. Given how many problems KA has solved for so many people, I think
it has more than justified its existence, educational approach, and resource
pools and funding.

------
DennisP
The one concrete criticism I could see in the article (aside from vague
handwaving about "pedagogical underpinnings") was about providing a step-by-
step series of instructions for solving a problem without real understanding.

But Khan doesn't actually do that. In my experience, he's very good at
emphasizing why something works. He encourages people to remember the "why"
well enough to work out the actual formulas for themselves, rather than just
memorizing the formulas.

~~~
wizzard
Personally I don't understand how one would go about teaching math without
using step-by-step instructions, especially considering his example of
teaching slope. He never says what would be a better way to teach slope than
the textbook/Khan methods, he just claims (without submitting any proof) that
those methods are completely ineffective. Well, it seems to be working for KA
students, and it seems to be working for other countries.

I agree with pinchyfingers: Students are getting worse at math because they
don't want to put the work in. And I don't think it should necessarily be the
educator's burden to make each individual math topic more fun and exciting to
try and trick students into using their brains. We need to find a way to get
kids motivated about learning in general again.

------
mpershan
What's the difference between KA's videos and something written? If I don't
know something, can't I just look it up on wikipedia or some other website?
Or, a book?

Here's what I'm getting at: NOTHING about KA is revolutionary. Nada. You can
read a book as quickly or as slowly as you like. If you don't understand
something, you go back.

"Ah, but these are videos. It's an actual human speaking." Well, yeah, the
recording of an actual human speaking. Problem is that there's no pedagogical
theory that supports the idea that a passive recording is especially effective
when it comes to learning.

People don't like being told that they have misconceptions, especially about
subjects that they take themselves to be experts in. And smart people consider
themselves experts about learning. But the truth is that there's a research
science concerning learning, and there are some surprising findings. Further,
the truth is that smart people are resentful towards this science, because it
challenges their views, and that teachers are more likely to be experts in
this science than anyone else.

Fact: Passive learning techniques aren't especially effective at the kinds of
learning that matter most. Listening to a video is passive learning.

Important (free) reading: <http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9853>

The problem with Khan Academy is two-fold: (1) the pedagogy is lousy and (2)
the delivery actually isn't that revolutionary. The ability to move at your
own pace is provided by a book. To the extent that Khan's videos are easier on
a person than reading, that's because they're less effective (because they're
more passive).

There's a way to use the web to revolutionize education, but it's not by
making material more accessible. It's by making people -- teacher, tutors and
students -- more accessible to each other.

~~~
tszyn
I've been wondering about this myself. Why are videos supposed to be better
than the same content presented as a textual tutorial (with some multimedia
content like animations)?

I can think of several advantages of textual content over video: \- you can
compare different parts of the text (for example, to discover an analogy) more
easily \- you can read at your own pace (you can't slow down the video) \-
skipping between different places is easier (just move your eye instead of
using a slider) \- it's easier to find the exact place you want to read \-
textual content can be easily revised by the author, which enables gradual
improvement and error correction

Can someone please explain to me what the big deal about video is?

~~~
rklancer
Easy. With video you're less likely to lose focus and drift off task. This is
of no small importance when you get your material on a computer, with endless
distractions at hand.

I haven't watched many Khan videos, but I did complete the Stanford ML-class
that used a Khan-inspired format of short videos. To make an HN-friendly
analogy, the use of video is like the various "lifehacker" tricks people use
to get themselves to focus on written material they encounter online. Some
people like Instapaper; I like the Readability bookmarklet and Chrome's Full
Screen view with the text bumped up to +2 or +3 zoom. Sometimes I even (gasp)
print things out to carry with me for when I have no Internet access.

Of course, some things are better as text. But video has its uses.

~~~
tszyn
That's an interesting point. Why do you think it is easier to get distracted
while reading a Web page than while watching a video? Do you think the
argument still holds when you're viewing a page in full-screen mode?

~~~
rklancer
With respect to video, I suspect that the answer is that video changes with
time. If a video viewer's attention drifts off of the video, he or she is
likely to notice being slightly behind when he or she does glance back at the
video, and therefore promptly return to task. Whereas written material does
nothing active to re-attract your attention.

I hypothesize that the attention-focusing effect of full-screen reading
operates via a related mechanism. Online, there are many useful and/or time-
wasting attention sinks just a click, or a glance across the screen, away.
Normally this kind of task switching is so common you don't notice it, so it's
very easy to fall into doing it when your attention drifts. Whereas when
reading full-screen, task switching requires a certain amount of effort. Also
the full-screened text is a big, juicy target for your attention. Therefore
attention drifts are more likely to result in a return to the task at hand.

To return to mbpershan's great-grandparent post bashing Khan for bad pedagogy
and in general dismissing people for not paying attention to the learning
research literature, note that I work at a nonprofit that develops well-
regarded modeling and simulation based learning activities in science, and we
publish in this field. So, certainly I think learning research is important.
But I imagine it would be tricky to find the positive effect of video, as
outlined above, in "official" learning-science research.

The effect depends very much on the fact that _I sought out the video_ and was
motivated to learn the material, _and_ on the fact that I have the freedom to
procrastinate by freely exploring the web (including interesting material I
have already saved for later reading), email, twitter, other work I have lined
up, etc. (If you're thinking about 14-year old kids viewing Khan videos at
home, substitute Youtube videos, games, and Facebook messages as needed.) But
in the official literature, often you will find something like, a classroom of
kids is given some mandatory curriculum content to study--which they may have
no inherent interest in--and some are selected to read paper books while
others are given video with a similar presentation of the material. They're
pre-tested and then post-tested and the question is asked, "were the learning
gains of the video group statistically-significantly larger than those of the
control (reading) group?"

Well, I wouldn't be terribly surprised to find no significant difference for
the video group because the video students didn't really care that much (and
were therefore happy to "space out" while the video went by, or were willing
to make only nominal efforts to keep up) and because the control-group
students weren't really being exposed to all the distractions of a teenager's
bedroom which might tempt an otherwise-motivated student far off-task.

This is all speculation, and the whole made-up study design is obviously a
straw man. So take what I say with a grain of salt. But nevertheless,
learning-science results come from studies in very controlled contexts--which
often have to do with _mass learning_ of material the subjects don't choose--
and often the result is remembered as a quick shorthand ("so-and-so showed
that video doesn't work") that may or may not apply to any specific situation
(where the question may not be about the "average" student, where self-
selection and motivation may play a critical factor, and where apparently rote
learning may be acceptable because the students will contextualize and
criticize in later months or years the material they just learned by rote.)

~~~
tszyn
Thanks. That makes sense. The more you stand to lose by drifting off, the less
likely you are to do it. Even if the cost of getting back on track is just
pressing F11 or seeking back in the video, it can be a significant
disincentive.

I think the whole computing experience -- sitting upright in front of a screen
with a mouse in your palm -- puts your mind in "hunting mode". Web surfing is
all about clicking, clicking, clicking. It's like a videogame -- a series of
clicks produces a reward (or not): a funny video, a witty exchange, an
interesting piece of news, an update from a friend.

