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The Dangerous Mr. Khan

• bpourriahi 15y ago
  Haters
• chrisjsmith 15y ago
  I think the conventional "educators" are feeling threatened because concise education in tolerable chunks is looking more attractive than toiling in lectures and massive tomes for hours over minor details. The Internet age has destroyed verbose teaching finally. Facts are important. Details are for the interested.
• hnhg 15y ago
  Okay, so the first part of this is nitpicking the obviously impossible task of summarising the history of the world (perhaps it was Khan's intention to simply get students interested in the subjects so that they could study them further), and then the second part verges on parody by putting together some poorly connected thoughts and trying to pass them off as an argument. If this is representative of the type of person against the Khan Academy, I'm for it even more.
• tokenadult 15y ago
  On the facts reported in the submitted article, I would have to suggest that Mr. Khan bring some expert historians (preferably of multiple cultural backgrounds and different nationalities) on board his project to produce the history videos. He could well devote his own time to producing more videos on more elementary levels of math, as elementary mathematics is still very poorly taught in much of the English-speaking world. http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/ http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/ ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf
• wccrawford 15y ago
  So, their biggest problems with Khan are that he doesn't go into enough detail and that he doesn't pick sides in the wars? Wow, that -is- dangerous. He might teach children to think for themselves or something! As for the Skinner Box, the internet is anything but. Yes, you tend to only see things you want to, etc... But there is nothing stopping you from seeing other things, and most sites will step out of your comfort zone quite a lot. They honestly believe that somehow Khan's videos could become the -only- resource for learning about history. Not a chance.
  • jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
    It's challenging to think for yourself when you don't have enough information to make reasoned decisions.
    • wccrawford 15y ago
      It's even harder when you're given a biased view of the facts and don't realize there might be more. The fact that he doesn't provide -everything- has a plus side in my book: It forces them to seek out more information if they want to have an opinion.
    • olalonde 15y ago
      How many people have watched Khan's video who otherwise wouldn't have learned shit about WWII or the Korean War. I know I learned stuff about the Korean War myself which I wouldn't have learned otherwise.
• maukdaddy 15y ago
  The comments thus far show exactly what is wrong with HN. HN has become an echo chamber where we all love certain people/companies/ideas and immediately dismiss any counter viewpoint. Instead of immediately discrediting the linked article because they're "haters" or "threatened", try reading it and understanding their point of view. I love Khan's work and what he's doing, but at the same time the article raises some valid points. You learn a lot more by examining both sides of a story than being a fanboi.
  • hnhg 15y ago
    I welcome opposing opinions but this itself doesn't present both sides of the argument, nor any context to the one example given, and sounds to me purely like a bashing exercise.
    • jordanb 15y ago
      I wouldn't expect an article named "The Dangerous Mr Kahn" to spend much type discussing the upside of the Kahn Academy. Going into it, it's obvious that it is an advocacy piece written by someone who's not thrilled with Mr Kahn's work. The OP's point is that hn is a discussion forum, which is most effective when the discussions are somewhat balanced. But since the Kahn Academy is a darling of this forum, this article is here just to be knocked down, and anyone not joining in is likely to be downvoted. That makes hn less valuable.
    • alain94040 15y ago
      Seeing how the comments on this thread were so divided, I read the article, and I support the view that it's a criticism that is worth considering, even though it's not highly convincing. You can argue that covering WWII to Vietnam in 15 minutes is just mission impossible. But the way it's described in that article does raise concerns.
    • chaostheory 15y ago
      > sounds to me purely like a bashing exercise. For the record, I like the Khan Academy and they do a lot of good; but I still think that's really unfair to say that given that the article brings up a really important point (regardless of its style of writing): Khan Academy history lessons are so abbreviated, that key, important points and figures in history are skipped. Why is this not good? One of the major key reasons we study history is so that major mistakes of the past are not repeated in the present or future. Now this is an extreme example that no Khan like outlet actually does, but what if they skipped over Jim Crowe laws in their history of the US? Going on somewhat of a tangent, reading this article reminds me of this TED talk about filter bubbles. http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu... Essentially Khan Academy and other ventures like it, may be inadvertently creating dangerous filter bubbles.
• jmarbach 15y ago
  While this article does argue against Mr. Khan being the one and only teacher, it does not refute the effectiveness of his teaching. This is exactly why every teacher should be delivering their course content in the same format as Khan. I am in the process of building a platform for any teacher to manage learning online in the same way that Khan has been so successful. I've been fortunate to be receive support on this transformation in education as recipient of the Thiel Fellowship: 20 Under 20. Visit http://ingenic.com http://ingenic.com to follow my progress.
• TeMPOraL 15y ago
  The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture. A brief summary, a TL;DR, an idea, an answer to questions like "what does it mean?" or "why should I care?". My experience with education is that for most of the time, we are being taught 'the form', not 'the contents'. It was after I've watched SICP video lectures that I finally understood many computer science concepts that I was being taught (read: forced to memorize for the exam) at university and even in high school. I strongly believe in what Einstein said: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." If Khan can summarize almost entire XX century into a 15-minute talk while staying correct with the facts, then that's great. It's what we call a 'high level overview'. It might be not sufficient, but it's a good start, as it constructs a skeleton which makes the details stick easier in our brains.
