I was in a car the other day with friends who don’t pay much attention to education issues, and one asked me, “Who is this guy who figured out how to teach math to everyone?” He said he read about him in Time magazine. Thus is a myth created.
I am not a reliable critic of math methods, it’s not my field so I have not assayed a view of Khan and his videos.
But today I read a devastating critique. The bottom line: the videos aren’t very good and neither is the math.
I have a tendency to want to see educational ideas developed in a sober and careful way, because I know of US education’s tendency to jump on bandwagons and adopt the latest fad and new thing. Teachers tend to be skeptical of quick fixes and properly so.
It is not that they are resistant to innovation, but they are resistant to hype, and properly so.
The author, Karim Kai Ani, writes as follows:
The real problem with Khan Academy is not the low-quality videos or the absence of any pedagogical intentionality. It’s just one resource among many, after all. Rather, the danger is that we believe the promise of silver bullets – of simple solutions to complex problems – and in so doing become deaf to what really needs to be done.
As Arne Duncan said, we need to invest in professional development, and provide teachers with the support and resources they need to be successful. We need to give them time to collaborate, and create relevant content that engages students and develops not just rote skills but also conceptual understanding. We have to help new teachers figure out classroom management – to reach the student who shows up late to class every day and never brings a pencil – and free up veteran teachers to mentor younger colleagues.
I recently attended the inaugural #TwitterMathCamp, a collection of teachers who traveled from around the country (plus two Canucks!)…during their vacation…and paid out of pocket…to discuss how best to introduce proportions and whether slope always requires units.
We need to stop focusing on the teachers who are doing it wrong and instead recognize the ones who are doing it right: the Frank Noscheses and the Kate Nowaks; the Sadie Estrellas and the Sam Shaws; the ones who spend their time trying to become better to make someone else’s kids smarter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I saw my first Kahn video when my assistant principal showed it to me. Our school leadership team made a conscious decision to not inform our students of the site. The instruction was so poor we were afraid it would confuse them.
Of course a group of teachers would want to squelch KA. Why would they want people to learn concepts in a matter of minutes that the NEA says should take hours of classroom time?
The American public education structure is disgusting in it’s outright abuse of it’s charges.
That’s true as evidenced by your failure to learn the difference between “its” and “it’s,” the latter being a contraction for “it is,” not the possessive form of “it.”
Had you only learned from KA, you’d never have made that error.
Meanwhile, no one I know in mathematics education holds the idiotic parody of an opinion you just tried to put into the mouths of all professional mathematics teachers. And I’m neither a member of the NEA or any other union. And when I was, I didn’t hold opinions based on the union but on what I saw as reasonable based on my professional judgment. Of course, a teacher-basher like you wouldn’t have any understanding of that.
I have written, along with Christopher Danielson, a rather pointed critique of Sal Khan’s lack of diligence in planning his lessons; it appeared in Valerie Strauss’ WASHINGTON POST column on July 25, 2012. You should read it, if you can handle the cognitive dissonance it would cause any intelligent person who knows anything about math teaching.
And why, if I’m so interested in keeping SOUND free math teaching away from the public, do I constantly recommend vastly better videos and other free resources available on-line? I’m not worried about competition from Sal Khan. I could out teach that charlatan without working up a sweat. But there are much better things out there already, free, that I think are worth people’s time. KA? Garbage in video form is still garbage.
Mistaking it’s and its is pretty common. They are pretty similar.
Lots of words seem similar. Being literate entails knowing the differences.
How would it have confused them?
Oh snap! Beautiful takedown of Sal, the world’s best math teacher.
best backwords+ tseb T=the S=stupidest E=educational B=boy
Here’s a link to a great video of two teachers watching Mr. Kahn’s YouTube lesson on multiplying with positive and negative numbers. Their commentary says it all. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hC0MV843_Ng BTW, Khan is now funded by Gates and Google to spread his YouTube lessons into all content areas across the world. http://www.fastcompany.com/1728471/change-generation-bill-gates-favorite-teacher-wants-to-disrupt-education
Yea their commentary sounds like they are two eighth graders making fun of a classmate. Stupid. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Sals presentation. In general, his videos to me seem better for people who can pick things up without too much hand holding. If you require slower, more detailed instruction, they are probably not going to work. I think it’s great for encouraging curious students to look into topics that interest them. 2 apples + 2apples = 4 apples. If you need more than that, you need an Ed plan anyways.
I suspect, Rick, that you’ve never had to teach a large, diverse group of students anything. But I’ll give you this: you say, “his videos to me seem better for people who can pick things up without too much hand holding. If you require slower, more detailed instruction, they are probably not going to work.”
While I don’t feel that KA gives even SHARP students a good perspective on mathematics, Christopher Danielson and I (in the Washington Post on Thursday) made the same point you make (with a bit less negativity about people who aren’t getting math from class work), suggesting that KA is an okay (and barely okay) review for kids who came away from a school lesson just looking for a rehash.
But that’s about as good as it gets, and yet Sal Khan is allegedly “the best math teacher (or the best teacher of any sort) Bill Gates has ever seen, a rather sad commentary on Mr. Gates’ formal education, but given his big-player status as a private contributor to education projects of various flavors, a rather sad comment on the places he’s actually gone to observe teaching since he became a billionaire (or maybe he doesn’t go or doesn’t see very well when he does).
The problem here (in this country, in this conversation) is that most Americans haven’t ever seen math taught well at ANY level. In fact, that includes most American mathematics teachers, as I know from speaking with lots of them about their experiences as students and their ideas of what good math teaching looks like. So how can those of us who have seen excellent mathematics teaching, some done in this country, some done in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America (sorry, but I’ve not yet seen any mathematics teaching of any sort from Antarctica) manage to communicate what upsets us about the poor math teaching Khan Academy has on display to people who really are comparing his rotten apples with the perhaps more rotten apples of enough of their previous teachers to think they’ve landed in the Garden of Eden and are getting the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge from Sal? They still haven’t tasted a great piece of fruit, and Sal’s seem like a step up.
No one is denying that. But to say, yes, some of Khan’s bad stuff is better than some other bad stuff is not to say, “This bad stuff is actually good.” And yet that’s what some folks are in effect stating, and what many people believe because they have so little of quality with which to compare.
But the good stuff is out there. I keep pointing to it. And I keep asking for any of Sal’s Kommandos to point me to a high-quality lesson from KA, one that if they are teachers they’d be proud to have written and taught. And NO ONE offers an example. Isn’t that a bit odd?
Get a job dude!
Sweet of you to offer, Mario. What’s it pay?
A teacher at my school uses Khan math. He is one of many teachers I share students with as a cross categorical special education teacher. My interested in Khan was based on this teacher’s use of the program, especially because the elementary program that my district uses has been extremely problematic for reaching kids who are significantly below grade level in math. (EDM, if anyone is curious.) I thought the students would enjoy and benefit from the independent practice on the computers. I got such a negative outcry from my students about how boring and hard it was when I mentioned using Khan that I decided not to pursue it. Those students would plead to come to my room to work if they saw me in the hall on the way to the computer lab to do Khan. I’ve learned enough about my students over the years to know that when they are adamantly resistant (or interested), that I need to take heed.
The Con academy you say?
Well, I’m no math teacher–but I could certainly teach some kids how to fail math in high school like I did. Unless, of course, they fail it differently these days with tech toys and all.
Anyhoo–the failure rate in high school math seems to be about the same as it was 30 years ago from the articles I’ve read–math wars or not.
I could also teach them how to productively get on with their lives after they’ve failed math, and that doesn’t include more math.
George DeMarse
The Sage of Wake Forest
The proposal submitted by the Boston Consulting Group in Philadelphia includes as an example of “innovative, cost-effective practices” the following:
“Flip the classroom”: use resources such as Khan Academy to deliver online lectures, while class time focuses more efficiently on working problems”
(page 11 of ” A full proposal detailing the work BCG planned to undertake in Philadelphia”, linked to from here:
http://thenotebook.org/blog/124923/bcg-documents-show-far-reaching-proposal-overhaul-district )
Karim Kai Ani makes an excellent point: that good teaching does not consist of ad hoc lessons. There’s value in thinking through a topic, deliberating over ways to present it, and responding to students’ questions and reactions. Khan’s videos may be good supplementary resources, but are they good math lessons? Some of them may be, but others contain errors and misleading statements. So there’s a flaw right there in Khan’s “big idea”: it can’t be broken down into viable parts.
The Khan Academy’s “big idea” is that actual instruction in subject matter should be removed from the classroom and transfered onto video. The students can watch it at home and then come to class to work on problems and take part in activities. Khan and others refer to this as the “flipped” classroom–where the instruction takes place at home, and the problem-solving in the classroom.
This isn’t entirely novel. In literature courses, you typically do the reading at home and then discuss it during class time. In math, you may read the textbook and work on problems at home, and then come to class ready to take in new material or consider some of the complexities of what you have learned.
But the “flipped” classroom takes this concept still further. Here, the teacher gives little or no whole-class instruction. Instead, the students engage in group work or solve problems at their own level and pace. The teacher circulates to help those who are having trouble.
But why assume that students can do without the instruction that takes place right there in the classroom? I have attended lectures and then later listened to them or watched them on video. There is no comparison.
Moreover, why assume that videos are such a great medium for conveying a topic? If the students are to learn some of the material on their own, at home, then a book may serve just as well, if not better. A book has the advantage that you can pause on a page and learn something through that pausing. You can read a paragraph as slowly or as quickly as you want. With a video, you’re either playing it or not. Sure, you can forward or backtrack, but only to find the spot you’re looking for.
And why assume that students benefit from solving problems in class, rather than at home? There’s a great liberty in working on problems alone, in quiet, without pressure or rush. Not that all children have quiet places to work–but at the very least, they can go to the local library or find another quiet place.
This doesn’t mean that students should do all problem-solving at home and that lessons should consist of instruction only. Nor does it mean that videos are useless; they may well have a place. But there’s no reason to treat the “flipped classroom” like a brilliant discovery. There’s nothing to flip. The proportion of instruction to discussion and other activities will vary from subject to subject, grade to grade, and lesson to lesson.
I touch on the Khan Academy in chapter 8 of my book and write about it at somewhat greater length here: http://blog.coreknowledge.org/2011/11/17/its-a-video-library-not-a-revolution/. I have read a number of short critiques since then–some focusing on the videos, others on the flipped classroom.
I find the Khan Academy a nice supplementary tool, especially when using it one-on-one with a student, but as the main thrust behind a lesson, it is of little pedagogical use.
That’s a pretty poor job of debunking.
I admire anyone who (free of charge) puts more than 3,000 video lessons online for anyone in the world to use. I have also found that Khan readily accepts feedback on any mistakes found in those lessons.
I find it sad that people indict all the work that’s been done there on the basis of looking through the mountain of content and finding some errors. Khan does not profess to be perfect.
How many of us are devoted enough to do all the work that Khan has done and give away the work?
Who among us would not have numerous errors if we had videotaped 3,000+ lessons we have given?
It’s one thing to do what Sorrel describes (above) and decide it’s not for your students.
It’s another thing completely to trash the whole body of Khan’s work. Very closed-minded.
He has financial support from Gates.