I think this induces a certain state of videogame-style excitement, which is
incompatible with "calm consumption", as when you're reading a book. On the
Web, one minute you're playing "the Web game", the next you're supposed to
read a serious text on math, history or geography. But you can't focus because
your brain wants to get another dopamine fix. You need to calm down first,
which takes time.

~~~
mpershan
All I want to argue is that, at best, this is a slim advantage of a video over
a book. So we shouldn't be saying that Khan Academy is revolutionary in any
meaningful sense. It's a new medium for the same old content, and it's a
medium whose advantages are pretty slim, at least for the way Khan is using
video.

~~~
rklancer
Sure. I'd even agree. I would say that for certain use cases, the advantage of
video can be large. Averaged over all use cases that matter, there may be no
advantage at all. Of course that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it where the
advantage is large (not that I think you're saying that!)

------
corkill
Khan Academy blew my mind when I heard the TED talk on it, no doubt this and
software like it has a massive part in the future of education.

More recently I started learning a different language (the human kind) and it
drove home even further how much more useful software can be to pickup
problems with my understanding.

Let's assume you have an A+ class teacher the best of the best. They still
have limited time with an entire class of students. It's simply not possible
to diagnose and fix the little or big parts individuals are missing.

An awesome teacher with infinite time could, but that is not a possibility, it
just doesn't scale.

About the article, haters going to hate, sounds jealous to me.

Ok point about still teaching using abstract examples, but hell that's a
simple fix, throw in some real life ones. How does he use "millions of
students across the world have used it" in his opening paragraph and then go
on to try and say it's doing it wrong lol.

------
Seth_Kriticos
I agree that KA is a wonderful site, but not a panacea.

What I miss from the article is to present the solution for it.

My girlfriend is a teacher and she tells me about her days. Generally it's
like taming lions many times. Kid's don't get the stuff they are being taught,
because it's endlessly boring and they don't care. Not a bit. I assume they
generally hate math classes.

And I can see why: they don't actually accomplish anything, have no context,
just pound on basic formulas (which the article actually highlights well in
the beginning).

So, I think that the solution is to package the knowledge in creative tasks.
Give the kids assignments that they can creatively engage in. Give some leeway
on the solutions. Let them work in small groups. This would give a bit of
cooperation in the groups and competition between. Give good grades to the
most efficient solutions. Structure the tasks so that the students need a
basic understanding of the current topic that has to be learned and add them
the resources (like KA). Then you might end up with them actually learning
something.

And knowledge that is acquired during the solution of particular problems
actually tends to stick longer than the next test.

------
summerdown2
I'm in fulltime work, and for years have wished I could go back to university
and get another degree. It isn't a qualification I want - I don't need it to
get on in my career, for example - but knowledge. Now the internet is bringing
me and thousands like me the opportunity to learn at our own pace for free.

I'm currently taking the Khan chemistry course and loving it. When you
criticise Khan for not helping kids as much as a real teacher does, I think
you miss the bigger picture. It's enabling people of all ages to broaden their
knowledge, not just people in formal education.

This, to me, is the real revolution: free lifelong learning.

~~~
nupark2
This is something I wish universities would provide: open enrollment for
adults _without the cookie-cutter bureaucratic undergraduate track_ and the
18-year-old-focused high-bar on-rails admissions process.

The "continuing education" programs that do exist are generally stunted and
poor.

Would it be so terrible if I spent 10 years gradually taking classes in
engineering and sciences, perhaps never earning a degree? Why is college
something you do only once, when you're arguably too young to genuinely
appreciate it or even know what you want?

This is why I find Khan Academy to be so fascinating.

~~~
padwiki
If it helps, this is exactly what our school is built around. Every class we
create is available both in a degree track as well as ala-carte to students
exactly like yourself. You have the same professor and t/a support, grading
and evaluation. You also have the same access to the resources in our learning
system. We are tuition only (no fees) so we even charge the same amount as the
degree seeking students ($100/credit, $400-$500 per class, $5k for masters).
And, if you decide to go through admissions and seek a degree, any courses you
take would apply towards that degree.

The only real difference between in degree and ala-carte is that degree
seeking students will have more options for how to pay for their education.
Once we are accredited, a vast array of financing becomes available for
students pursuing a degree. Some are good (grants, scholarships, state
subsidies) some are not (Student loans), but having options for our students
helps a great deal. We structured our program this way because we come from
your exact position: why can't I take the classes I want without all the BS?

I think the reason more schools don't do this is that it would expose the true
cost of these classes, which at institutions like Stanford or MIT can easily
exceed $5,000 _per class_. Actually, after fees, housing and books, $10k is
closer to accurate. The market for $5k classes is not huge, and without
putting everything on a gigantic student loan credit card, few rational
consumers would pay the price.

------
pinchyfingers
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.

~~~
mathalicious
You'll notice that I didn't actually say that Khan was the "most dangerous
phenomenon," but rather our own obsession with it, and the misinterpretation
of what it can do. Khan itself is great, but using it for what it wasn't
intended to do is a real problem...and one that schools & districts are
beginning to pursue more and more.

~~~
marshray
I don't understand. Who is it that's danagerously obsessed with Khan exactly?
My kids' public school teachers had never heard of it.

------
orblivion
One thing I thought of: I think one way to really make education stronger, and
cheaper, by utilizing technology, is to have your "point system" based on
_teaching_ people just under you. By teaching material, you also learn it more
strongly yourself. And of course you have more "one-on-one" time with students
while actually reducing the demand for professional teachers.

So maybe you could start with something like Khan Academy (it doesn't hurt to
have the lines, dots, and steps documented somewhere). But then have some sort
of social network (and I'm saying this as somebody who thinks that too many
things have social networks) based on the ability to learn and teach skills.

------
jroseattle
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>

------
arkitaip
The truth is that Khan Academy is helping millions of people - and I'm one of
them - to learn topic that seemed out of their reach. Maybe KA hasn't
understood all of the pieces of the educational puzzle, but given their
resources and trajectory I think they can have the same kind of profound
impact as Wikipedia.

------
tempire
I doubt the author has watched many Khan videos; Sal consistently harps on
understanding over procedure, while explaining both.

I started at pre-algebra and have kept going - geometry, trig, calc I, II,
III, linear algebra - racking up 60 hours of video watch time. Due to lack of
practice problems, I probably wouldn't do well on a test; however, I have no
problems conversing and theorizing about what I've learned. Due to Sal's
method of explanation, I understand the concepts. My entire perspective of
reality has changed, for everything, from relationships to spirituality to
basic mechanics.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my friend and I were discussing the basic nature
of expectations in relationships, and I realized I could prove my points using
calculus, and show her how relationships worked in terms of the fundamental
theorem. The problem wasn't my understanding, but rather that she would not
have understood the language.

Indeed, it seems to me the author has a peeve about a common educational
problem, and has ignorantly and unfairly grouped khan with the rest.

The truth is, I would have never done this with any other available system.
The overhead of every other method, both in cost and time, is too high.

Long live Khan!

------
beefman
It's another argument for constructivism, pointing out that Khan Academy is
non-constructivist education on steroids.

As much as I agree with this argument, it underplays the fact that
constructivism is a paradigm shift that will require gobs cultural readiness
and energy that we don't seem to have. It's like, Why don't we live in domes?
Well, because people expect houses to be rectangular, zoning laws assume
they'll be made of sticks, and we don't have enough energy to blow past these
things. Or, Why do we still use imperative programming languages instead of
functional languages?