  • tokenadult 15y ago
    The thing I remember was almost always missing in the education process I went through right up to the university was the big picture. What do you think the learner's responsibility is in the educational process? I am a teacher, and I do attempt to provide both big-picture ideas and detailed supporting facts and examples as I teach my students. (I try to elicit a lot of those from my students themselves, with a discussion format with lots of questions and answers as I present new concepts.) But I would hate to be in the position of my high school American history teacher, who was frequently interrupted by one of my classmates who would ask, "How am I supposed to write that down in my notes?" When I was in university studies, I read a very interesting book called Speaking and Listening (It may be this book on Google Books, but I am not completely sure: http://books.google.com/books?id=sOp5MbE6-jYC&q=Speaking+and+Listening&dq=Speaking+and+Listening&hl=en&ei=RpnvTbvlHuHr0gH_nOnzDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAA http://books.google.com/books?id=sOp5MbE6-jYC&q=Speaking... as it has been a long time since I read the book) in which I learned about the style of note-taking that many people call "Cornell notes" http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/cornellsystem.pdf http://lsc.sas.cornell.edu/Sidebars/Study_Skills_Resources/c... http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/cornellnotes.html http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/cornellnotes.html http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/printer/cornellnotes.pdf http://coe.jmu.edu/LearningToolbox/printer/cornellnotes.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Notes in which it is the note-taker's responsibility to sum up what the lecture means and what the main points are. Taking that approach was very helpful for me in my university studies and especially in my postgraduate professional school studies. I think Einstein too would agree http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html http://learninfreedom.org/Nobel_hates_school.html that ultimately it is up to the learner to seek understanding of the main points of any subject.
• ashbrahma 15y ago
  I agree that there are some valid points however history books have also been written by someone or a group of people with a certain viewpoint. Facts are sometimes suppressed in support of their viewpoints.
• icegreentea 15y ago
  Has a point. The Khan Academy approach is very good for maths, and most sciences. These are cases where you can distil knowledge into a few examples and cases, and it works well. The viewer now has a working, and accurate mental model of whatever they were learning, without having to go through -everything- involved. However, this approach to history and other topics can be a problem. While some of the criticism is somewhat overblown, it is valid. Distilling history and other social sciences down, to the degree that Khan does is very hard to do properly, and likely to introduce all sorts problems into the mental model of history the viewer has. It's not a case of "taking sides" or whatever. But, if the Academy really does want to be "the classroom of the world", then it -should- go into enough detail to build accurate mental models. How much stuff do you think people learn in a classroom, and never have a chance to "relearn". How many incorrect mental models are formed, and then never corrected until catastrophe. The responsible thing to do, if attempting to be come the classroom of the world is to realize that if they are successful, then for many people, the Academy will be their sole source of information for some topics (as in, not the only source of information, but the only source that they go to), and teach accordingly. Either have the lesson be able to provide an accurate and correct mental model, or make the learner explicitly aware that what they are learning is incomplete/unprecise/whatever.
  • natural219 15y ago
    "if the Academy really does want to be "the classroom of the world", then it -should- go into enough detail to build accurate mental models." We have no context about the video here. Is it for 4th graders? High schoolers? For me, elementary school consisted of brief snippets of historical events (Christopher Columbus discovered America. Indians and settlers got along and had Thanksgiving), while high school consisted mostly of un-learning all of the stuff that they got wrong in elementary school (Columbus was actually a failure! Oh, native Americans hated us). I don't think you can expect somebody getting their feet wet in history to pay attention to or care about historical subtleties.
  • SoftwareMaven 15y ago
    I totally agree with you. I don't think history and many of the humanities can be distiller into 10 minute chunks. I don't think it would be fair to distil World War II into 15 minutes, much less the last 100 years. Trying to distil romanticism into 15 minutes seems just as impossible, since to understand romanticism, you need to understand the changing, industrializing world that birthed it. My daughter's history class this year did not focus on dates at all. It didn't even really focus on facts. Instead, it focused on why events were taking place, what the impacts of those events were, and why that is important to understand today. This is the way to teach history, but it's a lot harder because it requires interpretation.
• natural219 15y ago
  I think this article is very interesting, if only to get a look at what objections might exist to an educational paradigm similar to KA. If we're serious about fighting for an efficient education system, we must be prepared to answer objections like this. He brings up a few valid points that I haven't thought of before. Presumably, as systems like KA are adopted the amount of total educational material decreases, as individual curricula are replaced by a standard set of materials. This decreases diversity in the type of education available for students, which can be seen as a good or a bad thing. I bet the author would be all for the system if the videos were "conservative" and they were replacing curricula of "liberal" educators teaching our children filthy subjectivist lies.
• bbg 15y ago
  +1 for the idea that history is more than an "incoherent torrent of factoids" I heard Khan say recently on the Colbert Report that he read the Wikipedia article on the French Revolution as his source before making his video on the subject. That's fine for his purposes, but somewhere up the information food chain someone must actually read the sources, weigh them, interpret, compare, and do all the other work of understanding and transmitting history. It's hard to imagine that those 'educated' by Khan can take up this work, or if they do, that by the time they become competent, they will regard his videos as anything other than inconsequential in their effort. However, I do think it's overblown to say that Khan is any more dangerous than Cliff's notes or similar supposed shortcut to education. And I suspect his math and finance videos might be quite good, based on the response, and on the fact that he actually spent time in school learning math and finance. (But I haven't watched them.)
  • alain94040 15y ago
    his math and finance videos might be quite good [...] But I haven't watched them You may want to try watching a few first. Based on the amount of praise Khan received on HN, I had high hopes. So I did watch a few, and I was disappointed. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I think on HN a lot of people love the concept of online education that Khan represents, but many have not bothered to seriously try it.
    • bbg 15y ago
      Yes, good point. Now that I look over the comments, everyone seems to say the same thing. That's enough to lead me to believe it should be re-examined. Truth is, I once watched half a video but got bored.
    • yummyfajitas 15y ago
      I've tried it. Or rather, my students did. Back when I was teaching, I know many of my students found Khan more understandable than me (or at least complementary to me). I started encouraging everyone to go watch Khan videos and see if they liked them. Many did, and learned quite a bit from them. I didn't like Khan that much - his style didn't work well for me. But it worked for many people. It's a lot to expect a single lecturer to be perfect for everyone. What would be really great is if we had multiple Khans, each teaching in different styles.