Ed, teachers create hundreds of lessons each year for their entire career and share them daily with their colleagues and we support each other. Not all of us can be the center of attention and most of us don’t want praise and recognition from Bill Gates or anyone else looking to cash in under the guise of helping children.
So when you ask who amongst us has devoted so much time to lessons and sharing, that would be the teachers of America. The ones you profess to admire and respect.
It is ironic how quick some are to criticize and blame teachers but then defend those who aren’t. However, since they claim to be doing whatever they are doing all for the children, it is so much more noble that those who choose to dedicate their lives to teaching and learning.
If a teacher posted videos with mistakes, Michelle Rhee would make it into a commercial to mock all teachers in the USA.
A non certified teacher makes mistakes and he is still a great guy just
trying to help the misfit teachers. It is also sad to indict the work of all
teachers in our country and try to sell it as “reform”.
Very, very closed minded.
Hi Linda1, I chose my words carefully when I said, “How many of us are devoted enough to do all the work that Khan has done AND give away the work?” That word “and” is important. It’s great when teachers work together and share lesson plans that work. It is another thing entirely to videotape thousands of lessons and post them to the Internet for all to see, use, critique, (or choose not to use). And it’s free.
It would be a wonderful thing if you would write a proposal to do something similar but better. You get to define what better means. Go and get it funded by a source you trust. If you create something vastly better than Khan, people will flock to it. It is a chance to multiply your impact on the world thousands of times over.
Or you can send feedback to Khan to improve what he has done.
There is no critique of teachers in my post. I can worship teachers and the noble work they do every day. Instead, what I wrote is a critique of people – regardless of profession – who completely reject all of what Khan has done. I think what Patrick Johnson posted (above) is a reasonable way to be open-minded and think about Khan’s work.
I’ll pass….Too busy raising children, teaching full time, going to school part time while defending my profession and educating my local self-appointed “experts and reformers” I don’t need to be worshipped nor am I motivated by recognition or money. The classroom is where it will always be real.
You are always here to quickly defend anyone BUT teachers. Maybe you can get in on the Klein/Murdoch digital gravy train or many of the
other lucrative “reform” scams.
Hi Linda1, I defend teachers as well. As I’ve posted elsewhere on Diane’s blog, I am pro-teacher-union, pro-holding-charters-extra-accountable, pro-increasing teacher-pay-and benefits, anti-publishing-teacher-VAM-scores, anti-AYP, anti-Teach-For-America (as currently structured).
More related to the post above, Khan IS a teacher. I know many teachers cringe at the thought but, until something better comes along, people around the world will be using Khan videos (in a variety of ways) to educate themselves or others.
@Ed Turley
“If you create something vastly better than Khan, people will flock to it.”
Now that isn’t entirely true. Or true at all. It seems to be parroting the general belief society holds that there’s an automatic, cosmic, karmic, immediate, reaction to our actions. The best wins out, hard work brings success, and everything happens as it should.
That right there would demonstrate your complete lack of any science education at all, and also complete lack of awareness. People don’t buy iPhones because they’re objectively better, people don’t pay silly amounts of money for a plain white tshirt sold by Kanye West. Objective good has nothing whatsoever to do with most decisions made by most people.
There’s quite a few fantastic Youtubers who have created channels filled with great maths lessons. Most of these channels don’t have many subscribers, and I’m more than willing to wager that most people so ardently defending Khan Academy have never heard of these channels. Because flash beats substance every time.
Personally I like Khan Academy but the trick is to see it for what it is: A video library which is more than a little chaotic in its treatment of subjects, but a passable solution for when a particular problem is bothering a particular person and they don’t want to go searching Youtube for the answer. Just go to Khan Academy and watch a video, simple.
A bit like using Duolingo for language lessons. You can, but you’ll get a lot more out of interacting with actual speakers, especially when it comes to tonal languages. And reading a lot makes you good at reading, not at writing.
When I saw his first videos, I really, really wanted to like them.
Fact is that, actually, *many* teachers and others have pointed out pretty fundamental errors and they have been summarily ignored. For instance, he states that two times one is “two plus it self, times one.” Last time I checked, two plus two was four. He repeats that error throughout his videos. He calls multiplication problems “sums” and mixes in algebra with basic arithmetic. He says pithy things like “I know this is confusing, but it’s so it will make sense later.”
He is trashing teachers — whole cloth and our whole job– by putting one-off videos stating that no, he doesn’t really think about what he’s going to say… and letting it be passed off as revolutionary and wonderful and better than what teachers work hard to do.
I am not ashamed to “trash” a whole body of work with such consistently abysmal standards, one that trashes me. My students deserve better for the millions given to fund that project.
The public schools give away all their lessons for free. In that way, school teachers and Sal Khan are doing the same thing. I see two differences, though.
(1) School teachers are professionally trained and proven effective, whereas Sal Khan is neither.
(2) School teachers are paid about $50,000/yr (if they’re lucky), whereas Sal Khan is paid about $500,000/yr.
Many educational institutions videotape lessons and make them freely available. It isn’t reasonable to praise Sal Khan for doing the same thing, but at a lower quality and a higher pay scale.
The public schools give away all their lessons for free. In that way, school teachers and Sal Khan are doing the same thing. I see two differences, though.
(1) School teachers are professionally trained and proven effective, whereas Sal Khan is neither.
(2) School teachers are paid about $50,000/yr (if they’re lucky), whereas Sal Khan is paid about $500,000/yr.
Many educational institutions videotape lessons and make them freely available. It isn’t reasonable to praise Sal Khan for doing the same thing, but at a lower quality and a higher pay scale.
Free of charge??? What abut the millions from Bill Gates and other donors?
Kepler was kicked out of his Protestant church for not signing the ‘Formula of Concord’ – this was about 100 years after Martin Luther did his stuff.
Kahn posts videoes. People interpret all kinds of meanings and implications and conclusions. People argue over the meanings and interpretations and conclusions. yawn.
The fact that lying charlatans like Duncan see a way to monetize a bunch of youtubes and, by the way, fire a bunch of people making above family wage wages, and, by the way, ruin community schools, and, by the way, employ his parasitic $ocial cla$$ at fat salaries – and fish live in the water, and birds fly in the air!
It is too bad the author is 1 of those math reformers pooh-poohing the drudgery of mastery. I have to deal with the consequences every year, with scores and scores of high schoolers, of the damage the math reformers have done. The CONCEPT of slope is irrelevant, and how it can be applied, when 24/32 and 12/16 and 9/12 and 3/4 are RANDOM decimals and percents. The garbage math reformers have pushed on millions of kids has done far more damage than Kahn will ever do.
Oh well.
As good teachers were are taught to deliver content in a variety of ways to engaged a variety of learning styles. Kahn Academy may engage a particular learning style but should not be dismissed if it doesn’t.
I tried to refresh my knowledge of algebra with Khan videos. But by the third session, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I nodded off twice and then shut it down and I never went back.
That doesn’t mean Khan isn’t a nice and really smart guy. But there is a real limit to what this type of video can do for students, who can’t stop instruction to ask questions about the material.
I have just looked at the Khan site for biology. There are other Biology video lessons out there that I think are better. But for some students where video might be the thing they listen to it might work.
Really interesting conversation today as we were picking a couple of hundred pounds of tomatoes in 97 degree temperatures. I was the youngest at 57. Two of the four of us have 100% disabilities. The other gentleman was down from Wisconsin visiting his brother, Tomato Tom. So we’d pick for 15 minutes or so, sit under a shade tree for 20-30 minutes or so just shooting the shit. And the discussion came about, about not being able to find younger folk who had any sense of mathematics at all. One of the disabled (had a stroke) guys who used to run an asphalt paving business was amazed that many of the younger employees couldn’t figure out things like cubic feet necessary to complete a job. The other gentleman from Wisconsin who worked at a casino in security was amazed that many younger employees couldn’t figure out in their head simple multiplication and/or division problems.
We realized that we all had to memorize math tables, not only add/subtract but the multiplication tables. I reiterated that as a Spanish teacher that I expected my students to memorize vocabulary. Doesn’t seem to happen now. Basic facts that should be at the tip of one’s tongue aren’t there for the younger folk. I also indicated that I had to teach English grammar terms to high school students who don’t know what an adverb, subject or prepositional pronoun is much less the moods and tenses of verb. Now I would never teach grammar for grammar sake (unless I was an English teacher) but grammar is the scaffold upon which to link the various structures of the languages.
I guess I’m just an “old fogey” but sometimes “old fogey” truths hold thrughout time.
Christopher Danielson (“Overthinking My Teaching”) and I have a piece coming out in Valerie Strauss’ column in the WASHINGTON POST sometime between now and Monday that I believe addresses many of the reasons Khan Academy videos are generally not useful for the students most in need of help. And unlike Karim Kai Ani, neither of us has a company that is offering for-pay resources to teachers or students. That is, unfortunately, a major undermining factor in Mr. Ani’s piece: he has been attacked as a “competitor” of Sal Khan’s, looking to hurt the market-leader.
Of course, there’s a bit of a funny contradiction there: all of Khan’s defenders are very big on mentioning his selfless generosity in offering his “product” free. So how can he have competitors in the marketplace?
That said, I must respond to those who feel that since KA is free, Sal Khan is more-or-less above criticism. There are two enormous flaws in that argument. First, his product is bad and thus pollutes the community of mathematics education quite badly. Our piece will go into why we believe his product is effectively the McDonalds (or worse) of math teaching on-line (or to go with the MTT2K metaphor, one might suggest that Salman Khan is the Harold P. Warren of math videos (look him up). Second, Sal Khan would be unimportant if he weren’t back by tens of millions of dollars and enormous media hype, plus the public apotheosis as “the best teacher I’ve ever seen” by none other than Bill Gates. While I think Gates knows less about education than he does about making truly great computer operating systems and software (and he doesn’t know much about either), I know he has so much money and influence that anything he says gets traction, no matter how full of nonsense it is. So Sal, having failed to debunk the lies told about him (that is, the hype that surrounds him), is guilty and bears the responsibility to learn a hell of a lot more about teaching and learning, areas in which he is so woefully ignorant that it’s embarrassing that anyone would mistake what he’s doing for teaching.
Khan is not (and should not be) above criticism.
However, he has created a enormous body of work that is freely available to all. There is also a mechanism to give feedback on any lesson or any part of any lesson thereby making the work stronger over time. And there is room for anyone with a better idea to create an alternative to compete with Khan.
You say, “First, his product is bad.” More than 1,000 people who use the product and have left feedback disagree strongly.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/khan-academy/id469863705?mt=8
These are the opinions of real people using the real product.
Another good article on Kahn’s work can be found here..
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/
Khan’s work is not a panacea. But it doesn’t pretend to be. It is a useful tool that can be used in many different ways. It promotes learning and that is what it was designed to do.
You also say, “Sal Khan would be unimportant if he weren’t back by tens of millions of dollars and enormous media hype, plus the public apotheosis as ‘the best teacher I’ve ever seen’ by none other than Bill Gates.”
Let me see. A person comes up with a good idea, he develops it, he gets noticed, people agree it’s a good idea, they give him money to further build out his idea, he does so, he becomes successful, his ideas becomes successful. Last I checked that is how most successful innovations go from concept to general availability.