Once it _was_ different: the constructivist program by Seymour Papert to put
Logo (which, as it happens, is a functional language!) in schools. It was a
fad in the early '80s and failed monumentally. So monumentally that today the
power of computing is equated with making textbooks interactive
<http://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/> and backpacks lighter. Both Jobs and
Gates criticized various 'computer in the classroom' initiatives in the '90s
for this very reason, but they didn't mention (or didn't know about) Logo.

One constructivist aspect of Khan's program not mentioned in the article is
the "flipped" classroom -- watching lectures at home and doing homework in
class. This is a far superior use of classroom time that allows questions to
come in the context of work, work to be a social activity, etc. And last I
heard, K.A. were having real trouble selling the idea. It's too revolutionary
for many schools.

What's often not understood is that schools are incredibly diverse
institutions. The parents, the students, the teachers, the unions, the
administration, the local, State, and federal governments... all sit in class
each day. There is no way to improve classrooms by decree, or even by offering
powerful alternatives like Khan Academy or Logo. The entire society must come
along.

The article criticizes Khan Academy for not employing teachers. But failed to
mention another constructivist act par excellence: they just hired Vi Hart!
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=e1a6Bxc0OYQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=e1a6Bxc0OYQ)

------
Legion
Khan Academy is a revolution in how lessons are delivered, not necessarily the
content of the lessons themselves.

The author wants to take learn-math-by-rote to task, and that's fine, but that
argument is no more specific to Khan Academy than any other math instruction.

Singling out Khan Academy is link-baiting. It's like if I were to bash the
Nissan Leaf for not having the latest in, I don't know, tire technology or
something. It would be a true statement, but the Leaf is notable for being an
all-electric vehicle, and what I'm talking about is something completely
orthogonal to what makes the Leaf noteworthy.

~~~
swcpg
The problem is that KA (and as you point out, many others) believe that
lessons are "delivered". This assumes what Paoulo Freire described as the
"banking model" of education and it is fundamentally wrong. People do not
learn through delivery and people or organizations perpetuating a banking
model are misguided and should be challenged.

------
stinkytaco
Is it an either/or proposition? Kahn has helped students pass their classes,
brush up on subjects they're rusty on, tutor them through a tough unit _and_
pass tests. I fail to see how this is a bad thing.

EDIT: I feel like I should expand on my initial reaction. Education isn't a
product that you can sell, market or prepackage to have certain functionality.
It's not a car or software. It's a process. You get out of it what you put in.
No amount of great teachers, progressive curriculum or charter schooling is
going to change the fact that the student still needs to participate.

Shoving students into holes and expecting them to learn _this way_ is stupid.
Expanding the ways in which they can engage their education is not. When we
encourage people to exercise or eat better we don't expect that they will all
do it the same way, why would we expect the same thing from education. I don't
think Kahn Academy is the "Future of Education" any more than I think marathon
running is the "Future of Fitness", but that doesn't mean it's bad for
education.

------
erikpukinskis
I totally with the author's suggestion that we invest more in teachers. It's
incredibly important.

But I hate, HATE, arguments of this form:

 _"[proponents] have been making similar claims for years, yet [outcomes] are
as bad as ever"_

It's absolutely just as vapid as "It will be different this time", yet I hear
people make this argument over and over.

Things happen until they don't. Sometimes it's a tiny event that precipitates
the change, sometimes it's a massive event, and sometimes it's the accrual of
thousands of chancy occurences. Past performance is a useful indicator of
future performance _only if aggregate statistics are your sole concern_. If
you care about individual situations, like whether a single property of
classrooms will change in response to a single new technology, past outcomes
in similar situations tells you very little.

And yes, if someone tells you "things will be different solely because of X",
where X is something that's happened dozens of times before, they are full of
shit.

But anyone who tells you "things will be the same because X happened before
too" is just as misguided.

------
davyjones
"When Bill Gates and others generously donated millions of dollars to Khan’s
organization, he immediately turned around and used this money to hire an all-
star team of…computer scientists. Of the twenty people who work at Khan
Academy, none has ever taught in a K12 classroom in the the United States.
Zero."

When you look at it like that, you never got it; leading to erroneous
conclusions.

------
DrCatbox
Its easy to ignore all the thousands of students, like me, who have improved
and understood concepts I hadnt learned before in formal school. We arent
really visible, its like we dont exist.

Just as I havent seen anyone improving their understanding of mathematical
concepts from the mathalicious school.

------
danielharan
"Khan Academy and its donors may preclude better products from coming along:
products built by experts that actually can improve how students learn"

So - what was stopping those experts from doing that already?

------
ig1
The author doesn't seem to have watched many of the khan academy videos, what
KA excels in is in fact precisely what he's criticizing it for not doing:
explaining what maths means.

~~~
zerohp
I agree. The exercises are a bit lacking but the videos are top notch. They
are far better than any other instruction I've received.

Khan Academy helped me recover from a subpar high school education and gave me
the tools to excel in college mathematics.

------
tokenadult
The blog post author is a provider of educational software sold to schools,
writing to identify problems that he thinks arise from the Khan Academy
approach to online education. I'll respond to what he said now that I've read
the blog and the earlier thoughtful comments on his blog and here on HN.

1\. It is hard to compete against free, especially in education.

Adam Smith pointed this out a long time ago: "In modern times [as contrasted
with ancient times] the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted
by the circumstances which render them more or less independent of their
success and reputation in their particular professions. Their salaries, too,
put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them,
in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in
competition with those who trade with a considerable one. . . . The privileges
of graduation, besides, are in many countries . . . obtained only by attending
the lectures of the public teachers. . . . The endowment of schools and
colleges have, in this manner, not only corrupted the diligence of public
teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
ones." -- The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part 3, Article II (1776).

Thus the only way to compete effectualy against the current system is to offer
something free-to-the-user as part of the mix. The current system of public
schools in the United States gains revenues of more than $500 billion dollars
per budget year for government-operated elementary and secondary schools.

<http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/09f33pub.pdf>

The blog author seeks to sell products for money to schools, and decries Khan
Academy being provided directly to learners for free. Many other providers of
educational products and services are doing what is REALLY hard: providing
products and services to primary-age and secondary-age learners directly, on
at least a cost-recovery basis, attempting to show a value proposition for
products and services that families have to pay for after already paying their
taxes.

Moreover, the monopoly or oligopoly the government-operated schools have on
offering certain kinds of educational credentials ensures that Khan Academy
and all competing providers of educational services have to rely on more than
just price to win over users.

2\. It takes guts to be an entrepreneur.

For anyone attempting to sell a product or service, the first challenge is
competing against everyone else providing a product or service (including
consumers who do it themselves). One of the entrepreneurs I most admire in the
educational products space is a homeschooling materials supplier that has for
more than a decade hosted a webpage called "27 Reasons NOT to Buy [Our
Product]."

<http://www.sonlight.com/not-to-buy.html>

That takes courage and honesty. Rather than FUD, a stand-up entrepreneur lets
prospective clients know what the competition offers. Clients are happier if
they can shop and compare what's on offer from competing providers.