• jlgosse 15y ago
  The only real problem I have with the Khan Academy is that they appear to be using a mouse to write notes on the digital chalkboard. This is incredibly messy and really hard to understand. For example: In the first video on motion, Sal is going on and on about the topic, and is doing a wonderful job. At the same time, he's writing notes. This would be fine, except the first '=' he writes looks like a 'c', and then in his first example, he is literally saying "D is equal to fifty.", while clearly, his writing looks more like "d=60". Seriously, couldn't Bill Gates buy some new tools for Sal? It really takes away from the production value when I see this.
  • mckoss 15y ago
    He uses a Wacom tablet to write.
  • spicyj 15y ago
    The newer videos have more sophisticated drawing and recording software; he simply hasn't redone the old ones. Example: http://www.khanacademy.org/video/object-image-height-and-distance-relationship?playlist=Physics http://www.khanacademy.org/video/object-image-height-and-dis...
  • deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
• synnik 15y ago
  As someone who has been a teacher and trainer of various kinds, removing your own bias from your teaching does not come naturally or easily. So I think the points made (while exaggerated) have at least a kernel of validity. However, ranting on a blog is not a productive response. Instead, I'd document them as constructive criticism and send them to Mr. Khan directly. I've got to believe that anyone who is passionate enough about education to put the Khan academy together in the first place is also willing to hear suggestions on improvements.
  • RuadhanMc 15y ago
    Is removing bias even possible? I mean, even if you succeed from removing your own personal bias, can you be sure that the person who wrote the material from which you learned had successfully removed their bias? And the person from which they learned?
• ph0rque 15y ago
  I think this article points out a weakness that has a rather simple solution: Khan should bring experts in other fields with a knack of teaching well into the academy. Also, sometime in the near to mid-future, the platform should open up to allow anyone to submit their own video lectures.
• bh42222 15y ago
  Oh no, a 15 minute summary of the history form WWII to Vietnam isn't thorough Well, I, never! In all seriousness, I am not sure what the author's point is. Summaries lack detail? Short things are short?
  • crux_ 15y ago
    One of the author's points is that the essence of history is "who & why", not "what & when," and that Khan is completely omitting that essence in his summaries.
    • enry_straker 15y ago
      The whole point of a Summary video of history, and what is tested in class for most students, is the what and when - not the who and why. Also, from reading the original scare-mongering article based on a single video viewed by the author, i didn't get the feeling that he was complaining about the lack of 'who and why' but rather libruls like Khan and Gates are taking over the world and throws in a irrelevant point about personalization engines in google and facebook.
      • crux_ 15y ago
        Yes, the article read like something produced by The Heritage Foundation; but that doesn't mean it cannot have some valid points along the way. As to your first sentence, one of the largest weaknesses of the entire essay is that most every criticism being applied to Khan could be applied equally to traditional education; the fact that something is tested for in class certainly doesn't make it the best thing to be learning.
• joshaidan 15y ago
  "Imagine the consequences if his videos did become the DOS or Windows of education: tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of young minds, all fed by Mr. Khan’s fizzy version of history. Not only would all students absorb the same value judgments, goofy comments, and cultural relativism, they would also conclude that Mr. Khan’s factoids constitute knowledge of history. " Isn't the simple solution to this problem is to hire other teachers than just having Mr. Khan do everything? In addition to Mr. Khan, hire some Japanese, Germany, and Russian history teachers so we get another perspective in addition to an American one. Perhaps Khan Academy should become the universal platform for teachers from around the world to deliver their curriculum. Then we would have a much richer education system with a plethora of perspectives--which would even beat our current system of one teacher teaching everything in a classroom.
• bstar 15y ago
  I agree strongly with the Author's issues with presenting history in this manner. History is a living document of clues that are merely interpreted by us- very little is fact. I've been studying Egyptology for about 6 years now and it's amazing what perspectives have changed in that time. We're even starting to see stories now that are challenging the "Out of Africa" theory. Whenever I hear a teacher/lecturer describe something historical as fact, it makes me cringe because so much is left to interpretation. Khan doing history in this manner is dangerous. But at the same time, the ways our schools do history is dangerous as well. Presenting singular perspectives and presenting them as fact only breeds misinformation. I believe khan academy is superb for math and sciences, especially for quick overviews of concepts. But the format is absolutely terrible for presenting historical topics. Understanding history requires reading from many resources and coming to logical conclusions. A copy/paste job from wikipedia is simply pathetic.
• hook 15y ago
  It is a lot easier to write an essay critique than it is to sit down and fix the problem by recording your own set of video lectures that teach people what you know.
• mquander 15y ago
  The way the author writes, it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't. Fact is, Khan's videos are considered good because the actual history education that most students take away from classrooms is even worse. Like most other subjects, that's what you get when you try to deliver a comprehensive, objective, detail-oriented education to students who (within a small margin of error) couldn't give a shit. Never mind the Bolsheviks or the timeline -- what percentage of randomly sampled American high school graduates would even know that there was a Russian Revolution if you asked them? If we can replace zero history with a fifteen-minute-chunk version of history, I'm for it.
  • boredguy8 15y ago
    The problem is that you think someone who watches this video would then "know there was a Russian Revolution." No, they wouldn't--at least not in any strong sense of the term "know". All they would have is some phonetic sequence that they could repeat. At that point, it's just a game of 'guess the password'. http://lesswrong.com/lw/iq/guessing_the_teachers_password/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/iq/guessing_the_teachers_password/
  • pg 15y ago
    it's as if he thinks there is some superior alternative that Khan is displacing. Last I checked, there ain't. Yes, that's what I was thinking. The stuff the author quotes sounds bad, but probably better than you'd get from some teachers I had. Plus on the Internet kids can watch these videos at any age. His simplified version of history could be way better than what e.g. an 8 year old might otherwise have access to.