Finally you say, “It’s embarrassing that anyone would mistake what he’s doing for teaching.” People are voting with their feet. They are voting for Khan’s work and they are voting against the critics.
A year from now, there will probably be hundreds of thousands of additional Khan learners, the work will have been translated into 5 or 10 languages, and the hundreds of elites who hate the fact that so many people are learning from Khan’s work – without their permission – will be crying in their soup.
Ed, surely you’re aware that there are comments on the Khan Academy videos that aren’t complaints but clear indication of someone (kids, most likely) who came away from one of Khan’s lectures still confused (we offer an example, one of many we could have culled, in our WaPo piece that will appear tomorrow). We’re not unaware of his many fans (I’ve already been sworn at by a few of them, and I’m clear that he has fanatical supporters). McDonald’s has served billions, Ed. Does that make their food into a gourmet meal?
My only crying will be over the distortion of what it means to know and do mathematics to which Khan contributes. If someone is starving and you give him that which is edible, s/he isn’t going to quibble with you over how nutritious or good-tasting it is. But if you continue to feed that person a diet of fat, salt, and other potentially health-threatening things IN EXCESS, and that person never finds out that there is free, highly-nutritious, great-tasting food, well, perhaps you’re doing that person a disservice to not at least hint that there are better places to eat.
Every argument you make I’ve read before and find it specious because of course the more nutritious free alternatives have been out there for quite a while. James Tanton, Dan Meyer, James Grimes, Paul Zeitz, to just mention the ones I follow carefully myself (and the list continues to grow as high-quality math teachers network), are all providing free video materials for math learners and math educators. This vote-with-your-feet nonsense is similar to the argument that Microsoft produces better operating systems than Apple because, well, it “won” the market. Some folks that know a hell of a lot more about computers and software than I do might suggest otherwise. The QWERTY keyboard “beat” the Dvorak keyboard, but in head to head competition, those who use the latter decimate the efforts of the best typists on the QWERTY keyboard. QWERTY just got there first and somehow magically held the market despite its technical inferiority. Then there is the war between VHS and Beta format, which in the early years was won by the inferior technology, for reasons I don’t profess to know. The “wisdom of the market” is often simply the slickness of the marketing, not the superiority of the idea or product.
I could go on, but you’re not really listening. You think that market share is everything and that if you get 200 million hits, you must have something, rather than simply having been a little lucky and VERY hyped by idiots like Bill Gates. Someone (maybe Michelle Rhee, who is an expert at it) should tape the man’s mouth shut when it comes to teaching and learning. He’s so clueless, it’s ridiculous.
Read the piece in tomorrow’s WaPo and tell me Khan knows what he’s doing, that it’s good teaching for kids who are lost. He needn’t have claimed to provide a panacea when he started, of course. He didn’t know what he had cooking yet (though as a former hedge fund manager, I suspect he had a plan or two up his sleeve). He let others do the hyping for him, and you know bloody well that hyping he’s had. Gates, the people ignorant enough to think that the “flipped classroom” idea and Sal Khan’s Academy are one and the same (though I saw today one early Khan advocate because of “flipping” who seems to be having his doubts – intriguingly he’s a mathematician now teaching at Grand Valley State, where the MTT2K profs – Coffey and Golden – also work. That’s because unlike some of the Khan Kadre of Kriticism Killers, this fellow is actually open to reason.
Khan can claim his hands are clean, but they aren’t, as long as he refuses to debunk his hype. If he had an ounce of class, he’d say, “Hey, I know zip about teaching and learning. I just had an idea about getting content out there. I should be taking the millions I got and paying the folks who I’ve roped into doing my thinking, planning, and editing for me free, but I’m far too self-centered and greedy, and I’ve lucked into a gold mine that will make me richer while I’m convincing the truly gullible that I’m a selfless saint.”
And wait until Khan rolls out completely the phases of KA that will bring in direct income, not just funding. Where will it come from? From our tax dollars, from money that could be much better spent. He’s a Wall St. and right- wing, and teacher-hating wet dream. You can say that you’re not anti-teacher, and that’s quite possibly true, but that doesn’t change the conversation on the whole about what Khan represents in the overall war on public education and the move towards highly-standardized, lowest-common-denominator, and – yes – dumbed-down math and other sorts of education. He’s not part of any real solution, though playing off him might be.
The interesting thing about the Kahn academy is that its success or failure rides on whether students find it useful, not on what anyone else thinks about it. No teachers need to require it, no school board will have to give it the ok, no school of education need advocate for it, students will find it useful or they will not.
If anyone is interested in the opinion of math education from a recent high school graduate, my son posted this comment on Mindshift here: http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/09/is-math-education-too-abstract/
His name is Alex Becker
I think you nailed it with your first sentence: “The interesting thing about the Kahn academy is that its success or failure rides on whether students find it useful, not on what anyone else thinks about it.”
Some people here though believe that people aren’t smart enough to do this evaluation. They also think there is a capitalist, corporate conspiracy that will use its money and influence to delude the public and make them THINK Khan’s work is great when, its really is terrible (in the eyes of those who feel they know better).
I believe people are smart enough to figure this out on their own. It’s already happening and people seem to be finding Khan’s work very helpful and useful and they are speaking up when its not and he is taking the feedback.
I do believe that people who reject ALL of Khan’s work and similar work of others – past, present and future – are simply going to be bypassed by it. It will not put public education and teachers out of business and I am glad that it won’t. It will change the meaning of “teacher” and “public education” in profound ways.
I believe the best outcome is the one whereby teachers are a big part of this change and are a productive part of this change. To me that means embracing what is great, helping to make the parts that are good or so-so much better, and give feedback on the parts that are truly bad (or creating a better replacement).
My fear is that educators may reject Khan-like work in total and just say nyet to any use of it in any scenario. If the answer is a full-scale no, we will have a situation like we have today with much of Federal education policy – educators will be sidelined and painted as out of touch and will have virtually no impact on policy or content. That would be a very, very bad outcome.
Ed, I’ve been down this road with you, but not here. So I’ll just sum up: you offer the McDonald’s Defense of KA. It’s good because so many people eat there. Who cares if what they’re eating is bad for them either in large doses or over the long haul? The wisdom of the market is always right (see QWERTY v. Dvorak keyboard, DOS v. Apple OS, Windows v. Mac OS, VHS v. Beta video format, ad nauseam).
A similar argument could, of course, be made (and has been made by many marketers and ad people) for cigarettes. The wisdom of the market used to include many physicians. Funny how well that generally worked out for them and the general public (we all paid for the damage of cigarettes, of course).
Heavens forfend that anyone dare try to disabuse naive people of what the intellectual health hazards are of letting KA provide you entire view of mathematics, even just at the K-12 level. Why that would be horrible! Particularly if critics are at the same time, as I have done for quite a while now, tried to recommend far better, equally free videos and text resources. No one I respect is speaking about “damn all video education because KA is bad.” No one. Anyone who does is a fool and would likely just be a Luddite, which I’m decidedly not.
I don’t see you answering those points, or the points Christopher and I raised. The ‘gee, sure, KA isn’t perfect” is just deflecting the real issues. Someone – anyone – point me to a truly good KA video in K-16 math. Just one. One that you’d be proud to have made yourself. One that reflects real preparation by Sal Khan that clearly took into account a reasonable range of potential learners. Not asking that he be able to teach partial differential equations to 3rd graders who haven’t taken analysis or ODE. That would be as much a case of loading the dice as I think we critics face every time we post something: we’re ALWAYS disqualified as critics of Sal. No one has the proper status to analyze his work EXCEPT, of course, for his fans and employees. And oddly, they have nothing but praise to offer. Oh, that’s the idea? Silly me.
Michael, you’ve made my point for me. Your value judgement doesn’t matter and won’t matter. Nor does mine. Intelligent people will reach their own conclusions. We don’t need gatekeepers. We don’t need high priests of knowledge. We don’t need anyone to save us from ourselves.
I have found many good uses for Khan content. I have many supporters among educators, parents, and students and most of these people are very bright. When you say they are consuming McDonalds food, they laugh at your smugness.
You have decided that the only use for Khan’s work is “for ideas on how NOT to teach a topic.” Let’s compare notes in a year and see how that’s going.
Ed, what can I say? I keep asking for that recommendation to the ONE great Khan video you or any of your very bright friends would be proud to put his/her name on. I have asked here, on various WaPo comment sections, and elsewhere, yet no one points me to anything specific. I think that’s telling.
When people start dying from emphysema, cancer, heart disease and the government finally connects the dots to cigarettes, people wonder what took so long. So you and your very bright friends feel free to ignore sincere attempts to suggest that this stuff isn’t very healthy, particularly not for kids or in the long run. You have a constitutional right to have poor taste in mathematics education and to consume junk food all you like.
And I don’t really care who blows off the warnings as “smugness.” I don’t personally feel anything akin to being smug, but if that’s your dismissal de jure, be my guest. Khan may help some kids get better grades in math classes that aren’t preparing them effectively for doing serious mathematics or make sense of their world. Lots of other things do so as well. The problem is that you have someone reinforcing very shallow notions of something that isn’t at all shallow, and feeling smart because a deeply flawed school system rewards them with booby prizes. If you and those very bright friends really like that sort of thing a lot, I have to wonder just how you measure intelligence or knowledge. Standardized test scores? Letter grades in the already-inflated K-16 world? Please. I’m holding out for understanding, insight, and other things of real, long-term value.
Let me add that I HAVE seen one KA video that I don’t utterly despise. It just happens to be the one he did to replace the deeply flawed one critiqued by John Golden and David Coffey on multiplying and dividing integers. It’s not horrid at all. But that’s because, to my mind, Sal lifted the lesson from James Tanton’s lesson on the same topic. Sal claims otherwise. Of course he does. It seems he suddenly recalled the way one of his own teachers explained the issue. It’s an utter coincidence that it’s precisely how Jim Tanton has it in a video that has been up since March 2010.
If the situation were reversed (KA had the revised, well-explained video up in 3/10 and Jim Tanton posted his last month), what do you think would happen if the Khan Kadre found out?
When I saw his first videos, I really, really wanted to like them.
Fact is that, actually, *many* teachers and others have pointed out pretty fundamental errors and they have been summarily ignored. For instance, he states that two times one is “two plus it self, times one.” Last time I checked, two plus two was four. He repeats that error throughout his videos. He calls multiplication problems “sums” and mixes in algebra with basic arithmetic. He says pithy things like “I know this is confusing, but it’s so it will make sense later.”
He is trashing teachers — whole cloth and our whole job– by putting one-off videos stating that no, he doesn’t really think about what he’s going to say… and letting it be passed off as revolutionary and wonderful and better than what teachers work hard to do.
I am not ashamed to “trash” a whole body of work with such consistently abysmal standards that trashes me. My students deserve better for the millions given to fund that project.
@teachingeconomist: I just posted a response to your son’s comment at the link you gave. You might want to point him there.
Michael,
I will point out the response. If you are interested, here is another link to some advice he gave to a student who found his teachers telling him not to study advanced mathematics:
http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/167294/am-i-too-young-to-learn-more-advanced-math-and-get-a-teacher/167306#167306
Backpack TV video response to Mystery Teacher Theater 2000 and in defense of Sal Khan and Khan Academy.