3\. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Khan Academy is provided over the Internet, entirely for free, but not
everyone who has an Internet connection makes use of it. (Some readers who
have commented here have suggested that the blog author should watch more Khan
Academy videos before making a global evaluation of the quality of Khan
Academy instruction.)

The public school system is free (that is, tax-subsidized) for all pupils, and
the pupils are compelled to attend in default of government-approved, parent-
funded alternatives besides. Even at that, teachers can't count on pupils
being engaged in their lessons. It's not clear that providing this or that new
lesson material will bring about more learning in a compulsory attendance
environment, as another reader here pointed out while mentioning the
interesting writings of the late John Holt.

4\. Khan Academy leaves a lot of room for a better service.

I have watched SOME Khan Academy videos, including some of the most recently
revised videos. My children have watched others. We have also done various
Khan Academy online exercises. My homeschooled children's main online
mathematics course is NOT Khan Academy, but ALEKS,

<http://www.aleks.com/>

which to date offers much superior exercises (which are more like open-ended
problems than mere exercises), much more relentless focus on steady skill
development of learners, and a more complete and articulated curriculum for
precalculus mathematics. I have urged the Khan Academy collaborators in past
replies here on HN basically to reinvent the research ALEKS has done on
knowledge spaces in K-12 mathematics

<http://www.aleks.com/about_aleks/Science_Behind_ALEKS.pdf>

and eventually to build a comparable framework to integrate all the Khan
Academy exercises into a coherent curriculum.

Anyone can try out ALEKS for an unlimited number of free, time-limited trials.
(I'm not paid to endorse ALEKS; I learned this from a local friend who
telephoned the company and asked about this.) So you and the blog author and
any member of the Khan Academy staff and any other person with an Internet
connection can try out ALEKS and see what is like. What ALEKS conspicuously
lacks compared to Khan Academy is audio explanations, and what differs from
Khan Academy most conspicuously about ALEKS is that ALEKS costs money, but I'm
happy to spend money on ALEKS for four learners in my family.

An even better source of videos on prealgebra topics than the Khan Academy
videos are the Art of Problem Solving videos by Richard Rusczyk,

[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Videos/index.php?type=pre...](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Videos/index.php?type=prealgebra)

also free and worthwhile for mathematical accuracy and engaging presentation,
with very challenging problems. Art of Problem Solving links to other videos,
some produced in-house and some from other providers,

[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Videos/index.php?&](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Videos/index.php?&);

that are also very good.

Competition is good. I like the public school system, the lessons I teach
locally as supplemental classes for advanced elementary-age learners, and Khan
Academy and Art of Problem Solving and ALEKS all to be subject to competition,
the better to have incentive to improve and to do better.

5\. There will continue to be an important role for in-person teachers.

Khan Academy will not make in-person teachers become obsolete. I tell all my
prospective clients for my own local in-person math classes about Khan Academy
before the first day of each new term. A good classroom teacher, who knows the
latest research on educational effectiveness,

[http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-
Analys...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Learning-Synthesis-Meta-Analyses-
Achievement/dp/0415476186)

will take care to form a community of shared curiosity and reality checks on
one another's thinking while teaching. There is an abundance of research on
effective mathematics teaching,

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NCTM2010.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/CommonCoreIV.pdf>

<http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf>

<http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf>

<http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf>

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

and much of that research has yet to be implemented in most classrooms in the
United States. It's even possible to compete with wholly free services and
provide supplemental classes in mathematics that families pay for willingly
and without compulsion. The key thing for a teacher to do is build a class
that is engaging and that welcomes curious learners who are willing to
challenge themselves.

See an earlier HN comment

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2760663>

for a bit more on the distinction between problems and exercises.

I wish the blog author, the Khan Academy developers, and everyone teaching
mathematics well in spurring the development of better materials and teaching
practices so that more mathematics learners learn more mathematics better.

<http://educationnext.org/teaching-math-to-the-talented/>

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
It's great that you're contrasting Khan to ALEKS. I'm not drinking the Khan
kool-aid; my kid just started using ALEKS in the last month and I agree it's
terrific. It's really puzzled me why Khan is getting all this attention when
ALEKS has been around so much longer (and seems to be better in many respects
-- just lacking instructional video). It would actually be terrific to have
some kind of integration between ALEKS and Khan -- to be able to see a video
lecture on a particular topic would be quite useful for the student.

~~~
ig1
Because KA has had a much bigger impact, millions of people are using it.

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
You have the tail wagging the dog there.

~~~
ig1
KA had a much bigger impact when it was growing word of mouth, long before it
got publicity.

------
Tyr42
Look, Sal just hired Vi Hart to do more cool math stuff, the exact opposite of
"wild goose chase" math.

~~~
zecho
Exactly. Vi isn't a teacher, either. Khan hired her to continue doing what
she's been doing for quite some time: Make math inspirational and interesting.
She didn't even take any math courses at university. She's just incredibly
passionate about its odd applications.

I know more than a few artists who self-describe as math haters who changed
their tune (if only briefly) and searched their souls for the true meaning of
shapes after seeing a few of Vi's wonderful videos.

------
gadgetdevil
This article is a joke. There is no evidence offered to support his
conclusions, it's basically a long slander article that his peddling his
shitty startup.

------
Sakes
This was a terrible read for me. The author sounds like a stereotypical parent
telling their child that they can not succeed where the parent failed.

His article is a list of arguably failed teaching techniques that our current
education system has implemented and khan academy is currently implementing.
He then draws the conclusion that since institutionalized education failed
with these techniques so will khan academy.

But he ignores the biggest difference and promise of Khan Academy vs
Traditional Education, which is focus on the individual vs focus on the
masses.

~~~
pjscott
I think the biggest difference from traditional education is that Khan Academy
is making the focus-on-the-individual approach scale to an arbitrary number of
people.

------
tmroyal
I don't think the problems that inspire education reform will go away until a
large number people with clout re-conceptualize the whole notion and function
of education. Education ends is too conflated with nationalist and career
ambitions. If students were given the encouragement and support to complete
relevant projects that can translate into attractive college applications or
on-the-job skills, students would be better served to enter the workforce and
would probably more effectively see the relevance of their actions. It's
difficult to test student success and standardized tests, organized by
specialist subjects, become irrelevant.

Marshall McLuhan (in the sixties) talked about how instant access to
information made specialization in education less relevant. He predicted that
schools would cease operating under the industrial assumption of
specialization. In fact, many other hard boundaries - work/leisure,
education/employment - would become blurred and resemble more pre-industrial,
and even pre-literate, sensibilities. Unfortunately, technology moves so much
slower than ideology, and people are treating the "jobs of the future" as if
one learns math, and then one can work in some math-making factory, or
something, for the rest of their life.

The dichotomy the author presents is irrelevant. Khan academy and
mathalicious.com would both serve a project-based curriculum quite well.

------
ISeemToBeAVerb
This doesn't have to be an either/or conversation about the relative
importance of teachers vs technology.

Teachers will always be needed and valued (above everything else, someone has
to create content for technology to disseminate).

The thing is, not all teachers are created equal. I'm sure we can all recall
certain teachers that were obviously not concerned for the betterment of their
students. Hell, some are downright hostile. Then, there are those teachers who
really do care- the ones you remember for life.