    • jpadvo 15y ago
      In this case, it doesn't matter that Khan is displacing worse things. These videos are still a disservice to their viewers. Better for people to know that they don't understand history, then to wrongly think they do know it. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
      • 15y ago
• sradnidge 15y ago
  When presented with '1 + 1 = 2', some people will be interested enough to ask why, and others won't give a fuck. Same goes for 'Hitler invaded Poland'. It doesn't mean one person is better or worse than the other, they're just different. The real problem will arise when people stop being interested. And when that happens it won't be the fault of the Khan Academy or wikipedia or the Internet or TV or video games or religion or <insert favoured target here>.
• torque2 15y ago
  Khan's physics videos are no better. Excerpts below from my series taking a critical view of Khan Academy: http://bit.ly/khancritic http://bit.ly/khancritic ... Ironically, Khan's TED talk is in stark contrast to two previous TED talks: * Dan Meyer - Math Curriculum Makeover http://bit.ly/DanMeyerTED http://bit.ly/DanMeyerTED * Sir Ken Robinson - Do Schools Kill Creativity? http://bit.ly/SirKenTED http://bit.ly/SirKenTED According to Dan, today’s math curriculum is teaching students to expect (and excel at) paint-by-numbers classwork, robbing kids of a skill more important than solving problems: formulating them. How does Khan Academy foster problem posing and creativity? If your philosophy of education is sit-and-get, i.e., teaching is telling and learning is listening, then Khan Academy (and flipping) are more efficient than in-classroom lecturing. But why lecture at all? TRUE progressive educators, TRUE education visionaries and revolutionaries don’t want to do these things better. We want to DO BETTER THINGS. Rather than instructing students with Khan’s videos, teachers should be inspiring them to figure things out on their own and learn how to create their own knowledge by working together. For example, instead of relying on lectures and textbooks, Modeling Instruction in Physics emphasizes active student construction of conceptual and mathematical models in an interactive learning community. Students are engaged with simple scenarios to learn to model the physical world. In comparison to traditional instruction, Modeling is extremely effective — under expert modeling instruction high school students average more than two standard deviations higher on a standard instrument for assessing conceptual understanding of physics. Watch one Modeling class in action: http://bit.ly/ModelingPhysics http://bit.ly/ModelingPhysics . In the clip, the teacher says, “I don’t lecture at all. Instead, I create experiences for the students either in the lab or puzzles and problems for them to solve and it’s up to them to try to figure that out.” I’ve often wondered why this type of teaching hasn’t gotten more attention in the media. Maybe because the teacher is using simple things like whiteboards and bowling balls rather than shiny iPads and SmartBoards? While Khan argues that his videos now eliminate "one-size-fits-all" education, his videos are exactly that. I tried finding Khan Academy videos for my students to use as references for studying, or to use as a tutorial when there’s a substitute teacher, but the physics ones aren't very good. They don’t use a lot of the multiple representations that are so fundamental to learning. Concept development is minimal, and he unknowingly plays into student misconceptions. His videos do not align with proper Physics Education Research. Teachers improve via reading up on pedagogy and getting feedback from mentors & students. Where is Sal's feedback? Where's the pedagogy? The research that Khan chooses to ignore is summarized in this one book, now available as a free PDF: "How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom" http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126 http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=10126
• eyko 15y ago
  I believe it's still a very good way to get students to actually read a book. In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job, and the author of the article... well, he fails to get that. The idea behind it is getting children interested in history enough that they would pick up a book. It's not, as I understand it, the only account of history they're expected to have. And to think otherwise is to think stupid.
  • michael_dorfman 15y ago
    In 15 minutes, Khan does a great job A great job of what, exactly?
    • eyko 15y ago
      Of getting you into the narrative, interested enough to wonder – "what led to the cold war?" or things like that. I haven't seen the video, I've only read the article, and from what the author writes... it seems he goes directly into events without building / contextualising too much. But events are interesting (like the space race) to children, and they will probably be more interested once they've got a timeline of a few anecdotes, than if they started with a dense lesson for each topic. I see it as investigative learning: you get some facts, a few events, a few ideas... and you're curious. You want to get more knowledge or discover the truth behind something, then you try to fill those gaps with evidence (in this case, with more historical facts?). I wouldn't dismiss Khan just because he doesn't go into detail with aspects. For example, the holocaust... it that the only thing that we remember from the WW2? In fact, Allies and Russia did not go to war because of the holocaust, so why is it so important that he mentions it? Is everything else so "not" important in WW2? If I were giving an account of it, I would even be praising Germany's technological advancements as a nation and comparing them to their contemporaries.
      • michael_dorfman 15y ago
        My question, then, is: is his lecture better, worse, or about the same as we'd expect in, say, a typical undergraduate history lecture? I wouldn't dismiss Khan just because he doesn't go into detail with aspects I wouldn't dream of doing that-- there's only so much detail one can fit into a brief lecture. The problem (if there is one) is one of selection and interpretation.
• astine 15y ago
  The author's complaint seems to be that the Khan Academy's history lectures give an overly simplified view of history and that this, along with their availability, will make them more attractive to students who, the author fears, will watch Khan Academy videos in lieu of studying the topics in depth. This, he fears, will lead to a cultural forgetfulness of what the author considers to be the important moral lessons of WWII. It's an important objection. There is a real tendency towards laziness among human begins and an easy availability of a simplified history could discourage people from deeper study. A simplified history from only one viewpoint is even worse. But I think he's pointing the finger in the wrong direction. Wikipedia is already a far greater threat on that matter and their are plenty of simplified versions of history available, some even taught in schools. Sal is only example of this (and possibly a product as the author alludes.) The proper solution would be more, and more in depth videos from other perspectives. I know some people who might be willing to do just that...
