Why good teachers don't fear the Khan Academy

The popularity of the Khan Academy, founded by Sal Khan, has brought to the surface simmering resentment.  The Washington Post, for example, just carried a piece written by Karim Kai Ani, a former middle school teacher and math coach.

Mr. Ani takes umbrage at the attention given to the Khan Academy, especially the accolades heaped on its founder.  He writes, “Sal Khan has been hailed as the “world’s teacher;” the “Messiah of Math;” and the savior for everything that ails public education.”  For good measure, he points out that there have been errors in some of Khan Academy videos, and takes umbrage at Mr. Khan’s alleged unpreparedness.

The conclusion that Mr. Khan is unprepared is based on an admission that Mr. Khan apparently doesn’t know what he is going to say half the time.  The reality, Mr. Ani doesn’t mention, is that some good teachers, with a good grasp of their subject matter don’t come prepared with a memorized script.  Instead, they know their subject matter well enough to modify their mental script on the fly-usually in response to the manner in which the students seem to understand the material.

Nor is it unusual for teachers to make mistakes.  They are, after all, human. Alexander Pope said that “to err is human; to forgive, divine.”  In teaching, to err is human; to acknowledge the mistake, and learn from it is divine.

The Montgomery County Public School System (MCPS) has devoted an entire webpage to promoting a Harvard publication titled "Leading for Equity: The Pursuit of Excellence in Montgomery County Public Schools."  The book gives a glimpse of the future of teaching in the largest public school system in Maryland.  According to the book, Montgomery County Public Schools  (MCPS), "…  is in talks with Lockheed Martin's Simulation, Training and Support group to create a prototype of a potentially breakthrough approach to teacher training. ... Brian Edwards, the superintendent's chief-of-staff is managing discussions about the development of a new approach to algebra professional development that builds on STS's sophisticated simulation and gaming technology, used by the military and commercial sectors to prepare people for complex and often high-risk professional tasks. The project is in the very early stages, but the general idea is that teachers could practice proven instructional techniques for core algebra skills in a virtual classroom environment that would include students with a variety of learning needs." It continues on and states 'the talks are ongoing'" (Page 90, paragraph 2).

Clearly, teachers are not perfect, and never will be. 

MCPS does promote the use of Khan Academy type videos for teaching.  A relevant example is one titled “The Math Dude rides, rises, and runs along the slope of a line.”  Clearly, the internet can be an effective teaching tool. In some cases, it can be an alternative to the traditional brick and mortar classroom.  Universities are embracing this fact with online offerings such as edX and Coursera.   The Khan Academy is nothing more than a symbol of this new reality facing public education.  A good public education system, one can argue, would be one that can add value to the internet offerings.  The criticism heaped on the Khan Academy exemplifies these facts.

Letting children learn

Take a look at this video, if you will, and pause for a moment to think of its implications.  Is it a salvo in the vast conspiracy some see, seeking to undermine public education?  Or, is it a thought provoking video on how our children learn?

In Montgomery County, Maryland, a wealthy enclave bordering Washington, DC, differentiated learning is the latest classroom innovation.  Take a look at these tweets from Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Superintendent Joshua Starr (please see here, here, and here), and you will notice students in groups learning on their own with the teacher serving as a ringmaster of sorts.  Give each group a computer and you will have replicated Sugata Mitra’s approach.

This paper asserts that two decades of research has shown that group learning increases student learning and social-emotional outcomes such as social skills, self-esteem, etc.  The abstract makes no bones about the fact that “groups with above-average students produced more correct answers and generated a greater number of high-quality explanation of how to solve the test problems than did groups without above average students.” Go back to that video and you will hear Mitra assert that, even on the same task, some groups did perform better than others.  

What then, you should ask yourself, would have happened if each of these groups in the differentiated classroom were given access to high quality resources be it via computer or otherwise?  The research, it seems is rather unequivocal, they will learn much more. 

 

Alas, such an experiment is highly unlikely.  In some minds it would herald the beginning of the end of teaching, relegating teachers to a minor role.  However, I would ask, don’t we owe it to our children to give them the opportunity to learn the most?  If we are to embrace untested education paradigms such as differentiated education, shouldn’t we do it in a way that is known to maximize learning?