Likewise, technology isn't created equal. There are some downright terrible
online learning courses.

The difference between now and a few years ago, is that the education system
is finally seeing the value in online technologies to aid in the classroom.

Ideally, you have a synergistic effect. A good teacher aided by a curriculum
we can actually track and measure on an individual scale.

The students are happy because they can learn at their own pace (or not- you
can't win them all over), and the teachers are freed from having a one-size-
fits-all solution to a problem that requires a more nuanced approach.

What about this is negative? Are jobs at risk? Probably. They have been for a
while now, but not because of technology. Our public schools are just plain
underfunded.

In the end, technology will actually create MORE jobs- as I said, someone has
to design and teach the online courses too.

Khan Academy isn't designed to replace teachers, it's designed to aid them in
the classroom and free up the time and resources to provide that QUALITY
education we all desire so badly for our children.

------
wizard_2
Access to education is the problem Kahn Academy solves for me. I changed
schools a lot as a kid and was kept back to repeat classes I had no problems
with because the new school would teach classes at a different rate or in a
different order.

Even in classes that I didn't have to repeat I was board a lot in class. (Bio,
Physics, Math) I wasted a lot of my youth that way and while it was annoying
then, it angers me now. Getting 100% on a class or test wasn't hard and
shouldn't have been the limit of my education.

If this was available then I would have pounced on it and tried to test of
classes. (If that was available of course, but that's another topic for
discussion.) If my parents had some other way for me to get out of grade and
high school they would have taken it.

This style of learning wont be for everyone. But it works for me.

On a side note, I've personally used Khan to teach my friends, my siblings,
and myself the basics in subjects we've gotten rusty in or never covered
growing up. I quite enjoy it.

------
jfager
The biggest problem with this rant is that it's attacking a strawman version
of Khan Academy, pretending that it's only a website with some videos and
exercises. It's not. KA is actively developing and testing an in-school
curriculum that focuses class and teacher time on intensive small group and
individual development of the concepts covered in the videos. The main insight
is that one-size-fits-all lectures delivered at one pace represents a payment
of a large opportunity cost that hurts both ends of the bell curve. If you
offload that responsibility to videos that kids can watch outside of class
and/or at their own pace, class time becomes an opportunity for kids to work
together to understand the concepts and gives teachers the opportunity to
figure out how to best reach each individual child. Khan Academy doesn't
replace teachers; it frees them up to actually teach.

------
ezyang
I think this link is a much better treatment of the famous "Benny" experiment:
[http://blog.mathed.net/2011/07/rysk-erlwangers-bennys-
concep...](http://blog.mathed.net/2011/07/rysk-erlwangers-bennys-conception-
of.html) (with a bonus of less conflict-of-interest.)

------
hsmyers
Are we sure that this isn't the same guy who just attacked Amazon? His
arguments are equally off point and equally worthless. And that is without
taking into account that the arguments come from the side that is losing! I no
more think that Khan Academy has a lock on 'the one true way' than any other
approach to the problem of education. What I do think is that for what ever
reason the approach seems to be working and that is a great deal more than
than can be said for the system currently in place. I will also point out the
number of top end colleges that are beginning to think outside of the box in
ways that greatly resemble Khan's---something that I don't think is an
accident...

------
brador
We're hating on this article, but you know what, I really like it. It covers a
one sided view, but it makes some solid points.

That Khan Academy is free WILL prevent some innovative paid for solutions
entering the market/being created. The "learn this, now do this test"
methodology is indeed flawed as I've found myself recently. Yet it does make
adaptive learning systems easier to build.

There must be a better way to do it and I'd be open to suggestions anyone may
have on a computerized learning system that just works. Links and ideas
welcome.

The mathalicious site this is a PR piece for does look nice and I clicked
around, The vids look good, but what's their testing system like? Adaptive?

------
darxius
Sal didn't start the Academy to change the way children are taught math in
school. He made it to fulfill a need he saw in a majority of student -- the
same thing the article points out.

That being said, I think Sal's TED talk (mentioned in another comment here)
really hits the nail on the head. I do believe that education in its current
North American form is flawed. I don't think exams are a proper way of testing
anything more than memory retention and ability to perform repetitive tasks
(do this, then this, then that, etc).

Khan Academy fills a void within the current education system. Yes the system
is flawed, but that's beside the Academy's scope.

------
SudarshanP
Education is already structured like game with every every feature of
gamification like points(scores) and grades(levels) and Leaderboards and so
on... But it is a very boring and badly designed game.

Playing a physical game like football and maintaining a good physique for
winning a football game seems a lot more fun than exercising to not be sick.
Same thing could be said about khan academy. Would it not be awesome that a
student can learn 50+25=75 without having to pull out an iPhone to calculate
the same... Does it matter whether he did it for energy points or self
improvement. A student with good "skills" will likely find it easier to
navigate more meaningful content in the future like graph interpretation
without even noticing that "the algorithmic skill" came in handy. I totally
agree that something like KA is not a solution but just piece of the jigsaw
puzzle.

One of the students of the stanford online classes ended up making a cellphone
powered self driving car by going through the online class. While the student
got the basic framework and ideas from the class, he must have learned a huge
amount of stuff putting it all together. Learning is very human no doubt. But
it can happen in the minds of the learner. Thrun or Andrew Ng do not need to
actually talk to the student by standing a few feet away. They just need to
empower and inspire students to work on awesome projects. The students can
learn by themselves and each other.

------
Quizzal
Parents need to understand that KA is not a substitute for the teaching
paradigm, but rather introduces a great tool for self-enrichment - as the
article suggests, a "supplement" to homework and education, KA is great. But
the "education" itself is a varied and dynamic system that cannot completely
rely on a child to be self-motivated. Few 7 year olds are self-motivated to
master math, and gamification is just another arrow in the quiver, but not the
panacea. Learning is IMO at least a 2 step process, requiring participation
beyond simply multiple choice and listening, it most importantly requires
exploration and deep problem solving skills. For example, being assigned a
math word problem where the child must read, re-read and attempt to find the
answer using at least 30 minutes of analysis before realizing the true nature
of the word problem. That 30 minute process is an important mental exercise
that cannot be circumvented. KA is a great way to quickly understand a
concept, but true mastery requires application, and having a teacher present
to gently guide without revealing the answer is an art.

Being a parent that closely monitors his child's learning process, I'm very
careful to never give my child the answer, but just enough hints to keep him
from being frustrated - ultimately, HE must figure it out, never me. KA is a
great way for my son to learn about a subject, but the next stage is when I
take him away from KA and start applying those concepts to real life problems.

Parents need to understand this 2 step process.

------
learc83
My idea on how to fix High School math. Spend the first 3 years doing nothing
but mastering basic algebra.

I've seen from tutoring my siblings that basic algebra skills are what they
lack. They concepts of trig and calculus aren't that difficult, it's the
algebra that trips them up.