• ajscherer 15y ago
  A visit to the wikipedia entry on the National Association of Scholars may help you understand the author's perspective. The first half of this article makes a reasonably convincing case that Mr. Khan is a much worse history teacher than math tutor. The second half of the article makes a totally convincing case that the author understands the Internet worse than Khan understands anything. I guess in his nightmare scenario the "algorithms of the Internet" will one day cause everyone's web-browsers to redirect every request to one of Mr. Khan's fizzy history lectures where he just glosses right over the moral infallibility of the US, the inherent superiority of western culture, and the fact that Jesus died for your sins. The same algorithms will doubtless prevent the author from creating his own history videos clarifying those topics for people. After all, Mr. Khan appeared on Charlie Rose!
  • edtechdev 15y ago
    Exactly: NAS "opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action and seeks to counter what it considers a 'liberal bias' in academia" Quotes from this article: "Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence" "A MoveOn.org liberal,..." This article can be safely ignored, including the author's other article about how "Online education should serve as a home for orphaned liberal arts and "boutique" courses." There are actually more substantive and constructive criticisms of the Khan Academy out there. But ultimately, we should make sure we don't ignore the great parts of it, either. After all, one guy recording screencasts and sharing them on youtube has helped millions of students now with understanding and doing math and other topics. With no budget and no formal training. Imagine if we had 1000 or 10,000 Salman Khan's teaching the public online, with perhaps a little more pedagogical content knowledge (http://www.tpck.org/tpck/index.php?title=Pedagogical_Content_Knowledge_(PCK) http://www.tpck.org/tpck/index.php?title=Pedagogical_Content... ), and using other tools in addition to just video (simulations, assessments, etc.).
• salmankhan 15y ago
  Hi Everyone, This is Sal here. I wanted to respond directly on the author's page, but they seem to be having a problem taking comments. The reason why I make history videos is that many people I know (many of whom are quite educated) don't even have a basic scaffold of world events in their minds (or the potential causality between events). Most American high school and college students would find it difficult to give even a summary of the Vietnam War or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many of these people have sat through years of traditional history classes (taught through state-mandated books by "experts"). Even more worrying is many experts who have taken one side or another of a historical issue and view their viewpoints as facts (this is the tone of most history books). If the author really watched my videos, he would see that I start most of them telling the listener to be skeptical of anything I tell them or anyone tells them; that no matter how footnoted something is, in the end it is dependent on people's accounts--the people who weren't killed--which are subject to bias (no matter how well-intentioned). Very few history books or professors do this. If anything, they create a false sense of certainty. As for the "one voice" issue, I don't see how a guy making digestible videos that inform and encourage skepticism (on YouTube where anyone else can do the same) are more dangerous than state-mandated text books. I don't see how lectures that are open for the world to scrutinize (and comment about on YouTube and our site) are more dangerous than a lone teacher or professor who can say whatever they like to their classrooms with no one there to correct or dispute them. Finally, there is nothing I would like to see more than other teachers/professors/experts adding their voice to the mix. Rather than wasting energy commenting on other people's work with pseudo-intellectual babble, why don't they produce their own videos and post them on YouTube? If someone can produce 20 videos that seem decent and want to do more as part of the Khan Academy, we'll point our audience at them. If our students respond, we'll figure out a way that they can potentially make it a career. regards, Sal
  • useful 15y ago
    Are you starting to use videos from other people? I'd love to see 3rd party content on the site provided it scored well with both students(attention) and teachers(content).
    • salmankhan 15y ago
• Apocryphon 15y ago
  The article is full of FUD, but Khan himself probably shouldn't be teaching humanities (like history) or social sciences (other than for his own specialization, economics) or the life sciences (and any other discipline he is not too familiar with).
• Revisor 15y ago
  If the Khan Academy were the final station in someone's education, as the author silently presumes, that would be bad. It's simplified and sometimes wrong as the article points out (though no educating institution gets everything right) . If on the other hand Khan Academy were the FIRST station in education: igniting passion for a subject - as it does for some people in math and economy - inspiring people to explore further and read more about it, mending the damage done by our institutional education! Than that would be a great achievement regardless of the mistakes, simplicities and even the ideological leaning.
• mbesto 15y ago
  It seems a bit strange that Mr Clemens [1] who is a English teacher that teaches online courses is commenting on issues concerning online teaching in history. Regardless he does bring up some very valid points that have plagued history scholars for centuries, but offers no real solution. I suppose the title "The Dangerous Mr. Kahn" that suggests that Mr. Kahn is dangerous to history education is a bit too sensationalist to suggest that he is any more dangerous than today's media, school teachers, disagreeing historians, and countless other attempts to present historical information in a categorical way. Everything is up to interpretation. My interpretation of his overall point is that "no one person should control the messages of history". There is definitely some work to be done by Mr. Kahn in this regard and given his very open mind I don't doubt he already has considered this. [1]- http://www.mpcfaculty.net/david_clemens/default.htm http://www.mpcfaculty.net/david_clemens/default.htm
• Symmetry 15y ago
  While I think that the criticisms in this piece were misplaced, its very possible that there are better free history resources out there. I've very much enjoyed the History According to Bob podcast series, for instance, but those would probably be too in depth for teaching kids, except the overview episodes. http://www.summahistorica.com/index.htm http://www.summahistorica.com/index.htm
• Jason_Wilmot 15y ago
  How many brick and mortar history teachers are doing a far worse job than Khan? Probably a lot. Ok, so the content can be tightened up, but that's not why Bill Gates is excited here. Take the Khan concept, pick the worlds finest educators in respective fields, build the content, and distribute. That's the game changer here.
