

Misconceptions about the Khan Academy - kamens
http://shipordie.com/post/4003361706/lets-clear-some-things-up-5-misconceptions-about-the

======
mnemonicsloth
To most people, teachers are authority figures first and employees second.
Having worked on educational software for several years now I can tell you
that, while most teachers are smart enough not to talk about it, they're all
very aware of this fact.

So the worry probably isn't that teachers will be replaced by software. It's
that availability of teaching software that's _almost_ as good as _some_
teachers will erode the social prestige held by _all_ teachers.

That prestige has been a central feature of the American political landscape
over the last few decades. From a survey I happend to have on my desktop,
taken during the Wisconsin Union Thing a few weeks ago [1] [2].

    
    
        What's your overall opinion of:
    
        Teachers           73% pos  10% neg
        Teachers' Unions   47% pos  30% neg
        Other Unions       38% pos  35% neg
        Barack Obama       49% pos  35% neg
    

As a group, teachers enjoyed a 63-point spread between favorables and
unfavorables _during a coordinated attack in the national spotlight that went
on for 3 weeks._ Maybe a president enjoys that kind of popularity for a little
while, right after winning a war, but not always.

If I were a teacher, I think a slogan like "[We] aim to make the world bad
teacher-proof" would sound very ominous.

[1]
[http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/_...](http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_Politics/___Politics_Today_Stories_Teases/2-24-28-11.pdf)

[2] This is a good time to point out that I'm trying to make this post
politically neutral, because politics is first in the official list of topics
best avoided on HN:

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
jasonrr
I think I understand what you're trying to say here, but the comment about
presidents in war time is really throwing me off. A president is an actual
person who has done "things". My opinion of the president is informed by my
knowledge of those things, so, when asked my opinion of the president, I can
answer. The survey question you compare it to is essentially the equivalent of
asking "Do you like the idea of teachers?" If you were to ask people about the
teachers in their district or their child's teachers, you would likely get a
very different spread.

That's not to say that teachers don't enjoy a good deal of prestige, but I
think it is safe to say that the survey you are using here may overstate your
case for just how popular actual individual teachers are with their respective
communities.

~~~
mnemonicsloth
I think we're probably in agreement here. I wanted to use the president-in-
wartime reference to parallel the fuzzy attitudes about teaching that you're
objecting to. We'll rally around the flag regardless of who the president goes
to war with, and if you ask people about teaching, and they'll tell you they
_love_ teachers because teachers _love_ their children... while the reality is
that teachers are just as human (and yes, just as venal) as everybody else.

There is one angle I'm not probably not seeing. I don't have kids myself, so I
don't know what it's like to leave a child in the care of strangers for seven
hours a day. You might _have to_ ascribe positive motivations to those people
to keep from going crazy. But then I think about how much unhappiness one
incompetent teacher can inflict on a child, and that really gets my hackles
up.

------
buyx
In South Africa, teaching quality and outcomes remain extremely uneven despite
the huge sums of money thrown at education by the state (lazy incompetent
unionised teachers being the primary reason [I won't go into the historical
reasons for these teachers' chronic incompetence, since there are Apartheid
apologists on HN, and I don't want to detract from the main point]).

To deal with this problem, the sort of instruction provided by the Khan Acdemy
has been around in South Africa for more than 20 years. The per topic videos,
as well as call in tv shows provided by these organisations are extremely
important to thousands of students.

The pioneers of this sort of learning in South Africa were the Learning
Channel (<http://learn.co.za/LC/index.php>), and a newer competitor called
Mindset(<http://www.mindset.co.za/learn/>).

Mindset uses Creative Commons licensing, but downloading their content or
viewing online seems impossible, while the excellent (in my opinion superior)
Learning Channel charges large fees for their content on DVD (although some
used to be broadcast for free on state television).

My friends and I used Learning Channel VHS tapes to pass our school-leaving
exams 13 years ago, as we didn't have teachers for many of our subjects.
Unfortunately, because of the price, I could only purchase a limited number of
topics.

It is a pity that massive repositories of Learning Channel content (some of it
probably unused because of South Africa's recent ill-advised, and soon to be
reversed curriculum changes) are hidden behind a 20th century paywall.

South Africa, despite expensive and limited bandwidth, has a long tradition of
students actively using this sort of instruction (via vhs/dvd and tv
broadcasts). Distributing Khan Academy videos and Mindset Learn, and
especially freeing and distributing Learning Channel videos could make a huge
difference to education here. If someone has a philanthropic need to save
millions of children in a third world country from chronic unemployability,
those would be the first easy steps to take.

~~~
niels_olson
>there are Apartheid apologists on HN

that's absolutely deplorable! I'm clearly missing whole genres of conversation
on this forum. So as to avoid charges of libel, let me encourage you to
provide examples. Can you cite examples?

~~~
shii
I'm guessing he means things like this:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=797920>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1563941>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1062454>

SearchYC is always your friend. Literally a treasure trove.