Definitive reply to Joe Wagner’s “retort” above: http://bit.ly/NN1ze6
I can’t say I found Mr. Backpack.tv’s ‘defense’ convincing; I can’t imagine anyone skeptical of the efficacy of the KA product would find this a winning sales pitch.
Given that when I went to the backpack.tv site, the first recommended link I saw was to KA, it’s hardly surprising that this guy defends KA, but surely he could have come up with something better. Or perhaps not. I’d go lots of other places before I’d go to KA for help on anything, except perhaps for ideas on how NOT to teach a topic.
Quit replying to every comment Goldenberg. We get it. You don’t like KA.
Anything you say, Kevin. Your will is too strong for me to resist. I will not reply to every comment. Oh, wait. . .
Great blog post: http://bltm.com/blog/
For a critique of the statistics videos, take a look at this post:
http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/2012/07/30/khan-not-good/
Math teachers should pump the brakes on the pride and give it a shot…chances make champions.
What in heck does that mean, Brandon? You think Sal Khan “takes chances”? Sure, the way that ill-prepared pilots do. The problem is that those who get in the plane with him are the ones most likely to get hurt: Sal will walk away counting those Gates millions all the way to the bank.
I heard a number of good things about the Khan Academy until I looked at some of the videos myself. I work with a group of kids at an area chess club, and one of the mothers who home schooled two boys asked for a recommendation. She had mentioned the Khan Academy, and this led me to do some research since I didn’t feel comfortable recommending the Khan Academy just based on what I had read. I’m really glad that I did.
I think it is sick the way the media heaps outrageous praise on the man of the moment. But as a return to school engineering student, who is taking the second semester in a graduate level course titled “Advanced Engineering Mathematics,” I have found Sal Khan one of the best lecturers on math that I have ever seen. I use him to backstop PhDs who, though they may know their math, have a limited ability to teach it. Perhaps the problem is mine alone, but listening to the comments of fellow students, I don’t think so.
Having taught animation classes myself, and having been a student in many and varied classes over the years, I know that teaching is a skill all its own. Being a Doctor, Masters, or Bachelors, in a field doesn’t seem to insure the ability to teach it. Being a certified teacher doesn’t seem to insure it; neither does being there in person.
I have encountered excellent teachers, (there seems to me a positive correlation with them handing out quality teaching materials that they prepared beforehand,) but many seem to be doing something other than Merrill’s “First Principles of Instruction.” Higher Learning as a whole doesn’t seem to operate according to “First Principles.” Everything is taught in the sterile vacuum of the University. Math professors seem addicted to abstraction. Concrete gut feeling first, then abstract would be my call, but I’m just the student.
As far as one-off videos, I have found those instrumental to understanding the material.
I have a course textbook, littered with errors, that I paid well over one hundred dollars for. I don’t remember that as part of my undergrad experience, years ago. I have had to research and buy my own auxiliary textbooks to paper over the shortcomings of the former. Finding Sal Khan, Dr. Chris Tisdell and the other top tier lecturers has been a welcome relief in a frustrating experience that is taking more time than it ought.
It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way we do Higher Learning. We’ve lost something vitally important with the demise of the apprenticeship system; something that we need to recover. But again, I’m just a student.
Couldn’t help but notice the conspicuously missing
Goldenberg Comment.
Oh, gee, Hamel, I missed one? You just jumped in here and you’re going to snipe at me without offering an iota of support for your previous b.s. claim about teachers. Nice. If you have anything intelligent and substantive to offer, let us know. And your credentials in math teaching are. . . .? Having a big mouth doesn’t qualify, I’m afraid. 😦
It is always interesting to see how quickly professionals are to jump in and bash a successful peer. This is not a response to anyone here specifically, but a general comment after reading many, many posts.
A perfect plans badly executed is always than a so so plan run perfectly.
This guy reaches a wide audience. Sometimes that angers the perfect math teacher who doesn’t understand why students in their class don’t like math (or them for that matter). The teacher for whom math always came easy might have seen many great teachers along the way, but they have always had the innate math ability in the first place. They, then, can’t understand the appeal of KA or why everyone is flocking to his programming and think they need to take a stand.
KA teaches to the masses (for the most part AFTER the masses local math program has failed them). Math teachers are not the masses, nor have they been able to effectively teach the masses. I’m not saying it is necessarily their own fault, as resources and teacher education play a massive role in this. This guy has found a way to reach everyone.
If there are math teachers here who have serious issue (issue that ALL math teachers can agree that something he is teaching is seriously flawed), don’t waste your time commenting and complaining here – APPROACH HIM!!!!
Here is really sounds like sour grapes.
…and who is unprofessional now?
The quality of the lectures is good. But it is required for students to do problems on their own. This is missing. So Kahn is good, but should not be relied upon by itself.
This thread is misleading, defamatory and plain false. The content is typical of most, but not all teachers. Bitter, envious, snide commentary towards something that can ( and does ) assist an education, but because it isn’t controlled by teachers must be rejected. The notion that teachers are generally authoritarian personalities with poor educations and no imagination is confirmed in this thread
Peter, I completely agree with you. I am a professional engineer and have used KA enough to appreciate what an outstanding job they are doing teaching math. I wish, I had such great resources as KA when I was in school.
I’m not sure what has caused some posters (like Goldenberg) to be so negative about KA, but to me it is another example of how out of touch some acedemics are with reality.
It’s no wonder more and more respected and very successful people are saying that college is not worth the cost, especially when there are websites like KA that do a better job of teaching than many high school teachers and university professors.
I cannot understand how anyone can disbarage information that is handed out for free for the purpose of educating a wide variety of learners. What is really wrong with a student using this tool to get extra help when they don’t understand a concept they are working on in school? Or perhaps they want to get ahead in a subject because they are either very interested, or managing their time effectively knowing that they may have a little less time available in the next few weeks? How about the older student who wants to brush up on a skill learned years ago and now forgotten or never learned in the first place. If Kahn Academy can empower students of all types to further their education and learning process, and do it in such way that is both easy to understand and beautifully presented, what could possibly be the objection. No one is replacing traditional teachers – only providing another tool. And Kahn goes way beyond math. How about the art history videos that take students to the museums to see art they might not see in another manner, while listening to art historians/professors discuss the art and what it could mean or why it is deemed important? Don’t we want our students of all types to seek out information and be accountable for their own education??
It seems to me the those who most criticize Sal Khan haven’t done much work in real world of high tech manufacturing, biotechnology, customer service etc. Educators and those invested in the educational industrial complex forget life is and open book test. School is the only place where you are asked to perform and are provided almost no resources. Most work including scientific, engineering, technology and mathematical works is done in collaborative groups. Computer programing is somewhat of an exception but even there much of the creative work is done collaboratively and it is the grunt work of coding that is more solitary.
If the majority of math teachers are so good why is it a large population of American adults who have graduated from high school and college in the last 40 -50 years would say they “hate math”, “math courses were useless”, “my math teacher my have known math but he/she couldn’t teach”, etc?
Sal Khan is not the end all and be all, his work is just very viable tool which children and adults can use to learn and understand new things. His video allow you to follow his thought processes in understanding a subject. I thing making the process transparent is what is so valuable in his videos.
In today’s world information is extremely easy to acquire. Why waste valuable class time on information transmission or gathering. Use the very limited class time to develop an understanding if the information, how that information interacts with what someone’s own knowledge.
My comments come from a 26 year career as a Naval officer, 14 years in information technology and 10 years as a high school science teacher.
I am a 32 year old self-proclaimed nerd with a BS in Manufacturing Engineering and an AAS in Aviation Maintenance. As such I have participated in quite a few math and applied math classes.
I am reasonably adept at picking up math concepts so that may make a difference on how useful I find the content on Khan Academy. If I were to rate the quality of my math education experience based on how quickly I understood a new concept without frustration, it would look like this.
High School Math 4/10
Community College Math 6/10
University Math 7/10
Khan Academy Math 8/10
I’m not saying that the results will be the same for everyone but I’m sold on Khan Academy. I think they are doing a wonderful thing for the world and I think we should support them and help them rather than complain about them.
Side note: Several of the comments above sound like people baselessly trying to protect their pension/profession rather than objectively comparing real results.
I think other teachers that quickly bash Khan’s Academy are jealous and possibly inept. I am a teacher studying to be a nurse. Khan carried me through chemistry. I had to work at it, but I don’t think I would have gotten an A without his videos. While I probably would have been able to get an A without his videos, they provided initial clarity, which gave me the confidence and motivation to push myself. If someone can impact a student to that degree teaching Biochemistry concepts, then he or she has to have some talent. I think the man is amazing. He pulled me out of the fire of my own self-doubt and ignorance and I actually learned something. Isn’t that what teachers are supposed to do? (Many teachers I know are actually not smart enough to grasp some the concepts he explains as if he’s describing 2 plus 2.) The man is brilliant and I will be forever grateful for him for making me believe in my ability to tackle complex science subjects.
How lovely for you, buggaboy. But you really don’t know what you’re talking about as far as people who are serious mathematics teachers critiquing Khan’s pedagogy, preparation, and factual knowledge of mathematics. He’s not brilliant, though he is likely not stupid, and he’s as boring a speaker as I have heard doing video math explanations. There’s no enthusiasm, there’s no insight, it’s just a bright student speaking procedures in (mostly) elementary mathematics without any logical sequence or well-thought out examples. Sal’s no teacher, let alone a great one.
you have got to be kidding me right? SAT scores from 1500 to a 1800 thanks to Sal….. your an idiot ……
@Ellis: thanks for your opinion. It doesn’t change mine because nothing I said precludes the possibility of someone watching Khan videos and scoring well on an exam.
What you need to show is causality, not simply correlation. That’s hard to do with a sample size n = 1, and absolutely no controlling for other factors, to name but two weaknesses.
Also, aren’t there three areas scored on the SAT: Critical Reading, Math, and Writing, each scored on a scale of 200 – 800, meaning that a perfect score would be 2400? Are you reporting on all three and claiming a rise from 1500 (average of 500) to 1800 (average of 600)? Certainly impressive, but did you use KA videos to work on the writing and the critical reading sections as well as math? And if so, did you use nothing else for all three areas?
Finally, stating “your [sic] an idiot” is childish and a little embarrassing for you. I have reasons for the things I stated with which you disagree. Shall I claim that you are an idiot because we disagree? Sorry, I’m not in the mood for mudslinging just now, and I hope that if you reply again that you raise the level of your game above personal epithets. I can believe (and do) that Khan is not the great teacher some feel he is and make an argument to support that viewpoint. I’ve done so, more than once. Doesn’t make me right, but at least my reasons are offered honestly and openly. And without calling those who see things differently schoolyard insults.
“As of July 21, 2014, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube attracted 2,089,353 subscribers and the Khan Academy videos have been viewed over 458 million times”
source:Wikipedia
There is factual evidence indicating that his videos are actually helping a lot of people learn.Anybody who can relate to so many people and guide them through their education i would argue is probably brilliant.i would say the reason his videos are so helpful is beacuse he employs a conversational and informal style and by no means is he unprepared,most people are attracted to his enthusiasm and passion.And anyway he’s probably done a lot more than most people
Psandeep, with nearly 500 million views, why are critics still writing articles that Americans “stink at math”? Does that refer only to whoever has not seen his videos (me)?