Leave the higher level math, for everyone but the most advanced students, to
college. If I was a college math professor I'd rather teach a group of kids
who have mastered algebra, than ones who've had a whirlwind tour of
everything.

~~~
lightcatcher
This might work for some people, but as someone relatively smart and good at
math, this would just make me want to cry myself to sleep at night. A smart
student can master algebra/algebra 2 curriculum in a couple of months. A
problem with a lot of high achievers is that they already feel like they are
wasting time in high school, this just aggravates that problem.

My suggestion: Not everyone needs to learn that much math. Classes up to
algebra 2 and also an intro to statistics are probably enough for most people.
Note that this can be in high school or college. However, for those who want
to be mathematicians/scientists/engineers/technical people, math education
should diverge probably around 7th grade. Rather than teaching pre-algebra or
algebra or whatever they do now, they should start teaching the students how
to do proofs. The best thing about Ma 1a at Caltech
(<http://www.math.caltech.edu/~2011-12/1term/ma001a1/>) is that about 60% of
the material could be taught to a smart motivated 7th grader. Making the
students do proofs with help everyone figure out either that they love math
and its beautiful or that they aren't really that interested in math. With a
more rigorous understanding of basic math, learning applications like calculus
is a lot easier.

------
jasonwatkinspdx
The about the product slide show appears to use stolen preview images from
shutterstock.com.

------
robfig
Disappointing that it didn't even touch on what I see as one of the central
items of Khan Academy: the "watch lectures at home and do homework with
teachers" methodology.

That seems like the most interesting bit -- one that could get a great teacher
to expand their influence across many more students than they could otherwise.
(ie, they have more time for 1-on-1 help since they do not have to put so much
time into lectures)

------
bambax
This is what one finds in the "About" page of Khan Academy:

> _Sal also found time to get three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard_

> _Shantanu (...) received four degrees from MIT_

> _Bilal (...) completed his MBA and MA in Education from Stanford and a BS in
> Actuarial Science from Urbana-Champaign_

> _Marcia (...) received her BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford_

> _Jessica (...) is an alumna of Stanford and UC San Diego_

> _Desmond (...) studied mechatronics engineering at Swinburne University,
> Australia_

> _Charlotte (...) received her BA from Haverford College_

> _Elizabeth (...) earned a B.A. in Intellectual History at Penn_

> _Marcos (...) has an SB from MIT and an MFA from RISD_

> _James (...) received two degrees from CMU in Physics and Computer Science_

> _Minli (...) has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and M.S. in Management
> Science & Engineering from Stanford University_

<http://www.khanacademy.org/about/the-team>

What's the point? If traditional education is irrelevant, why does it matter
whether Khan Academy's people come from the most prestigious universities...?

~~~
gjm11
1\. Is anyone actually saying that traditional education is irrelevant? In
particular, is Khan Academy (or Sal Khan personally) saying this? (I haven't
heard it.)

2\. Imagine that you're a possible user (or funder or ...) of KA, but you are
not convinced that "traditional education is irrelevant" or that KA's variety
of not-so-traditional education is going to be any good.

One thing you might look for, when evaluating KA, is whether the people who
run it are any good _by the standards you're used to_. So even if the people
operating KA thought that "traditional education is irrelevant" it might be
eminently reasonable for them to parade their traditional-education
qualifications, in order to help persuade those who aren't yet on board with
the idea.

------
why-el
For one thing Khan Academy does not say it strives to solve the problems you
discuss. It's only goal, I believe was and still is accessibility.

------
davesims
My feeling after reading the article is that he's link-baiting to make a valid
point about trends in education in general. He gets demerits for the
misdirection, but his fundamental question is essential and needs to be
engaged.

Is he correct that education is fundamentally a human, not technological,
endeavor? Is something essential lost when teaching is made completely
abstract by software and engineering?

I say this as a home-schooling father of five that uses a lot of technology --
DVDs, online -- to augment our curriculum, and couldn't be happier that I'll
be able to have my kids go through MIT, Stanford, Khan, etc., online content,
and I think our options in the next few years will be even more amazing.

I'm in agreement with the author that human interaction has to be fundamental
to the educational process, but technology must play a role. Books themselves
represent arguably the most important mass application of technology in modern
history.

So the question for me is: does Khan (or Mathalicious for that matter) attempt
to become a replacement for human interaction in education? I don't think so.
That is still left to the freedom of any parent or teacher using the material.
If more context needs to be applied to a given technology-driven lesson, then
the parent or teacher is certainly not prevented from doing so.

The more I think about it, the more I think the author is simply advocating
one abstract technological solution over another: his particular brand of
context-driven content vs. Khan's more conventional content. Nowhere is the
question of actual human interaction broached, just the question of whether
qualified "experts" created the content to begin with. He may be correct that
his content on the whole is better than Khan's, but his invocation of the
"human vs. technological" seems to me yet another misdirection.

The real human element of education takes place in one-on-one situations, with
a teacher or parent who can intuit where the child's understanding is at,
respond in real-time to the student's own reactions, and change their approach
in real-time accordingly. Nothing can replace the give-and-take of face-to-
face teaching. Every student is different and real teachers know how to change
their tactics slightly, drastically or somewhere in-between to help a student
make that crucial conceptual breakthrough.

So to me, "Mathalicious vs. Khan" is merely pitting one abstract set of
materials vs. another, and has nothing to do with "human vs. technology." I
may use one of them or both or neither, but I won't give up my direct
interaction with the student, and, having been raised by a teacher myself, I
know that real teachers understand this as well.

------
redschell
Interesting assessment of what I've always considered to be a successful
learning supplement. Not an alternative, and certainly not a revolution, but
something people of all ages and backgrounds can refer to when needed. It's a
wonderful resource, and this article attempts to diagnose some sort of
nonexistent problem with it. It even seems to back off at the end, as if the
author realizes he's done little to identify a problem and less to propose an
alternative (or even market his product).

Now, if he was going to complain about the "intuitive" approach of KA, he
might've had something. Alternatives to KA like PatrickJMT have been
successful (to an extent) because some feel that Khan is perhaps a bit too
gentle with his teaching method. Baptism by fire certainly appeals to some.

I hate to say it, because comments like these always feel a bit hollow to me,
but "Sour grapes" is all that comes to mind with this article.

------
quietness
I was hoping to find some sort of statistics showing how students are not
better off after learning through KA, but I didn't find it. It would have been
very helpful in minimizing the bias the article has against KA, because at
least it would show a concrete evidence of the claims presented in the
article.

KA applied Jane McGonigal's concept in her Ted Talk on game theory, where
players are encouraged to continue with a quest through awards and points.
This is lacking in traditional education, where only those on top get awards,
and those on the bottom do not, perpetuating the problem throughout the lives
of the students.

Also, there was no solution, except something around the line that this is not
a panacea (nothing is) and that we should reconsider how we think of KA. An
alternative or a better idea would have best ended the article that so
criticizes how KA is so wrong.

------
MRonney
While slanted I think it raises an obvious point that educators sometimes
forget. Do not put all your efforts into one method of teaching. Procedure and
habit is comforting and easy to plan for. But no one teaching strategy will
work well with all students, plus many students will get lulled into boredom
and disinterest after a while. KA might be one of your introductions to a
topic (though it is sort of dull and non-engaging) or it may fall in the
middle of teaching the topics. Maybe you can use it for remediation or for
enrichment. But if one uses it as the sole learning method I think that is
folly. The old adage is that people who do well in school go back and teach
the ways that worked for them. KA might seem perfect to the people that it
works for, but until we see that it works for 100% of students we can't sit on
our laurels.