• cstefanovici 15y ago
  Of course Khan lectures are not all encompassing just like his lecture on IPOs aren't but they provide a great deal of entry level knowledge. If the author ever imagined that WW2 could be explained in one short Khan Academy video his expectations were wrong not Khan Academy itself. Personally, I believe he is a spiteful fool afraid of a revolution in education.
  • hugh3 15y ago
    Personally, I believe he is a spiteful fool afraid of a revolution in education Please refrain from name-calling. On one hand, you're rightly pointing out that one fifteen-minute video by one guy can never be an all-encompassing summary of thirty years of world history. And you're right. But then you're talking about the Khan Academy as being some kind of "revolution" in education, even though the Khan academy still consists of fifteen-minute videos by one guy. This is the article's point -- there's some pretty serious limits to what we can expect out of a Khan-Academy sort of model. He's done a great job with introductory mathematics, but there's a crapload of work that would need to be done to make it an adequate source for other subjects.
• JabavuAdams 15y ago
  I think the Khan methodology works very very well for elementary math, and I'm a huge fan of the automatically-generated practice problems. These are more valuable than the videos IMHO. It's valid to point out that other subject matter may not be well presented by this kind of approach. On the other hand, it's early days. So fast-forward 20-years when you can download a video-game from Khan Academy that will teach you about Vietnam or the Korean war that is exhaustively researched and curated by a hobbyist and veteran (from both sides) community. Imagine downloading an interactive demo that shows that even if you target an airstrike to within 1m in an urban area, fragments will travel 500 m into neighbouring apartment blocks. That would be better than kids learning their military history from CoD.
• bigwally 15y ago
  David Clemens (the author of the article) should read the text books presented in American high schools. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
• crux_ 15y ago
  Completely and totally off topic, but I find the popularity of the "filter bubble" concept fascinating. It's not as if the vast majority of us didn't already manually create deeply effective filter bubbles, after all; but now that we can blame it on algorithms rather than our own nature, it's much easier to talk about. (( Once upon a time I thought the internet would be a cultural/ideological melting pot, but it was clear a decade ago that it was having the opposite effect.... ))
  • pjscott 15y ago
    Is it a bad thing that people are diverging into a greater multitude of more varied filter bubbles than ever before? It should be fine, as long as you can easily travel among bubbles. Back when filter bubbles were more geographic and cultural, it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. With the internet, it's easy. People use the phrase "melting pot" like it's a good thing, but I don't want to be melted in a pot.
    • crux_ 15y ago
      > it wasn't so easy to poke your head out and see really different worldviews. With the internet, it's easy. That doesn't really matter if nobody does it -- and it turns out to be even easier to find (& stay in) communities that simply echo & reinforce your worldview. As for the rest, I think you're just being contrary for the sake of being contrary. It seems fairly obvious that one of the least intellectually healthy things out there, from individuals all the way up to societies, is to be surrounded solely by people who agree with you. Isolation breeds ignorance and extremism.
• rsheridan6 15y ago
  Khan Academy is mostly about math, and it shouldn't be judged almost solely on the basis of one history video. I have my 7 year old doing math well beyond what they've taught him in school using Khan Academy.
• scythe 15y ago
  >I pulled up his video “U.S. History Overview 3—World War II to Vietnam” Well, there's your problem. If you concern yourself primarily with US History, as Khan does (and declares what he is doing), you're going to necessarily ignore a lot of non-US perspectives, like, y'know, Leningrad, Churchill, the rape of Nanking, Japan's lack of oil reserves, the whole bit. The real question is not whether Mr. Khan did a poor job of explaining US History, it is whether the idea of teaching "$country history", when we concern ourselves primarily with foreign affairs as Mr. Khan does, whether focusing on the actions of $country in an era of global politics gives a skewed and ultimately inaccurate perspective. The answer to that should be a rather obvious 'yes'... I do doubt however that Mr. Khan truly hopes to achieve or at least does not really believe that he can achieve a monopoly in education. Perhaps his format will be copied but I doubt his lectures themselves will become the status quo especially if they are as lacking in depth as the example shown (I am not really familiar with the Khan Academy). The graver problem shown in the article does not really concern the Khan Academy but rather our method of consuming information from a general standpoint, and the dangers of the personalization of news; but this is a rather tired complaint, and the author does not suggest a novel approach for combatting it.
• ddkrone 15y ago
  Picking on Khan is a little too easy. He is not an entrenched institution and Khan himself has never claimed that his goal is to replace the classroom with his own videos. His videos are just supposed to be reviews and overviews of what teachers should be teaching in class anyway so if the teachers do things right then Khan's videos will just be helpful supplements for studying for tests and reinforcing material the student already knows. If NAS and other institutions designed to keep education on track were doing their job then there would be no void being filled by Salman Khan's videos so instead of scrutinizing Khan Academy Mr. Clemens should really be taking a closer look at NAS and other academic institutions.
• colbyolson 15y ago
  I think the problem is bias. Math can be taught without bias, as numbers can only be seen as numbers. There are only a few ways you can teach maths. When you teach history, it brings in a plethora of views, opinions, and bias. There will always be someone saying "hey wait a minute, you forgot <fact>.", and I'm not sure there's a way around that. At least not in history.
• richcollins 15y ago
  I don't think he gets that Khan isn't the big idea. The market can select for history teachers that are better than Khan. The big idea is that many won't need universities moving forward.
• dendory 15y ago
  I went there expecting teachers whining about a new teaching model, but seeing what the videos really are like, and the things said, I fully agree with the article. I think having a full video based classroom for everyone would be good, but Mr Khan seems to be doing a rather sloppy job filling every topic in the world by himself.