I think it’s important to keep in mind that different people have very different ideas about what it means to learn, teach, know, or do mathematics. For the majority of Americans, who are woefully ignorant of the essence of mathematics, Khan Academy may get the job done (but even there it’s not the right tool for everyone). But for deeper understanding of what math is about, it simply is a slicker version of typical classroom instruction in school mathematics. People would be vastly better off going to James Tanton’s YouTube channels. He has a couple of free video courses on his GDayMath.com website, and lots of videos via jamestanton.com, all of which can also be found on YouTube. His books are fabulous, too. There are other fine sources: numberphile.com and their YouTube channel; the Art of Problem solving; James Grime (aka the Singing Banana) have videos on YouTube and on their websites.
The “down side” of the things I recommend: they might require some thought. But that’s because real mathematics does. Khan Academy videos often seem to try to take the thought out of things, just like most traditional math teaching does. As a way to learn to think mathematically, I think such things are a wasted effort. If all you care about is memorizing steps and procedures that you don’t really understand, I suppose they are okay, though I find Sal Khan’s voice deadly dull and very annoying, and I don’t think he gives informed thought to the examples he uses or the internal order in which lessons proceed. And I think that’s because Sal isn’t a mathematics teacher by trade, and so he thinks that just doing what countless math teachers have done live with doubtful results will be more effective if done on video, with the badges and other bells and whistles that the KA website offers. Probably good for training lab rats, but not so great for promoting mathematical thought.
@dianeravitch <>
I should think you would have enough knowledge of the scientific method to know better than to even suggest such an argument. Now I am not saying that anybody has “proven” the effectiveness of Khan Academy. But to dismiss it out of hand on technical even pedantic grounds is ignoring the fact that millions of learners find its material useful.
I suppose in the history of education it has been shown over and over again that the only way to teach people is to find the person who is considered the most expert in the world and have that person explain carefully and absolutely correctly exactly how to do everything perfectly without mistakes because education is not about discovery but about perfectly replicating ideas.
I find this entire article and the article it cites as groundless, even painful to read. With nearly a PhD in measurement and quantitative methods and a Masters in applied economics, I have taken a lot of mathematics and consider myself rather gifted in the area scoring higher than 99% of my peers on standardized testing in Mathematics.
Yet, I cannot understand the criticism of slope explanation presented in the original article.
I admit that I am heavily invested in Khan academy as I have used it extensively and find it frankly amazing. I will not go on any farther with this as I find myself more interested in swearing and stamping my foot than an actual conversation.
But, to summarize. You admit to never having watched any Khan academy videos. Please attempt to confine your future comments to something you have some personal knowledge of in the future rather than second or third hand regurgitations.
I can’t believe people are bashing Khan Academy. What he has done is amazing. He should get the Medal of Freedom! I’ve done 445 out of 503 of the math lessons and I’m looking forward to completing them all. I’ve learned so much math this year and I really enjoyed it. If people think he’s doing so bad, instead of putting him down, maybe you should try to help him. I think it is just jealousy. Everything can be improved, but you have to start somewhere. At least instead of just complaining about the system, he actually did something about it. Stop bashing and start doing.
agree – Sal is terrific
Sadly, I feel that polarization rather than logic has permeated this discussion. I have commented on this article previously but let me revisit my previous response from a different perspective. In my opinion (based on observations over a teaching career of over 60 years is that there are two distinct phases to mathematics education. One is to teach students problem-solving techniques and how to compute various algorithms. And the other is to have them internalize how and when to use these techniques.
Thanks to modern technology (mainly Google and the Internet) the first problem is addressed quite nicely on many math-help websites, of which, in my opinion, Khan Academy is a leading example. However, the fact that so many students still say such things as “It was an easy course. I could do everything except the word problems” indicates to me that the second problem still exists. Sadly, in the “textbook of life” there are only word problems.
It is my opinion that Khan Academy, as well as most of the available math-help sites that currently exist, does little, if anything, to address this problem. I do not blame KA for this because Sal has never claimed that this was his objective. So let me give a hypothetical example. Suppose I need to find the inverse of matrix but my classroom instructor has not explained the process in a way that I understand. So I go to KA and find that it gives me a wonderful way (meaning a way that is easy for me to internalize). So now I feel comfortable when it comes to finding the inverse of a matrix. Prior to the advent of today’s sophisticated hand-held calculators this is a great achievement for me. However with today’s calculators I can find the inverse of a matrix just by entering the matric on the calculator and clicking on the “inverse matrix” key. In essence, the calculator has simply replaced the need to resort to “paper and pencil” computations.
As an important aside. while this is sufficient for those students who ask “How do you do this?”, it does not address the needs of the students who say “Why do I have to know this? I’ll never use it once the course is over”. The latter group of students is quite large because of the number of math courses they are required to take rather than the courses they would have elected to take if the choice had been left up to them. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that nowadays some form of post-secondary education has replaced the high school diploma/GED as the entry level credential for jobs that lead to greater upward mobility.
However, knowing how to find the inverse of a matrix is not the same as knowing how and when to use this knowledge; and it is my opinion that this is the problem that still runs rampant despite the modern state of technology. In the case of my own website (www.mathasasecondlanguage.com) I still teach the “how” but I also include the “why” because I feel that understanding the “why” helps the students to better internalize the “how”, especially when it comes to solving “real life” problems. And if my students desire more practice with the “how”, I am happy to let them use KA.
So let me close with an analogy that might seem to be completely out of context. We often hear people say such things as “I’d rather be poor but healthy than rich and sick”. My feeling is that this is an unnecessary compromise, at least when compared to “I’d rather be rich and healthy than poor and sick”. In other words, rather than to settle for one of two alternatives, why not try to find an alternative that combines the best of the other two?. In that sense, I think that using KA to reinforce the “how” is a great first step. And I am hoping that a website such as mine will be a great first step for explaining the “why”.
Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it
Khan Acadamy is a big success, and sal Is the one that made it happen. Khan acadamy will get is criticism from teachers, but not from students. Students cannot lose there job teachers can.
Khan Academy has helped me learn Trigonometry. The value of the tool is self evident to the people who use it. The school teachers posting sour grapes comments in this thread are a few standard deviations from the mean.
Oh, simple. Don’t like Khan? Ignore him. I’ve got aspergers. I can’t get good grades(or even get to finish a course) if I need to study in a crowded classroom and I can’t afford private lessons.
My math teachers since I was little were all pretty much either complete idiots or pompous a*ses that forgot what it’s like to learn new things in a narrow timeframe. Sure, there are great teachers somewhere, just never had the pleasure of meeting any and even if I did, I’m not noisy or stupid enough to get noticed by one.
Khan did something very simple and wonderful – put the material out there for anyone to look. For me it’s a godsend. For all those other students who are more busy with their parties, homies, gangs, teams or whatever, sure, go coach em or something – they need the herding.
I just want to learn. Go shout and protest somewhere else, we’re studying here.
I agree with the writer:
Once I tiried the computer programing and the teacher svreamed at me.
P.s. Sal Khan talks too much
There are so many teachers bashing Khan Academy and neglecting the assistance that his channel has provided for students out of pure spite and denial. It would be tremendously helpful if they would start proving their worth in the classroom rather than bullying someone who has been so helpful to me and other students alike. To be honest I have heard far worse student criticism of teachers in the classroom and our god awful system for teaching than I have of Khan Academy. If Sal stops making video’s and leaves us to retire to the kind of teachers complaining out his “inferior” mathematical understanding and teaching, then god help us all.
As a teacher who uses Khan Academy in the classroom, I can see both benefits and issues with the system. I think the biggest benefit, that many people miss, is the flexibility of the system. Very few of my students like the videos, however, for those that do they are immensely helpful. How great is it that they can, if they want, have a problem type explained to them and unlimited number of times?
Something else, often not talked about, are the exercises. As I said, very few of our students watch the videos, but they all use the exercises. We’ve replaced our textbooks with the Khan Academy exercises. I remember the days of being a math student, painfully completing 30 problems that I already knew how to do, because that was what was assigned for homework. Now, students who are ahead can quickly do 5 and move on, and those that need more practice can do as many as they need. It is essentially a responsive textbook for students.
Most math teachers don’t grade every single homework/practice problem their students do, and so often only have an understanding of their student’s ability through tests, when it is often too late to intervene. The Khan Academy reports, though not nearly as comprehensive and helpful as the could be (my biggest critique of the system) do provide information on student learning progress. I can identify students who are stuck, or not yet trying, figure out what the problem is, and get them back on track.
Another reason I think a lot of people defend Khan Academy, is that it is a program developed to help, not to make money. It is free, and as a teacher working in a low-income school, that is important. They have a fully operational Spanish-translated version of the site that is incredibly helpful for some of our new-comer students and all of our Spanish speaking parents.
And finally, they know they aren’t perfect, and are constantly working on improving the site. They are settling because they have a basically good product, and they are trying to be receptive to both individual and classroom users. They’ve even built in a “Report a mistake in this video” button, so users can help them identify any issues.
Hi, K. I’m an education reporter at The Los Angeles Times. I’m interested in talking to teachers who use Khan Academy to help support students whose first language isn’t English. Would you be interested in talking to me about your experience? If so, contact me at Sara.Hayden[at]latimes.com. Thanks!
Before I was able to really sink my teeth into Algebra, I had dropped out of school so I could start my career in computer programming (sounds dumb right?). I found learning math to be incredibly difficult. Dropping out of school was probably one of the best decisions I made.
At a young age I found out what my learning style was and my career blossomed and I eventually became successful. I am well geared for computer programming because I like experimenting. Rapid experimenting (and failure) allows me to really soak in the fundamentals and understand the essence of an idea. In a traditional classroom you have to deal with all of the distractions with the students. What if your teacher is having a bad day? What if I am sick and I miss the lesson? How can the teacher accurately keep track of every fundamental of math and my skill level in each as well as how I can improve on the ones I need help. Even if these variables perfectly align there is the issue where I have to wait to have my homework graded, so my ability to experiment and quickly iterate over the idea is hampered by the teacher’s schedule. I don’t find out if I am doing things right or if I have a grasp on the idea until almost 24hours later.
I just started Khan Academy’s Algebra one and I finally see mathematics for what it is. I am no longer hampered by all of the many distractions and failures in education that kept me for enjoying math.. I am already applying the principals of my lessons in my programming, by building complex animation algorithms that apply effects to video using html and javascript, my main motivation is to learn linear Algebra so that I can improve on the 3D programming that I have been getting into.
Unfortunately the brash idea that he is somehow failing is obviously wrong. khan is more likely among a long line of innovators who are proving that people’s jobs can be done just as well on a machine. If I was an educator and a guy with no education background revolutionized my industry, and his efforts received millions of dollars in grants and funding, AND his innovation hinted at the antiquity of my methods and threatened the very existence of my job title… I too would be jealous.
