As I’ve said on this site before, I think education is one part of our culture that is in serious need of an overhaul. There are probably only a few people that disagree with this assessment and they are probably paid lobbyists for the teachers unions. That’s an important distinction. I don’t think even the teachers themselves would disagree with the statement that education is in need of a revolution.
Kahn Academy is essentially a Youtube based teaching system. Kahn is a testament to the potential future of education, but the beauty of Kahn Academy is its simplicity. There are 1600 videos primarily focused on math and science, and they’re all about 10 minutes long. The material is presented as if you are just watching someone illustrate it on a whiteboard. It’s not fancy at all.
I think Kahn raises some really interesting questions about our education system, and also creates a lot of hope both for our education system in the U.S., as well as the education of the world.
- If one man can create 1600 instructional videos on his own, with no funding, covering topics like physics and trigonometry, what would be possible with some funding?
- If this is the future of education, what does it say about the current education system that the revolution took place without any policy support from the government?
- Why couldn’t “brick and mortar” schools require teachers to create one instructional video per week that would be similar to Kahn’s but would be focused on building a library for self paced learning? Why couldn’t students be required to complete one peer tutoring program per week as part of their classwork? How quickly could we explode the availability of learning materials?
- What if students were required to complete some number of sections of the Kahn videos during the summer, so that they could come to class in the fall further ahead than when they left in the spring?
- Why are our “job training” programs teaching skills like Microsoft Office, when most Americans can’t cross multiply? Programs like Kahn would allow these same people to go back to basics and do something that would give them a much better chance of actually attaining real skills. As an employer, I don’t care if someone can use MS Office if they don’t have a brain to do anything with it.
- Has there ever been a time in history where an education rich in the basic important subjects could be so attainable for so many? What does this say about the optimism that we should have for our future?
Just some thoughts.