• tibbon 15y ago
  It seems to be pretty nitpicking. He says things that plenty of educators would likely say in describing events such as, "as you'd imagine". His point about FDR's viewpoint of Hitler's invasion of Poland is really weak and I just don't get it. Everything actually is relative. The Germans probably thought it was just as fine (if not moreso) to invade Poland as in the US Bush thought it was ok to invade Iraq. Of course history is written by the victors. Had Germany won, it would have been written as a good action from their perspective. So in 15 minutes he doesn't dig into terribly much detail. Let's face it, even after a teacher spends an entire semester going over this with 8th graders, in 10 years time do they remember all the details? Details are something that can come after interest is solidified. Pushing details on 8th graders misses the larger point often as it is buried in dates, maps, names and such. If you get them hooked on the main point, they will find the details.
• peterwwillis 15y ago
  Uh. Would citing sources of information with pop-ups in the videos help? Perhaps links to online books or wikipedia articles (which I realize potentially creates a loop of false references, but whatever)
• crux 15y ago
  It's quite apparent to me that Mr. Clemens' political leanings and the exigencies of blogging culture have worked together to transform a worthwhile small point into a pretty overbaked big point. Mr. Clemens demonstrates ably, I think, that Mr. Khan is a lousy history teacher. I haven't taken any of his science courses, so I can't speak about them, but it's clear that when it comes to history Mr. Khan lacks the depth of knowledge and fluency with the facts to teach effectively. So he ends up missing things, leaving things unexplained, falling back on pop culture depictions, oversimplifying motivations. On the other hand—what does this have to do with pretty much anything else? I think it's not a stretch to see how every deficiency displayed there can be directly derived from a lack of familiarity with the material. Do you really need to try to make the overheated claim that being waffly with facts and simplistic with the human narrative is the result of an academia-enforced political and epistemological philosophy? Mr. Khan isn't exactly saying, you know, 'As we learn from a cursory reading of Baudrillard, the concept that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in any meaningful, substantial way is clearly a fiction of the necessities of realpolitik.' He's just fudging it. Mr Clemens continues to spiral outward, proposing a grim reality where all our education is mediated through Facebook and thus (because of the nature of Facebook's algorithms at the moment) through political conformity, confirmation bias, and groupthink—which results in Mr. Khan's own pernicious beliefs being beamed, unopposed, into the minds of our modern youth. All this from “from FDR’s point of view, Hitler definitely was in the wrong here” and a reference to _Saving Private Ryan_. Mr Clemens should have restricted his aim to a more manageable and germane topic: the unfortunate fiction that we can teach history, or anything else, by reading out loud from the textbook, or by stringing together a sequence of pictures of famous people. Teaching is hard, and many people in lecture halls and seminars all across this great nation do it poorly every day. Unfortunately, when it comes to World War II, Mr. Khan is a member of their ranks. I'm not sure that Bill Gates' neoliberal plans for a New World Order history course necessarily enter into it.
• hillel 15y ago
  To the author of the article, Mr. Clemens, and other academics annoyed by Mr. Khan's compressed description of important topics, I ask the following question: Other than criticize this new source of education, what are YOU doing to address the needs of people hungry for learning other than continuing on the same well worn path that you've been on for decades? Professional academics whining about Khan Academy ignore the fact that their customers are telling them something by flocking to Khan's videos. They're saying that higher education today doesn't always meet their needs, and they need these services packaged, priced, and delivered in new ways. If Mr. Clemens doesn't like Khan's treatment of a particular topic, how about recording your own video that does it right. It does seem easier to criticize and keep to your own cloistered little world rather than put yourself out there and try to innovate. But that's just my perspective.
• kerryiob 15y ago
  My own thoughts on this issue along these same lines: http://www.kerryob.com/2011/06/08/concerns-on-khan-academys-goals/ http://www.kerryob.com/2011/06/08/concerns-on-khan-academys-...
• bsiemon 15y ago
  It seems like teaching how to research and read about history would be better than short narratives about various periods.
• anandkesari 15y ago
  The postmodern approach of teaching history as a perspective is flawed in that this perspective should be developed by the student and not fed to them by the teacher. How can a student develop perspective without knowledge of facts? How is this different from dogma?
• drhodes 15y ago
  One of the author's gripes: Unfortunately, he does not explain what a Bolshevik is nor how or why the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian empire, nor why it matters but no dilly-dallying, just fast forward and bingo... This is a limitation of the 1-way set in stone nature of video. It could be addressed by augmenting the lecture with an interface similar to an interactive-movie-game at the arcades circa 1993 called Dragon's Lair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Lair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_Lair). A concept similar to "pick your own adventure" books but with video. For instance, if some lecture L is about ideas A, B, C, D, and there is another lecture B+ in the library that specifically targets B in detail, then there could be an option presented to the user around the timestamp B to divert to B+ in depth, then come back to C. The important part is that the material is relevant as decided by the user. If they decide B+ isn't what they wanted, they could cut right back to C immediately.
• spencerfry 15y ago
  I watched a few of the Khan Academy videos. They're fun and entertaining and you may even learn a little, but they don't cover anything beyond the surface of a topic. I think the Open Yale videos where you can watch a full semester of a Yale professor's class are far more informative: http://oyc.yale.edu/ http://oyc.yale.edu/
• lekanwang 15y ago
  I was quite disappointed by his non-technical lectures as well, and hope they improve. But, even if they are improved, almost every student watching that lecture will miss a big part of the humanities--being with peers, actively engaging in group discussion, and finding responses to questions by actively synthesizing information. Having an interesting discussion is like finally coding something interesting with a new programming language you just picked up. Learning the facts or the syntax isn't the point. Khan has the vision that these videos will be used in conjunction with classroom teachers, but with roles reversed from the current school system--students will watch lectures on their own time, and in class, they will engage in discussions and doing practice problems. This seems to be the part that was missed in the article, and much of the discussion here. If that symbiosis is executed correctly (and the lectures are improved), this could be powerful.
