Khan Academy Founder Talks Radical Education Reform and The One World Schoolhouse

1x 1.1x 1.25x 1.5x 2x 3x

:15 :15

Download

Khan Academy Founder Talks Radical Education Reform and The One World Schoolhouse

"There's a lot more demand for people who want to just improve themselves than anyone would have guessed," says author Salman Khan, founder of the free educational video series that bears his name and the new book, The One World Schoolhouse: Education Reimagined.

Originally conceived to help his cousins learn math, Khan Academy now offers free online lectures and video tutorials to more than 6 million students each month. Videos covering topics as diverse as mathematics, physics, history, and economics have garnered over 200 million views and generated significant funding from both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Khan to discuss how to radically transform American education, why technology is never the solution reformers expect, and how massive amounts of money go missing every day in conventional public schools.

About 14 minutes.

Camera by Meredith Bragg and Joshua Swain. Edited by Swain.

Scroll below for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Comments

[sloopyinca]

KHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN Academy.

[The Immaculate Trouser]

Sal is intelligent, but not experienced. His pattern indicates two-dimensional thinking.

[pmains]

Is that a joke about XY axis he's looking at?

[JW]

THE OVERRIDE! WHERE'S THE MANUAL OVERRIDE?

[sloopyinca]

Would they get more traffic if he was grateful to people? Perhaps is he ended every segment with a "Thank you, come again"?

[$park?]

Meh, people don't put a lot of stock in gratitude anymore. I get funny looks when I thank people for their help. Especially the kids working the cash register at various store.

[sloopyinca]

Well, I was going with racism but you took it seriously. I'll try harder to be a dick next time.

[$park?]

Funny, you're more of a dick when you're not trying to be one than when you are.

[Zeb]

Yeah, just relax and let it come naturally.

[alan_s]

There will not be radical reform in anything for some time now.

[$park?]

And it especially sucks considering even incremental changes are thought of as radical.

[mr simple]

THIS is CHEM 423!

[Tim]

Education requires bricks, mortar, buses, teachers, principals, janitors, timetables, DISCIPLINE! You can't just hand it out free on the internet.

[$park?]

He offered the world EDUCATION!

[sloopyinca]

What manner of man are you that can summon idiocy without link or reference?

[Tim]

"He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghosts"

[sloopyinca]

Meh, I'll play: "It puts the lotion on it's skin or else it gets the hose again."

[Tim]

Links?
http://www.ed.gov/
http://www.nea.org/

[sloopyinca]

What's next? Are you gonna link to the DOJ and tell us they're needed for there to be justice in the world?

[Fluhdoten1]

justice is codified by the constitution (rights) and by legislated laws.

ever expanding knowledge is too complex to codify.

this is why govt intrusion into education is a non-starter.

at some point, usually very soon (like kindergarden), ppls idea of what is truth diverges.

obama wanted to teach homosexuality to kindergardeners as socially acceptable. that is truth to some ppl, but most often not those who have 5 year old kids.

having govt decide what is and is not truth is just bad. hoisting that cross on govts shoulders to bear is a grotesque twisting of its purpose. its simply better left to the discretion of each individual. let them get it wrong on their own instead of having a govt with impunity tell them how to be wrong. none of us are getting "TRUTH" right in the first place, including science or EPA or any single entity. just stop blackmailing govt into thrusting its falsehoods onto the peasants. its lose-lose.

"truth" shouldnt be backed by the only game in town that has a legal monopoly on violence, judges, and lawmakers. these ppl need a heavy dose of humble pie, cuz they aint getting the right answers and so shouldnt be foisting their version on others.

[Fist of Etiquette]

This is ceti-alpha.com. Ceti-alpha.org was seized six months after we registered it. The shock shifted the traffic and the entire site went to waste.

[Tim]

You green blooded son of a bitch!

[JW]

Save your breath, Admiral. These social media managers swore an oath to me before you were even born.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Even with such big players as Google and Bill Gates in his corner, as the Khan Academy model becomes more popular, expect a slew of hatchet-jobs against him. As Khan advocates Bloom's mastery learning, it threatens many paradigms that modern-day educrats hold dear. The first is that mastery learning allows the student to be tested again and again until he or she shows mastery of the material. This is incompatible with a standardized curriculum that requires a certain amount of material to be taught within a certain amount of time. This also prevents "accountability" assessments of the teacher as these standardized tests assume the prior conditions.

[0x90]

IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDING! HOW CAN YOU HAVE ANY PUDDING, IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT?

[ljomccullough]

Thanks for the interview. As homeschoolers, we use Khan Academy frequently. While the name of the book scares me a bit (well it scares me A LOT), I might have to pick it up. Educational paradigms shifting can only be a good thing.

[?J?? de ?guila]

The Stalinistic Fascists will find a way to fuck this up.

[Terry VanNoy]

Sal Khan deserves all of the media and attention he is getting because of his tremendous vision, leadership, and work with Khan Academy. I first learned about his videos in 2009, after I had already been recording SMARTboard videos for my math students in my high school classroom. It turns out that we started about the same time, realizing that kids at all levels really responded to this new educational opportunity to be in control of their own learning through uploaded videos.
The idea of Khan Academy, that our educational system needs to be improved, tweaked, rethought, and restructured, has been an inspiration for me as I continue to do my thing, at a smaller scale but in the same direction. My YouTube channel "Math Class with Terry V" is doing great, and has spawned my live online tutoring web site MathPowerLine.com. The point of this shameless plug is that I am not alone. Sal, you have generated a lot of thought and energy around this idea that our schools can be improved in dramatic ways, so thank you for being one of the first! Terry VanNoy