~~~
buyx
And <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1662581> An entire thread of
apartheid being defended.

And this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1565298>

------
jleader
I just wanted to say that I like the way the article refers to "great
teachers" in the plural, and to "the one" bad teacher in the singular.

Also, to misconception #4, I just finished reading Gowers' "Mathematics: A
Very Short Introduction", where he tangentially makes the point that sometimes
putting too much effort into trying to get students to understand "the
meaning" behind some piece of mathematical technique may be misguided, in part
because a given piece of math can represent multiple meanings (he uses the
example of x __a + x __b = x __(a+b), which can perhaps be taught more easily
axiomatically, instead of teaching "exponentiation is really repeated
multiplication").

~~~
pixcavator
In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them. -- John
von Neumann

------
joelhooks
We home educate and the Khan Academy has been absolutely fantastic for
supplementing the math curriculum we use (Saxon). Saxon is great, and the kids
use it as a self-study device with great success for years, but watching Sal
do his thing is a great way to get some humanity into the maths.

~~~
tokenadult
_supplementing the math curriculum we use (Saxon)_

For homeschooling, I much prefer Miquon Math

<http://www.keypress.com/x6252.xml>

for starting out my children, and then the Singapore Primary Mathematics
materials (which now have an edition aligned to United States curriculums
standards)

[http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/1...](http://www.singaporemath.com/Primary_Mathematics_Stds_Ed_s/134.htm)

followed up by the Gelfand textbooks

<http://www.amazon.com/Algebra-Israel-M-Gelfand/dp/0817636773>

[http://www.amazon.com/Method-Coordinates-I-M-
Gelfand/dp/0817...](http://www.amazon.com/Method-Coordinates-I-M-
Gelfand/dp/0817635335/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Functions-Graphs-Dover-Books-
Mathemati...](http://www.amazon.com/Functions-Graphs-Dover-Books-
Mathematics/dp/0486425649/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-I-M-
Gelfand/dp/0817639144...](http://www.amazon.com/Trigonometry-I-M-
Gelfand/dp/0817639144/)

appropriately supplemented by ALEKS

<http://www.aleks.com>

and EPGY

<http://epgy.stanford.edu/district/info.html>

~~~
joelhooks
Hey, thanks for all the great links.

------
JshWright
Just today I used Kahn Academy in what the article seems to consider the
"intended" way.

My wife's sister is in high school, taking chemistry this year. From time to
time she'll get stuck on something, and I'll tutor her a bit. Earlier today
she called and asked if I could help her out with "kinetics." I told her to go
to Kahn Academy, watch the intro to kinetics video, and that I'd stop by on my
way home from work. Later on, I stopped by and we went through a few pages of
exercises together. There obviously were still a few gaps in her
understanding, but all the basic hurdles (terminology, etc) were out of the
way. We were able to just work on a handful of sticking points.

KA is great for handling the "busy work" of teaching.

------
VladRussian
there must be some conceptions before notion of misconceptions may arise.

~~~
jonsmock
I forwarded his recent TED Talk to several of my teacher friends, and many
immediately thought this was supposed to be their replacement. So, I'm
assuming the first (mis)conception is valid at the very least.

~~~
yummyfajitas
It would certainly be beneficial if we could reduce our needs for human
teachers by means of a tool like Khan Academy.

As a nation, we spend more one education than the military ($972B as of 2007
according to wikipedia, vs about $725B for the military including wars). A 1%
increase in efficiency would save a little less than $10 billion, and a 16%
increase in efficiency (using 2007 numbers) would be sufficient to balance the
federal budget deficit [1].

If the Khan Academy is not striving to reduce our need for human teachers, we
should create an organization that will.

[1] Edit: I should note that education is paid for primarily by the state and
local governments, so it wouldn't be directly possible to reduce the federal
budget by such savings. I was solely trying to make an order of magnitude
comparison.

~~~
steveplace
>As a nation, we spend more on education than the military

That's an incredibly misleading claim. Consider this graph:

<http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/edgraph.html>

So we see that funding for public k-12 is roughly the same as defense, but
let's consider the funding sources. IIRC, defense spending is funded solely by
the federal government, whereas public school spending is sourced from
federal, state, and local-- property taxes taking a big chunk out of it.

So if we compare apples to apples-- which is federal spending between the two,
we see a very wide disparity. This of course is exacerbated by the military
occupations currently taking place by the US gov't.

I could also argue how spending in education will have a better effect on GDP
relative to defense spending, but I'm a little tired of googling things.

[edit] Here's a much clearer picture of the spending distribution:
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20.html)

Compare edu to defense and you'll see my point.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Why is it misleading to look at total cost or total government cost rather
than simply federal government cost? What makes the federal government
special?