• hasaneducation 15y ago
  From the article, Khan lectures on things he knows nothing about. Is that the revolution in education everyone is so excited about? Getting teachers that don't know the subject matter? His background is math and engineering, his history knowledge he gets from movies and his biology, he gets from pondering. Charlatan, definition of. Khan on history of D-Day: "if you’ve ever seen Saving Private Ryan it starts with this and it’s probably, you know, I’ve never been in, never been on . . . never stormed a beach, but I can imagine it is probably the most realistic re-enactment of what it was like to storm the beach at Normandy" Khan on Entropy: In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy.
  • ern 15y ago
    and his biology, he gets from pondering... Khan on Entropy: In a recent talk he explained how he prepared for his lecture on entropy: "I took two weeks off and I just pondered it, and I called every professor and everyone I could talk to and I said, Let's go have a glass of wine about entropy." I'm sure you realise that entropy is not a concept from biology, but it isn't clear from your comment. Since he has a background in engineering, and therefore a reasonable physics and chemistry grounding, I would guess that he had his "glasses of wine" and pondering to make sure he covered all the bases, and thought of a helpful way of explaining it. Have you watched his lectures on entropy? Is there anything wrong with them? I'm sure constructive criticism is better than calling him names and picking on his research methods.
• palguay 15y ago
  I looked up the author of the article. He is a professor , I wanted to see what his great book course was about, I could not access it and Khan academy offers me Instant access , this is something that the people in academics like him do not seem to understand why kids love khan academy. BTW here is the course and I am definitely not interested in it http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/GreatBooks/Pages/GreatBooksCourses.aspx http://www.mpc.edu/academics/Humanities/GreatBooks/Pages/Gre...
• Dramatize 15y ago
  Kahn's videos are what magazines are to books. It's much more accessible/enjoyable to read a PC magazine than read a technical document. They expose topics to a much broader audience. I loved the French Revolution videos.
• tatsuke95 15y ago
  Entertaining read. I agree with the assertion that The Khan Academy, via brief video clips, may be a terrible place to learn history (though it is GREAT for other subjects). But as others have noted...who cares? The internet is filled with opinions and falsities, far more "dangerous" than anything on Mr. Khan's site, that pass themselves off as "history". It's just a matter of degree.
• pontifier 15y ago
  I was at the Singularity summit in SLC this weekend and had the privilege of hearing Mr. Shantanu Sinha (president of Khan Academy) speak. One of the questions from the audience after his presentation was about how they plan to teach subjects that are more open to interpretation than math. His answer (according to my notes) is that they are working on it, and it is a challenge to eliminate bias. He stressed that they have just recently grown to 8 employees thanks to the recent funding, and that they are doing their best. Their overall vision is one of enabling true mastery of subjects by enabling students to proceed at their own pace, and expand upon on a topic only after mastering the prerequisites (switching from percent knowledge in fixed time to complete knowledge in variable time). The eventual goal is to change the in-class focus from data transmission to social interaction, learning interpersonal skills, communication, leadership, and teamwork. I was sceptical about Khan academy, but I believe that with sufficient funding and attention they will be able to create a curriculum that is at least as good as what the average student gets now, and probably much better. They have also started experimenting with A/B testing using analytics on their 2 million students to find the most effective ways to teach.
• flavy 15y ago
  I like to think of Mr Khan efforts as something similar to those of the mentor in Sophie's World. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophies_World http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophies_World He can teach the audience on how to think about subjects, but I doubt he can be deep on all of them. This is very helpful but is not scalable. I wonder how this effort will become mature if it continues to get funded and promoted.
• iwwr 15y ago
  Uh oh, Mr. Khan is not reactionary enough for the tastes of someone like Clemens: Here Mr. Khan stands exposed as possessing a historical perspective steeped in academia’s standard issue, postmodern, left-leaning narrative of cultural relativism, multiculturalism, and moral equivalence.
• aufreak3 15y ago
  Math and hard science learning can be reasonably measured by the kind of objective testing that KA does, however that is inadequate for subjects like history. Knowing about a bunch of events says nothing about the "lesson". I wonder how KA plans to address that, if at all. IMO, it'll be good if KA focuses on the hard basics like mathematics. (By "hard" I don't mean "difficult" btw.)
• Rustee 15y ago
  After reading the article I feel it 'attacks' Sal individually and not the KA as a whole, quoting vocabulary used by him. "Historical velocity is achieved through words and phrases such as “essentially,” “fast forward,” and “as you can imagine.”
• rweba 15y ago
  The entire success of Khan Academy rests on providing simple quick introductions to different topics. If Khan made the videos longer or went into more details the students would get bored and it might as well be a History channel documentary or a NOVA science show (fun for certain people but unlikely to capture the interest of many 8th graders). As to this specific video I actually thought it was very good - precisely because of Khan's conversational breezy style that managed to keep my interest even though I was quite familiar with these events. A longer lecture would have me closing the tab pretty quick and I imagine the same reaction from the target audience. Lastly, Khan Academy videos in their current form are probably not going to replace the entire educational system, but if you want to get a quick introduction to a certain topic they seem to be effective. For example I just watched this video a few minutes ago and approximately doubled my knowledge of diabetes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLjSY00JlE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPLjSY00JlE and I would guess some of the viewers have similar increases in their knowledge in other topics. THAT is where Khan Academy currently excels and it is a perfectly worthwhile contribution.