I’m definitely not an expert in the field. I’m only in ninth grade. However, Khan Academy has worked wonders for me. Thanks to Sal Khan’s wonderful site, I aced the Eighth Grade Math standardized test at school last year. In fact, I’m four grade levels ahead. Let me tell you, I’m no numbers genius. In seventh grade, I got a 78 in math. I have improved so much!
I think Khan Academy is a great learning tool. If you have any doubts, I suggest you ask the students instead of the teachers. After all, they are the ones learning from the site. Their comments– and test scores– should be enough proof that Khan Academy is a great learning tool.
I love Khan Academy. I found the website about two years ago and thought it might be fun to finally try to tackle calculus. Btw, I’m in my fifties. So, now a couple years later. I’ve done that and then some and am working towards a masters in applied mathematics. I had very little math in university eons ago and I’ve used plenty of other resources besides Khan but Khan got me enthused. Helped me to get started and helped me to get through many early sticking points. It’s free. It’s a great tool. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
I am a retired HS teacher with 30 years first in the private sector followed by 15 in public schools. I taught at a typical working class HS with 2200 students reflecting ethnic and economic diversity matching that of our countrie’s current population, including significant numbers of ESL(English as a second language), special needs and poverty students even homeliness. My roster never had below 32 students per class over 15 years. Here are the two simple and yet crushing flaws plaguing education debates in this country. To begin, people evidently can not hold, effectively in their minds, the scale of numbers in the world today. With a world population of over 7 billion, millions are such and infinitesimal fraction that they actually mean nothing. A video goes viral on YouTube and has over a million viewers? Bid deal. So 1 out of every 7,000 people watched it. That means nothing. KA has racked up 2 million subscribers world wide? A drop in the ocean. Moreover, I nearly never hear anyone focusing on the most important factor in any human learning; motivation, willingness of the student to actually learn. ” A student who wants to lean needs a teacher like a fish needs a bicycle.” The KA, like so many other flawed, scientifically untested new age teaching reforms in this relentless pursuit toward privatizing public education in America, utterly ignores the adolescent aged learner who does not want to learn. There is nothing easier than selling food to a starving person. KA only teaches the willing. That will in the end fix nothing of the problems in public education! We spend unconscionable amounts of time and money trying to fix publication here and it is as effective as rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Can we please apply some basic scientific method to evaluating how to teach not just the willing but everyone.
I read the devastating critique and was truly underwhelmed. I love mathematics, got my degree in math/physics, and have been applying math daily for the last 40 years as a software architect/business consultant. I found the discussion about how Sal got slope wrong to be ludicrously pedantic, if not completely wrong-headed. Slope is a model or representation for a rate of change; the rate of change is not the slope. It’s like saying the thermometer is the temperature. If I had math teachers like Karim Kai Ani I likely would have had the joy of mathematics beaten out of me.
Sal does not pretend to be rigorous. He displays a workman like attitude toward math. Math is a set of tools that work best when sharply honed. He demonstrates a fearlessness when attacking problems that is liberating. When he is doing a Laplace transform he’ll freely admit that he hasn’t memorized the formula for integration by parts but will quickly re-derive if from the product formula. This represents a deep facility with mathematical thinking. He’s not afraid to chase down a dropped sign or some other slip of the stylus during his presentations and these excursions too are instructive.
I have my complaints about the recent activity on the http://www.khanacademy.org website. My chief complaint is that much of the the new content is completely driven by the Educational-Industrial complex. If you as educators don’t like the material on Khan academy then consider yourselves staring in the mirror. If you like the mind numbing new material then in my opinion you are part of the problem with mathematics teaching in America today. The problems have proliferated and outpaced the instructional material; much of the quiz material is unmotivated. To the extent that this forces folk to use other materials to complete the exercises, there may be some value to the incompleteness. Sal has also been reduced in many cases to just working sample problems. Sound familiar to everyone who has observed the frenzy of teaching to the test?. He does yeoman’s work untangling modern math edu-jargon however but it is not enough. The bureaucratic morass that masquerades as education is stifling American innovation.
As an aspiring secondary math instructor, I’ve been seeking out explanations, discussions and ideas both online and in print. Along the way, I have bookmarked several of Sal’s videos. I too dislike the recent updates to the Khan Academy site, such as the “energy points” or whatever gimmicky silliness is going on. The number of exercises have grown as you point out, and that’s not what I want from Sal. Where Sal shines is in giving the learner an intuitive spin on certain topics, for example I enjoyed his lessons on the basics of concavity. He is clear, confident and has a warm and engaging manner, even if his lessons are not particularly succinct. I can always move the slider to “cut to the chase” though there are those who benefit from what seems like a plodding approach to me.
I have my criticisms — he spends a lot of time changing pen colors, and sometimes an edit or two (or three) would help move things along when he’s showing a repeated operation or taking time to draw the coordinate plane or erase the board. I would like to see a more comprehensive approach that say, mirrored the content of typical precalculus course. Instead, students are treated to a sort of “just in time” approach with a jumble of different lessons, concepts and techniques all posted up there. Quality and continuity can be a bit inconsistent. I can’t remember the particular topic but just at the point where was ready for the next video there was nothing…just quizzes and problems to work. There was a hole in the graph!
Where the original post went wrong, however, was in blaming Sal for his own celebrity. It’s not his fault that there’s a segment of the educational reform movement that views him as the second coming. And many of Sal’s critics have gone too far. There’s no need to gloat over some small detail that doesn’t match exactly how one thinks things should be approached. Quibbling over legalistic definitions of terms doesn’t teach anyone anything except what a pedantic jerk one can be. A variety of self-styled Youtube teachers along with websites such as Purplemath are clearly helping students grasp both concepts and techniques, and sorry, idealists, but teaching to tests is a reality and as long as there is a test next week or next month, students have to know how to solve these problems and get the right answers. I need my students to be able to design bridges that won’t fall down, help optimize business operations and predict the population growth of certain microbes. That requires them to do the homework, study the material, do pretty well on tests, and yes, to memorize certain things. Whether that promotes some sort of eternal mathematical enlightenment or not is a matter for philosophers to debate.
I plan to encourage my students to seek out whatever explanations or discussions help them in their studies, and also to share what they find with the class. KA is neither a panacea nor some wicked force that is turning students’ brains to mush. It’s helpful to those who may benefit if nothing else from having an alternate explanation. Like books, discussion forums and study groups, KA and other web-based lecturers offer a way to help motivated students learn. Internet educational videos aren’t going to transform education as we know it, nor turn those who don’t care about learning into gifted scholars.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/how-well-does-khan-academy-teach/2012/07/27/gJQA9bWEAX_blog.html
Unless something has changed dramatically since I co-authored the above, I stand by the analysis Christopher Danielson and I offered about Sal Khan. Have you read a word where he decries the repeated hyperbole about him being “the greatest mathematics teacher ever” as spouted by Bill Gates and others? If not, then he’s guilty of helping to perpetuate his own mythos. And that is so deeply undeserved that I shudder at the thought that any intelligent, numerate person with a decent sense of what it means to teach might want to model hisher teaching practice on Khan’s tossed-off lessons.
Kindly re-read my response, Mr Goldenberg. I hope you don’t believe that I plan to model my approach on that of Sal Khan. I indicated nothing of the sort nor do I have any intention of doing so. In fact, I specifically criticized the haphazard nature of his lessons and the inconsistent quality of what is posted. I recognize the superiority of a structured and traditional course layout. If I were to use any one lecturer as a model, it would be Dr. Bruce Edwards of University of Florida, whose Great Courses material is clear, well-organized and comports with known course standards.
I intend to model my lessons on the recommendations of NCTM and structure the exposition of topics to match required texts and objectives. However, I don’t take an idealistic approach. Nobody is going to die by employing the simple concept of rise over run to grasp the slope of a line, and that is actually how slope is taught when the concept is first introduced. The guy isn’t trying to write journal articles, after all. Frankly I think most teachers would be thrilled to know that students are actually viewing any type of internet resource dealing with mathematics instead of goofing off on Snapchat, playing video games or watching TV.
If a student comes in and wants to discuss or share any concept related to the math topic at hand, well I say, “BRAVO!” Thank heavens. It could be from a popular book on algebra or calculus, a web article, a discussion forum like StackExchange or a Youtube Internet video from Sal Khan or someone else. Key questions would include “What in that lesson or article helped you understand the concept?” and “How would you improve upon it?” Of course, I would also point out any area where I felt an explanation fell short or needed clarification. They’re going to see things online. My job is to help them be critical thinkers about what they see.
I do agree with you that Mr. Khan needs to display a bit more humility about his videos and what they can accommplish. I didn’t realize the extent to which Bill Gates and others have been so effusively promoting him as the “Messiah of Math.” That’s just ridiculous, and he indeed does have a responsibility to disabuse the public of that idea whether or not millions of dollars of foundation money are being thrown his way. Still, watching a few Khan Academy videos isn’t going to destroy some kid’s entire mathematics education. I refuse to become hysterical over the deficiencies in Sal Khan’s videos simply because educational reformers think he can do no wrong.
I have several hundred math-related articles and discussions bookmarked. A handful of them (probably about 6 or 7) happen to be Sal’s videos. If any of them pique my students’ interest in mathematics generally or help them realize the value in locating ancillary material on their own, I certainly won’t complain.
Fred: what makes you think I misread something you wrote? More importantly, what makes you think my comment was grounded in a misreading of anything you wrote?
Let me repeat something I’ve stated here when the original post was made: there are things online free of charge taught by real teachers, not sloppy mess-makers like Sal Khan. People who drool over his stuff often write as if there are two choices: bad school math teachers or Sal. But of course there are many, many other choices. They include finding truly knowledgeable mathematics teachers (people who know more math than Sal, but more to the point, who know how to teach, which he does not, Bill Gates’ ignorant, pathetic hyperbole notwithstanding). Start with any of the following: James Tanton, Michel van Biezen, and Herb Gross. They’re all on YouTube. Their stuff is free. Between them, they cover an enormous range of mathematics and science-related material. They’re not the only such folks, but on my view they’re the best I’ve seen. Gross has video courses that start with arithmetic and end with differential equations and complex analysis. The more advanced material was filmed at MIT around 1970 (and there is a bunch of free downloadable support material). If anyone deserves the title of “Best Math Teacher You’ve Ever Seen,” it’s probably Herb. He’s in his mid-’80s now, still going strong. He will reply directly to questions and comments on his videos. And he make Sal Khan look like the empty fraud he is. I challenge anyone who raves about Sal Khan to check out Gross’ stuff. If you still think Sal Khan is the bee’s knees, you have my sympathies: you’ll never have the slightest clue what real mathematics is about.
Tanton is a brilliant mathematics (Ph.D from Princeton) and teacher (until a couple of years ago, he was teaching at St. Mark’s School near Boston, and he worked with Bob & Ellen Kaplan’s Math Circles for many years). He has several sites and YouTube channels with a wide range of problems, short takes on deep mathematical ideas ranging from elementary to. . . not so elementary. His free courses on quadratics, probability, etc., are as good as it gets. I use part of the quadratics course in my own classes with excellent effects.
van Biezen is like what Khan’s stuff would be if Sal ever took more than 10 minutes to throw a lesson together: nothing radical, but everything is well-thought out and the explanations are clear. He doesn’t make the sorts of absurd errors that Sal does. And since he’s an engineering professor, he covers physics, engineering, and how the math fits into applications.