Now, as for my numbers: 2007, $972B total, the government portion of it was
$809B. If you restrict to K-12, it is indeed slightly less than the military
($493B vs $653B). Government expenditures on education are still $150B more
than the military as of 2007, the year I originally cited (including higher
education and "education not definable by level").

For 2009 (the last year for which full data is available), the gap between
government spending on the military and education is $50B (in favor of
education).

Regardless of whether spending on education is better for GDP than defense
spending, it would be better still to provide the same education for less
money. When you spend this much money, small gains multiplied systemwide yield
huge gains. A 1% increase in efficiency saves you $8.5B in gov spending and
$9.7B in total spending.

Or, to put it another way, every teacher we replace saves $50-150k/year
directly and removes a massive unfunded liability (their pension/future health
care costs) from the government balance sheet. If Khan Academy isn't ambitious
enough to try to do this, hopefully someone will step up and do so.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>every teacher we replace saves $50-150k/year directly and removes a massive
unfunded liability (their pension/future health care costs) from the
government balance sheet

Who looks after the children?

If parents are working then, even if children are learning through a
computerised system, children still need to be cared for.

Are you going to do away with teaching staff altogether? So no one to monitor
and encourage the students, to watch that they're not going lord-of-the-flies
and building a bonfire out of the learning terminals or are you going to
mandate that parents look after their kids and take responsibility for what is
currently [often] school based learning.

Don't get me wrong, teachers are not solely childcare professionals. But,
children still need care without teachers.

Presumably non-teaching child care staff in a school like environment still
need to be paid wages and pensions and have their health costs paid - did you
account for that in your savings?

Are you planning on Khan Academy sorting out emotional education, social
education, etc. too?

~~~
yummyfajitas
The fact that we can't replace every single human does not mean we shouldn't
try to replace some of them.

Is it your assertion that with 16% less adult supervision (to borrow a number
from my first post), schools would degenerate into "lord of the flies"?

If anything, I expect the situation would improve. Rather than having 1
teacher trying to do double duty (lecture and impose discipline), we could
have cheaper discipline-only employees handle the discipline side and leave
the lecturing to Khan.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I guess what I'm wondering is how're you implementing it beyond just telling
about 1 in 5 teachers not to come in to school next term?

It sounds like you're planning on having a "person with a big stick" in a room
of 35 kids playing a video on a screen. Or possibly in a room of 35 computers
with kids at each one.

For sure, have a room of 1000 computers and one person with a machine gun ...
sorted!??

~~~
tedunangst
You hire new teachers slower than old teachers retire.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
OK, in most schools where I am that won't work (for example if there are 2
teachers for 1 year of pupils, one retires you then have a 60+ student class
and classrooms designed for about 24) but that's not what I'm trying to get
at.

What I want to know is how you're integrating Khan Academy (or similar) use
into a pupils learning experience - eg give them a terminal to interact with
for all their learning?

Also he seemed to be suggesting that we get rid of people in the role of
teachers and have some form of child/youth minder. What's their actual role,
what setting are they working in, how do they relate to the kids, are we
shouldering kids/youth with the entire responsibility for their own education,
is this the ultimate pupil-led learning or something else?

~~~
yummyfajitas
_What's their actual role,_

Preventing violence and hooliganism.

 _what setting are they working in,_

The video lecture portion of the educational experience.

 _are we shouldering kids/youth with the entire responsibility for their own
education,_

In another post I suggested a model of 2 hours of video lecture, 1 hour of
recitation with a human teacher. Thus, you allow 1 teacher to do the work of
3. The youth police would devote their full attention to overseeing the video
lecture area and preventing hooliganism (as opposed to 50% on police work, 50%
lecturing like a traditional teacher). Thus, the youth police would be lower
skilled (and hence cheaper) and we would probably need fewer of them than
teachers.

This is one possible model. I'm sure if you devoted 30 seconds of thought to
it, you could come up with other possible ways (not just straw men) of doing
it. I'm not proposing a solution, I'm asking why Khan Academy isn't trying to
come up with one.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
See, police in my country earn more than teachers.

>"I'm not proposing a solution"

It pretty much sounds like you are, just a partial one.

The problem as I see it in implementing such a system is that basically you
have to experiment with a whole load of people and if the experiment doesn't
work then it's "oh dear we messed up your education, nevermind there are
plenty more people to experiment on".

The least impacting way to trial this that I can think of would possibly be in
a situation similar to that in Australia where some kids/youth in the interior
belong to "schools of the air" and interact with teachers by webcam (eg
<http://www.emerge.net.au/~kalsota/information.htm>,
<http://www.outbackwriter.com/education.htm>). Having kids able to use video
lectures to supplement in this sort of scenario seems less impacting and more
easily trialled as the kids are using a computer in a similar way already -
perhaps they've been doing such a thing, not sure. What is different about
schools of the air is that they appear to be largely home-tutoring with
support.