------
sopooneo
One thing I think gets left out of these discussions is how much of a
teacher's job (in many districts, even good ones) is motivating his or her
students. Most students do best when they _respect_ their teachers and want to
impress them. You can't really replicate this remotely. The human connection
is largely reliant of being in the same physical room.

This fact does not fall on one side or the other of any argument I see here. I
expect it is completely compatible with integrating KA into a school
curriculum or not. I just think it needs to be kept in mind.

------
salman89
"And at its heart, education remains a fundamentally human endeavor."

This is not necessarily true. There may be a way for technology to facilitate
the alternative learning methods that the author is suggesting.

------
tzm
This article has a legitimate argument of qualitative vs quantitive learning,
however it has an undertone of resentment towards KA as a technology platform.

Pull vs push-based learning.. labor inefficiencies.. Disintermediation. Many
markets will be disrupted, including the educational process.

For example, looking at iPads in the classroom, "HMH Fuse" students scored
about 20 percent higher than students who used traditional textbooks.

<http://www.hmheducation.com/fuse/pilot-1.php>

------
ScottyGray
I think the question is, what problem is it that Khan Academy seems to be
solving? It may very well be a band-aid on the symptoms of our sick math
education system. It might also be improving scores of students on exams.

I happen to be in the camp that HOW we are teaching and HOW we are measuring
the learning of mathematics is the problem. We are teaching procedures simply
to try to get the right data. We avoid actually teaching mathematics because
the only real way to figure out what someone understands is to ask for an
explanation and discussion and those results depend on trusting teachers to
evaluate the understanding and assign a measure to it.

It seems that the best job we do teaching mathematics occurs at the lowest and
highest extremes. K-3 elementary students, and Ph.D. Students. It's because at
those extremes it's more about conversation than scores. Notice that no one
gives Ph.D. students multiple choice quizzes.

Now back to Khan Academy, so this is how we are going to use this powerful
computational tool to teach Mathematics? Watch video and take multiple choice
quizzes? Anyone who thinks that's revolutionary doesn't understand the history
of educational technology. This has all been done before, just not free. Free
is the only difference between Khan Academy and all of the other previous
efforts of using automatic quizzing systems and pre-taped lectures to teach.

I be a jerk to criticize Khan without offering an alternative. There has been
a project happening at the University of Illinois for the past 20 years that
IS revolutionary and does use the full power of the computer to change the
approach to teaching math, AND flips the classroom the way Khan speaks of. It
uses content written in Mathematica to approach the subject from the model
level rather than the procedure level. It's simply too difficult for most
people to understand models by doing hand calculations. However, once the
models have been well explored and understood the procedures become trivial.

I am part of a project called Making Math to bring the model of teaching using
Mathematica to the web using modern Javascript techniques. We're adding all
the communication and feedback mechanisms as well as authoring and editing
interfaces. BUT our motto is "if a computer can grade it, it's not worth
asking." We feel that way because we expect explanations, and because at the
end of the day, students want feedback from mentor, both help, and a pat on
the back for a job well done.

(the one thing I like about Khan Academy is the marginalization of the lecture
format and the flipping of the classroom. I just happen to think we can flip
the classroom by engaging students in better activities, and providing a
mechanism to explore and explain mathematical models).

------
mathattack
I don't see Khan replacining teachers - Henie changing what they do. Rather
than lecture and quiz in the classrom, he enables the model to be flipped.
Lectures and quizzes on your own time, come to class for help and interactive
discussion.

------
capex
Khan Academy is like Google Analytics. A great, free service. use it if you
want to, don't if you don't. No one's ever forced you to. To the author: If
you've got something better, bring it on. Don't try to pull others down.

------
ilaksh
Are the Khan tests really multiple choice? I don't think most of them are.

------
otisfunkmeyer
this is exactly how i feel about khan academy. a lot of how and no why.

------
schmrz
Okay, so the consensus is that the article is a joke (khan academy helped me a
lot couple of years ago in high school so I agree). Why is it on the front
page of HN then?

~~~
why-el
So that it won't be again. Edit: Downvoting probably means that was not clear
enough. I meant this will gather enough evidence for people to not post
anything similar on Hacker News.

------
jsnk
Khan Academy is providing an alternative educational path for students who
want to learn on their own pace. And Khan Academy is doing this right!

------
imd23
WORST TITLE EVER. This is an amazing article, and it's point of view is so
debatable, but the title doesn't attract as the article it self.

------
metafour
Some of the comments here indicate that the Khan Academy videos also include
instruction on the meaning behind the math as opposed to the idea that it's
just teaching rote memorization of procedures and applications without
context. As a student who has recently taken math methods courses some of the
arguments against this approach is the idea that students should be developing
their understanding of the underlying meanings on their own. One resource I've
used recently classifies activities into four areas: memorization, procedures
without connections, procedures with connections, and doing mathematics. The
first two are considering as having lower-level demands and the last two are
higher-level demands[1]. Thus it is possible that the Khan Academy videos are
actually a great resource for students as there are no guarantees that we're
within the bounds of the lower-level demands tasks, and this seems to be
possible considering the comments I've read and some of the sections of video
that I've watched.

In contrast I've also looked at one of the mathalicious.com lessons[2] which
if approached correctly can also fall within the bounds of the higher-level
demands tasks. However, that is something that close attention must be paid
to. We can always modify activities such that the level of cognitive demand is
either increased or reduced. More importantly though I feel as though the
mathalicious lessons have an opportunity to further make connections by having
students do mathematics that is practical. The one lesson I examined seemed to
not do this, which is disappointing. Granted I don't have my BS in mathematics
nor my teaching certification yet as I'm in my final semester but I don't
think this lesson represents any kind of activity that is realistic. I
remember reading an article by IIRC Richard Feynman about analyzing textbooks
for use in classrooms in California. This was one of the arguments he
presented as well; example activities we have students do to learn the
underlying mathematical concepts should be realistic and not contrived
examples.

Overall, the key here is that students should be doing the mathematical work.
Obviously I have a vested interest in the subject as I'm in the classroom for
the majority of my week actually working with students to teach and help them
learn math. Is it possible that Khan Academy can be ineffective if used
incorrectly? Absolutely. But I feel the same can be said of the mathalicious
lessons. If someone isn't there to correctly use the resources they can have a
smaller impact than originally intended.

[1] 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, Smith &
Stein. NCTM.

[2] <http://www.mathalicious.com/lesson/can-music-kill-you/>

N.B. I'm also a little concerned with one of the sections in the Lesson Guide
that I read through. It states the following:

Before we find the equation of the line, we want to focus on the meaning of
slope. A helpful shorthand for slope is “y per x,” which is how we’ll measure
slope (i.e. its units). In this case slope will be measured in “heart beats
per music beat,” and will tell us what happens to Billy Jean’s heart rate when
she increases the music tempo by one [beat]. By focusing on this real-­‐world
meaning, we can avoid tricks like “rise over run.”

At first glance it seems to me that "y per x" is a trick too, which they're
calling out "rise over run" for being. I feel that "rise over run" is closer
to the mathematical definition that is presented in most textbooks which
refers to the "difference in y over the difference in x" or "vertical change
over horizontal change". While using "y per x" allows them to then refer to
"heart beats per music beat" in this context, that doesn't get at the heart of
the idea that it's really the ratio of the change in heart beats compared to
the change in music beats.

------
the_cat_kittles
I wish I knew more about the person writing it, its hard to contextualize
their opinions as it stands currently.