Any of them wipes the floor with Sal Khan. Seriously.
And for a wide gamut of college-level courses, just start looking at what’s available free. Category theory, analysis, number theory, abstract algebra (Benedict Gross’ Harvard lectures are stellar), and so on. From Harvard, MIT, Ohio State, Stanford, Cal Tech, U of Michigan, U of Pennsylvania, the list goes on. All free. Why would anyone eat at Sal’s Greasy Spoon when there’s gourmet eating out there? I mean, seriously.
I’ve been very impressed with the Khan videos I’ve viewed thus far. I’ve been studying human anatomy and when I get to something in my text that baffles me, I watch a Khan video which explains the concept. The concept then is then both clear and memorable to me and the text suddenly makes sense. I am now planning to review calculus (which I took in college eons ago) using Khan academy. In addition, I plan to work through it with a student who wants to learn, using some old texts and/or Khan practice material.
Mr. Goldenberg: For the most part, we agree. And I thank you for pointing out that education “reformers” are indeed obsessed with Sal Khan. I will review your recommended sites for sure. Also I have one of my own: Professor Paul Dawkins of Lamar University in Texas maintains an extensive web resource called Paul’s Online Math Notes. Again, though, people WILL view his videos and just as you and I view things critically, I believe that students should be educated to view things critically as well. I don’t need to stand at the front of the classroom and castigate anyone for viewing or sharing his videos or anything else relevant to the subject at hand. If a couple of his lessons help the light bulb go on, great. Just taking an interest in the topic is a beautiful thing. We can discuss weaknesses in his approach or who teaches it better without resorting to trashing people. At least, some can. Good day, I’m done with the topic and I thank you again for your perspective.
Hi All!
By way of introduction, I am the Herb Gross to whom Mr. Goldenberg referred. I came across this site surfing to find comments about my own work. Teaching for me has always been a labor of love and I tend to value my success by the comments that are made freely on the internet.
I have never met Sal but I find that his material is more than adequate for the students who ask such questions as “How do you do this?” However most of the folks that suffer from “innumeracy” (and there are many of them!!) cloak their apprehension by asking such questions as “Why do I have to know this? I’ll never use it once this course is over.” And from what I have seen is that Sal (like so many others) does nothing to answer this question. And unless Sal had interned to answer this question, he has done nothing wrong.
On the other hand my teaching strategy is based on my self-inflicted axiom that when students understand the “why”, they become much more adept at not just doing the algorithms but also in knowing when and how to apply them.
In a manner of speaking I look at Sal and myself as different sides of the same coin; he addresses the “how” and I address the “why” (but I think I do a pretty good job on the “how” as well) and when students need more practice than what is contained in my work, I have no trouble recommending that they visit Khan Academy. I would be pleased if Sal, on the other hand, referenced my site to the students who want to know more about the “why:”
If you would like to look at my website, it can be viewed at http://www.mathasasecondlanguage.com and if you would like to write to me my email address is hgross3@comcast.net. Last year, at age 85, under the sponsorship of Corning Inc. I produced a series of 40 arithmetic videos that are designed to help elementary school teachers help their students to internalize math better. The playlist for these videos can be accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TaLSX7xybA&list=PLufObkSlzUUU4oKivkiwchXBRfAzQXpcu (Even if you don’t like them at least be impressed that even though I was 85 years old at the time, I didn’t fall asleep once during the recording sessions). On a more serious note I hope to have these videos on my new website that is currently under construction and augment it with power point slide shows to produce an online professional development workshop for elementary school teachers and their school districts to use free of charge. In fact all of my material on the Internet is available to be downloaded free of charge by anyone.
In closing I send all of you my best wishes for a healthy, happy and fulfilling new year!
Thanks for posting the above, Herb. I’ll let folks pursue the links you provided and see if perhaps I offered too much praise of you and your work. 🙂 Unlike me, you’re far too polite and classy to bad-mouth anyone else’s work.
Thanks for your very kind words Michael. I feel quite good about the material that I have posted on my website. What I worry about is that the people who might benefit the most from the work on my website might not even know that the website exists. Once people know that the website exists it is up to them to decide whether they find my work to be helpful to them. There is a saying in spots to the effect that no team is good as it looks like when it is winning nor as bad as it looks like when it is losing. I expect that my work will have both supporters and its detractors.
I admire the effort that Khan and his cohorts have put into making courses more accessible to students. The number of viewers and the percentage of viewers who feel that his work has helped them is impressive. My highly subjective feeling (and that’s all it is) is that a majority of his viewers are hoping that his work will help them pass tests; and if I am correct it means that they might not retain the knowledge they gained once they have passed their math course.
I guess what I’m really wondering is whether KA has done much to reduce innumeracy in this country (and beyond). And in all fairness, in the very worst possible case, he has certainly caused no harm.
This article fails to take into consideration the fact that many people who go to Khan Academy have already gone through the process of being taught by good or bad teachers. It’s all well and good to tackle the root of the problem, however I see Khan Academy as tackling the branches. I needed a good source of information to learn a few things after highschool, and before college. Khan Academy was a great free resource for this purpose. I’m pretty sure they never claimed that they were trying to re-write and fix the education system as a whole.
I’m a student and have found that KA’s video lessons are not worthy of being lavished with all of this money and attention. There are far better teachers on YouTube and resources to be found all over the web. My favourites are the YouTube video lessons taught by Derek Owens, the Paul’s Online Math Notes series by Paul Dawkins at Lamar University, and the numerous pages offered by Elizabeth Stapel on Purplemath.com. Another helpful resource is the Trig Without Tears series and PDF available online by Stan Brown. By comparison, Mr. Khan’s lessons are disorganized and sloppy, and his website is a jumble of half-baked lessons, random examples and unfinished topics punctuated by self-quizzes. Why Khan Academy has been anointed as the best of breed in online math education is a complete mystery to me. I have found a couple of his lessons helpful but it was in spite of his fast-food approach not because of it. You would think that the clearest, best-organized presentations that combine rigor with clarity and intuitive appeal would receive all the attention, rather than someone who seems very nice but is really more of a PR specialist. These foundations need to stop giving him all their money and I urge my fellow students reading this to utilize better quality resources.
@Trevor: while I agree with your comments, you obviously have seen that there are many people who do believe in Khan and Khan Academy. My belief is that most of those haven’t really looked for the better sorts of resources you mentioned or the ones I’ve listed here on at least one occasion. If someone is looking for a quick fix and KA seems to do the job, s/he is not highly likely to check out the sorts of things that you or I find more informative and valuable. I suspect that for many it comes down to: 1) the wide exposure and reputation of KA (as you’ve said, Khan has gotten a ton of PR, earned or not); 2) the desire for procedural knowledge – most people just want to know how to do the homework or improve on the exams and are not interested in deeper understanding; 3) things like rigor and conceptual knowledge (along with some of the other qualities you mention) aren’t valued widely; 4) really doing mathematics involves work, thinking, a willingness to struggle (productively, one hopes), and other things that many people find difficult, painful, intimidating, etc. So sites that expect students to do more than follow steps and mnemonics (“Ours is not to reason why; just invert and multiply!”) are off-putting to a majority. Khan academy reaches them at precisely the level they want to be reached.
While it is true that there are students who recognize the shallowness of KA, and some who complain that explanations aren’t always clear, that the lectures are “disorganized and sloppy,” as you say (I’d say that they are thrown together capriciously, and Sal Khan has said things about how he works that make it clear that we’re right on that score), there are loads of Khan defenders, many of them quite zealous. I’ve been attacked many times online for criticizing KA, and so have other critics, most of whom are not competitors, but simply people who care about the quality of mathematics teaching and learning. It’s hard to fight a cult, and Sal Khan and his services have grown some of the trappings of cults and political or religious fanaticism. I’m not going to roll over to those who attack me, and it’s gratifying to read comments like yours to remind me that not everyone is willing to settle for “fast food” mathematics.
I do not understand how many of the negative comments about Khan Academy are rooted in “he thinks he is great, but he is not, so Khan Academy is no good.” He is not perfect, but neither are most textbooks, most teaching strategies and most teachers (myself included). Hyperbole on the part of many regarding KA is NOT a strike against its potential usefulness. I use it as a supplement for students to keep Algebra fresh while they are in my Geometry class and as an alternate approach to what we do in my Physics classes. In the spirit of mixing up approaches to keep the students interested, I am all for KA.
John J- – I think your point of view is quite reasonable. My own issue is that in my work with mathematically at-risk students who, as a coping mechanism, often ask “Why do I have to know this?”. KA does nothing to address this question. The reason this “bothers” me is that I believe that addressing the “why” often helps students to better internalize the “how”. Of course, Khan does not purport to teach the “why” and for that reason he is doing nothing wrong. However, at least in my opinion, he is also doing nothing to help students overcome their fear of math
I don’t think the author understands what “debunk” means. You’re not going to debunk Sal Khan, unless you intend on debunking Math. Be a smart student and use a textbook, or another of the thousands of free online resources in conjunction with your Kahn-Academying. This is why scientists peer-review stuff. It’s not difficult to Google a math term and find a more than adequate selection of descriptions, explications, and practice problems that aren’t from Khan Academy — if you are doubtful about something, or just need a second opinion.
@abductivism: one problem with your comment is that it fails to consider who “the author” is who uses the word “debunks.” It’s not Val Strauss, it’s not Karim Kai Ani, but in fact, it is Diane Ravitch in her headline. Is it her with whom you wish to argue?
Yet another, I believe, is you argue with a claim that has not been made. The headline refers directly to debunk the Khan Academy, not Mr. Khan. Yet you proceed as if it was the latter.
Finally, it is not necessary to “debunk” mathematics in order to debunk either Mr. Khan (as was not, in fact, claimed), or his academy. I suspect you know that full well.
I am a middle school math teacher. I use Khan in my classroom as a major resource. I use it with my own two daughters. Everyone who has used Khan to learn the concepts were able twas able pass the state exam. The students that did not even bother, did not pass. In fact, my own daughters scored in the 95th percentile because I have them use it everyday.
I agree that it is not a replacement for teachers because what khan lacks is determining how a student learns and trying to find a way to help the student understand the concept.
Only the 95th percentile? Hmm. Seems like a less than optimal performance. But in all seriousness, you start with the assumption that the test is valid, something that is frequently questioned here and elsewhere, and with good reason. If we’re going to accept that criterion as evidence of good mathematics teaching, then we concede in no small part that the educational deformers who promote high stakes tests are correct about evaluating students, teachers, and schools. I, for one, will never accept that as adequate evidence.
You may be making the fundamental post hoc fallacy in ascribing student success (regardless of the meaningfulness of the criterion) to using Khan Academy. And for my part, there are much bigger things lacking from the videos he offers than just a teacher’s “touch.” As I and others have argued, KA videos seem not only to be thrown together randomly in terms of the examples, the order in which they are presented, and how they are explained, but the approach he takes is almost entirely procedural: do A, B, & C and magically get the “right answer.” How or why it works is rarely if ever considered. So you have a mechanistic approach to teaching used to promote a mechanistic “understanding” of mathematics. That is a sad and sorry state of affairs that might help kids get over hurdles but will never lead anyone to become truly good at real mathematics. As a means to an end, I suppose it’s as good as many others, but the end it promotes is fundamentally shallow. It reflects, I’m afraid, Sal’s own relationship to mathematics. Not surprising for a hedge-fund guy, but hardly the place I’d go for anything meaningful.
Try Math As A Second Language. Free videos from the marvelous Herb Gross on K-12 mathematics. Sal’s not the only game in town, folks.
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I hesitated about responding to Michael’s last message but it is my feeling that it is not Khan Academy that is the problem but rather a national culture that seems to believe that mathematics is a “how do you do it?” type of course. And as long as success in test taking is going to be based mainly on doing computations correctly, the Internet in general and KA in particular will continue to be used on a regular basis by students and teachers. In essence the Internet has replaced “pencil and paper” for performing computations.
In my opinion if innumeracy is meant to be the mathematical counterpart of illiteracy, then it means that the problem is that innumerate people do not know how to do various calculations. And if that’s the case, the Internet solves the problem. I feel that what we should be worried about is what I would call “functional innumeracy”; that is, people who can compute well but who don’t know how or when to apply the computations. It is reflected in the vast legion of math students who proclaim “It was an easy math course. I could do everything except the word problems!”. Sadly in the “text book of life” there are only word problems and those proclamations only confirm students who know how to compute but are not able to apply these computations to solve “real world” problems.
So as I said in a previous post, I believe that KA is more than adequate (despite some faults that one might be able to find with it) for helping those students who ask “How do you do this?” but that it does little or nothing to address the students who ask “Why do I have to know this? I’ll never use it once this course is over?” In my mind this latter statement is the coping mechanism of those who fear math. More specifically, the next best thing to being good at something is to be able to convince yourself that what you weren’t good at wasn’t worth knowing in the first place!
As a current college student I use and haved used Khan Academy a lot. Some students don’t like, or don’t think it helps but personally I’ve found his videos a lifesaver especially in college. I’m terrible at math, and I can tell you right now when I was in calc the only thing I cared about was passing. I’m not a math major, so obviously I cared about the mechanics behind solving problems, not the theory behind it and often times the mechanics behind problems were, well the problem. I understood what a derivative was and what it meant in relation to slope but that didn’t help me on any of the tests. Another example is chemistry, I use KA extensively in chemistry, especially organic. Knowing the theory of SN1/2, E1/2 and free radical synthesis doesn’t get you anywhere on tests. I could know every single definition and basic equation for every type of synthesis reaction but it won’t necessarily help in application of the mechanisms. If you don’t understand the mechanisms of those reactions it doesn’t matter if you get the theory driving the mechanics because you won’t be able to draw out the entirety of the reaction with just an understanding what a certain type of reaction is or does. Khan does an amazing job at breaking down problems so you can understand mechanics. I agree he doesn’t always explain theories behind concepts, but if a student is watching/depending on KA videos it’s because they don’t understand the mechanisms or procedures behind solving a problem. I agree that KA isn’t the best stand alone learning system and works much better in conjunction with an actual school. KA has saved my butt before countless tests and I think people are too harsh on him without considering testimony from students that use his system regularly. When I go to KA I’m usually looking for more complex, college level topics and honestly I just want a simple, slow explanation. I don’t care if there’s a few mistakes, or he does a problem a bit differently than my professor, I’m looking for a relatively short,concise simple video to explain how to do something which he almost always provides. Personally I think Sal understands students extremely well. As college student it can be hard to schedule tutoring sessions with a crazy schedule and KA is perfect for reinforcing topic and problem types besides the fact it’s a free service! Accounts are free and you get worksheets and tons of videos and especially in chemistry, where KA’s problems are usually a bit easier than anything I do in class his videos really help me build upon what I managed (or didn’t manage) to pick up in class.
His videos are fantastic. When you make comments like “He’s not brilliant, though he is likely not stupid, and he’s as boring a speaker as I have heard doing video math explanations.” you’re just making an ass of yourself.
I am finishing up my senior year getting my B.S in bioengineering, their advanced physiology videos(someone else does these, not khan), chemistry videos, math videos are fantastic.
if the vast majority of people like to learn from these videos, then it’s your perspective that needs to change.
@demthruz: since you’re quoting me, your insult is directed at me as well.
You give a blanket review of a wide swath of Khan videos and declare that they are “fantastic.” I coauthored a piece for the WASHINGTON POST that picked one math video to analyze and found it wanting. The comments Christopher Danielson & I offered were, we observed, not peculiar to that one video.
In the nearly four years since that piece was published, I’ve yet to see anything approaching a point-by-point refutation of what we wrote about with substantive supporting evidence undermining our comments. We’ve certainly been called a host of names, some insulting, some flattering. But neither comprises a counter-analysis. And I don’t expect to ever read such a refutation because it’s impossible to use the actual lesson Khan offers to undermine what we said about it. Hence, we simply get insults. Not exactly likely to change minds.
My perspective will change precisely when my direct critical comments on KA videos are countered substantively, rather than with angry rhetoric/opinion, that addresses the particulars. Yours certainly doesn’t even pretend to refute my claims, unless saying, “You’re making an ass of yourself” is supposed to be a pointed, substantive analysis.
Khanacademy is similar to Wikipedia. The world is a better place with it. Is it perfect? Of course not. Will it help the next Nobel price winner? Probably not. The doubters are missing the point. Think about people that are failed by the public school system or people that have no access to education.
I also would like to suggest doubters to spend some time looking at the reporting tools and the recommendation system in khanacademy. It allows adults to know exactly which topic and exercise students are struggling with. As a parent this is invaluable. No public school teacher can ever keep track of the topic that some kid might have struggled with 2 years ago.
If you hate the videos, you should still take advantage of the personalized learning and evaluation tools. The truth is that there are no free tools out there that do a better job with the tracking at scale.
No one is stopping anyone from using Khan Academy or calling for its being banned from the face of the planet. But “doubters” (or as I would call us, informed and experienced mathematics educators acting as critics) are raising issues that other teachers and potential users might benefit from considering. Why is that a bad thing?
A real issue that educators have is that so much money and time is spent in managing education not delivering education. The US has spent trillions in teaching math over the last 4 decades. KA is one of many outside approaches (free) that have provided support. The math education industry has had 10+ years to produce 1000’s of videos (the right way:) with all the correct peds/models etc.. If as professionals you can see the students as your customers & their parents as customers and give them the confidence that what you delivery meets the modern (web, mobile, social) world, its the world we live in and calling everyone who points that out as not”getting it” misses the point. If your industry spent a year or 2 and built a KA that was 10x better then you could get the support from the “customers” vs. looking for new ideas.
” If as professionals you can see the students as your customers & their parents as customers and give them the confidence that what you delivery meets the modern (web, mobile, social) world, its the world we live in and calling everyone who points that out as not”getting it” misses the point.”
I don’t work in an industry. I work in a profession. I don’t have “customers,” but rather individual students and their parents. If you insist on distorting my world with your capitalistic, industrialist, mass-production model, you miss the point of every competent, thoughtful educator on the planet.
I think that you make a very important point when you imply that spending more money unwisely to solve a problem only leads to a higher cost failure. In that vein, I’m not sure that we have to spend time to improve KA by a factor 10. In fact, KA is a stand-alone very good way to help students who are asking “How do you do this?”. The problem with KA, at least in my opinion, is that it does not address the question that a huge percent of students are asking, namely, “Why do I have to know this?” For the most part these are the students who do not intend to pursue a STEM-related career; and I would estimate that this group may be as large as 70% of the student population. For that reason our goal should be to invent additional courses along the lines of “Math Appreciation”.
In other words we should teach these students something that they will use later in life. In terms of a specific illustration, most of the non-STEM students will never have to use the quadratic equation but if it has to be taught to them, they will benefit more by seeing the logic of how the formula was derived. That is, it is rather elegant to show how by logical deduction we can reduce a quadratic equations into two linear equations, etc. To put it yet another way, students can go through life not knowing how to solve a “John-and-Bill-marble-problem” but most likely they cannot go through life successfully without the ability to think logically.
I used to define education to my students by telling that education was the part that was left after you have forgotten everything else that you have ever been taught; and my guess is that too many students, including many who have succeeded to pass courses by using KA, are not truly educated (using my definition of “education”). They tend to forget what they have been taught once they pass the required exit exam.
I have developed my own website (www.mathasasecondlanguage.com), also free of charge< to complement what KA does. As I see it, KA teachers the “how”, which I also do but at the same time I emphasize the “why" and the “when”. And the beauty is that whether it is a KA video or a Herb Gross video, the output is systemic in the sense that any viewer, at any time, and in any place sees exactly the same thing. My guess is that the Internet already contains enough “good stuff” but that not enough instructors make use of the wealth of material that is available. I believe that new approaches such as the “flipped classroom” are striving to do this by having students look at selected video before coming to class and then using the class time to discuss the videos and offer additional enrichment.
In 2014 at age 86, I presented a TEDx talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orqfXaDqm7Y&feature=youtu.be) that describes my thoughts in a bit more detail. I have lost a step or two because of my age, but I think the presentation will give you a good idea of how I perceive the problem.
Finally, someone who agrees. I am building and launching a company shortly aimed at giving the platform of education to teachers. Their success is determined and ranked by the power of the people. The only person (or people) that should determine who is the best at XYZ should be the collective masses. And if you pit people up against one another (which I am), where they explain the same thing, then you just created huge incentive for parties on both ends.
There are different ways to teach subjects. KA is limited to the ways expressed in the videos. I still find it to be extremely helpful for a free resource. I don’t think you should sit a child in front of KA all day and expect them to be able to be able to give you proofs of math concepts they have learned, but KA does teach and it does serve it’s purpose. I don’t always think that KAs way of tackling a math problem provides the easiest method or explanation. Sometimes it works for my student and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then we have to find other ways of looking at the problem so that my student understands. The same issues exists in a traditional school setting.
One benefit of KA is that it allows for mastery of concepts. One of the biggest issues facing traditional education models today is the fact that the system caters to the “average” student. The students who are lagging behind will continue to fall further and further behind as concepts are built upon concepts that were never mastered. The students who are ready for advanced concepts are stifled. There is no one size fits all solution. I don’t think we should be overly critical of methods that attempt to be one part of the education puzzle. I don’t think KA represents itself as being the only tool we should use to give our students a well-rounded education.
I like how many teachers are knocking KA. You may be a great teacher, but seriously, my teachers failed. I have found Khan Academy incredibly helpful. As someone who has never “gotten” math and who is now going through college level Calculus and who used KA for her statistics class (along with numerous other, non-math courses), I cannot understand the hate. If it’s helping people understand who otherwise didn’t, what the heck is the problem?
Never seen my daughter happier to succeed in math than when she is watching KA. So proof is in the pudding and all the rhetoric is for nothing. All the verbal acrobatics trying to slander the reputation of KA lay on deaf ears. Not everything is for everyone. Is KA perfect? No. Just like public school teachers. Some are good, some are mediocre, and some are amazing depending on the students perspective, personality, and way of learning that suits them.
To completely say it has no merit discredits you from the first second I started reading your critique.