~~~
mathalicious
Happy to tell you more. My name is Karim. I'm the founder of Mathalicious and
the author of the blog post. I'm also a former classroom teacher and middle
school math coach, where I worked with other teachers to help improve
instruction by focusing on 1) conceptual understanding, and 2) relevance.

It seems like the anti-post comments fall in three categories:

1\. Khan is great 2\. Mathalicious is just jealous 3\. The author of the post
is part of the establishment and should be ignored

Let's take those one at a time.

First, Khan is great for what it is. It's a wonderful resource for homework
help, for review, for a refresher, etc., and I said as much in the post.
However, Khan Academy is _not_ great pedagogically. It presents math as a
series of steps, is entirely traditional, does not address conceptual
understanding, and should not be the first touch-point for students learning
math. Unfortunately, this is exactly what's happening in any number of schools
across the country, and the worry --- and it's not just mine, but many in the
education community --- is that it will merely perpetuate the problem.

Second, the "you're just jealous because Khan is eating your lunch" critique
is a bit silly. Mathalicious provides lessons to classroom teachers, not
direct instruction to students. If Khan Academy were effective at teaching
students in a meaningful way on the front end, this would actually be good for
us. Our lessons focus mostly on applications of mathematics, and in this sense
are the yin to the yang. Regardless, the critique that Khan's style of
instruction is ineffective and has been proven so has nothing to do with
something so subjective as jealousy. It's objective fact, something I'd
imagine would resonate with computer scientists. That said, would I like it if
Mathalicious had Khan's millions? Absolutely. Not only would it allow me to
have an income --- something I've foregone for over two years --- but it would
more importantly allow Mathalicious to make its lessons free to teachers,
something that we simply cannot afford to do. (Still, we do allow users to
choose their own price, including $5/month: the price of a Starbucks coffee.)

Third, this issue of my being part of the "establishment" because I'm a
teacher... As a teacher, I've seen first-hand how broken the system is. I've
taught next to people who knew very little math, and that frustrates nobody
more than the teachers who have to pick up their slack. Either way, the
"change must come from outside of the system" argument suggests that teachers
therefore have _no_ role to play in education reform. If there's anyone who
actually believes this, please raise your hand.

In the end, here's my argument in a nutshell:

1\. We have a math crisis caused by ineffective teaching and an emphasis on
rote skills 2\. This style of teaching has been demonstrated by research not
to work 3\. Khan's style of teaching is the same 4\. Cash-strapped schools &
districts are beginning to adopt Khan Academy as a core tool 5\. This won't
work and risks perpetuating the problem 6\. We know from observing other
countries that, to solve the problem, we must invest in professional
development and effective curriculum 7\. In part because Khan is free, and in
part because of a sycophantic media narrative, we are less likely to do this
so long as we think Khan Academy is the solution to the problem

So, what part of that do people disagree with?

Karim

~~~
gomphus
Let me try to crack that nutshell...

1\. ...and several other factors, like requiring all students in a class to
move at the same pace.

2\. We all, including Khan, recognize there is a problem.

3\. You gravely mischaracterize Khan's approach. Yes, the video you selected
(out of thousands) does promote rote methods, as do many of the exercises. But
Khan is also at pains to demonstrate mathematical reasoning from first
principles, and to emphasize why we use the methods we do, why they work, and
what relevance they have to the real world - in real world terms that make at
least as much sense to me as those used by mathalicious. These 'reason' and
'proof' videos are judiciously interspersed with the 'rote' videos and taken
together form exactly the kind of compelling mathematical narrative you
complain is lacking from typical math curricula.

4\. This is great. Students can view and review Khan's videos as their core
learning material, help each other, and make use of the teacher's limited time
according to metrics which continually and repeatedly assess their personal
level of comprehension (which, as they absorb substantial portions of a
playlist, will expand far beyond the memorization of rote methods).

5\. Hard data will soon show if you are right, but it is my impression that
thousands have already benefited.

6\. The Khan model, taken in its entirety, only encourages this.

7\. If you listen to what Khan actually says in his various talks, he is
proposing that his site has a novel and exciting role to play as part of a
general restructuring of math education along the lines your propose.

You could have taken the view that the Khan Academy is a useful tool and
resource, yet to capitalize on it we must redouble our efforts to improve
education funding, classroom teaching methods and better curricula. That
sounds reasonable. Instead you wrote an article attacking the Khan Academy as
being a direct impediment to this kind of progress. Few respondents here on HN
have found your arguments persuasive, and instead of replying to the kind of
points I make above, you tellingly characterize us as follows:

 _It seems like the anti-post comments fall in three categories: 1. Khan is
great 2. Mathalicious is just jealous 3. The author of the post is part of the
establishment and should be ignored_

The discussion here has been far more nuanced and sophisticated than you allow
for - kind of like the way you discredit Khan's videos.

~~~
mathalicious
Thanks for the comments. Very helpful. Again, to reiterate, I actually like
Khan Academy, and the post wasn't critiquing Khan as much as it was _our
turning Khan into something that it's not._ The post wasn't about Khan. It was
about us. <br> Schools are experimenting with using it as a core instructional
tool. That is not in question. Whether or not Khan himself is advocating this
is besides the point (although they are involved in pilot programs). The point
is that schools & districts are turning to a style of instruction that we know
from research does not work, and that threatens to postpone the more important
-- and necessary -- conversation about better teaching and better curriculum.
<br> That said, I have heard what Khan has said about how he envisions Khan
Academy being used. (Awkward sentence; apologies). He wants teachers to be
able to offload skills instruction in order to be freed up to pursue projects
and other applications. In theory, this is terrific. As a former classroom
teacher myself, I know how much time we spend on basic skills. However, my
concern -- and let's be clear; I say this as a teacher -- is that if students
aren't learning the skills correctly in the first place, then they won't be
able to apply them. <br> Finally, as someone who has spent considerable time
-- and all of his savings -- trying to create a product that will help
teachers teach better from the curriculum angle, I can tell you that Khan
Academy _has_ made it incredibly difficult to fund new projects in the ed
space. Yes, there is more money than ever, but almost all of it is for
platforms. Nobody wants to put money into effective content, because the media
narrative has convinced them that the math problem has already been "solved."
Having watched many, many Khan Academy videos, and having spoken to any number
of teachers and school administrators, I have a difficult time believing this
to be true.

~~~
mathalicious
Again, at its core, the blog post was about how Khan Academy was originally
intended as a source for homework help; that we've begun to use it for _much_
more than this; and that this risks perpetuating the underlying problem.
&nbsp; This seems fairly straightforward, uncontroversial, and I must admit
that I'm surprised by how energetic (and in some cases, vitriolic) the
response has been.

------
valugi
cached version.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hf-1BZk...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Hf-1BZkcQ30J:www.mathalicious.com/2012/02/04/khan-
academy-its-different-this-time/+http://www.mathalicious.com/2012/02/04/khan-
academy-its-different-this-time/&cd=1&hl=no&ct=clnk&gl=no)

