http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/ff_khan/How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education
By Clive Thompson
July 15, 2011
Wired Magazine
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For years, teachers like Thordarson have complained about the frustrations of teaching to the �middle� of the class. They stand at the whiteboard, trying to get 25 or more students to learn the same stuff at the same pace. And, of course, it never really works: Advanced kids get bored and tune out, lagging ones get lost and tune out, and pretty soon half the class isn�t paying attention. Since the rise of personal computers in the early �80s, educators have hoped that technology could solve this problem by offering lessons tailored to each kid. Schools have blown millions, maybe billions, of dollars on sophisticated classroom technology, but the effort has been in vain.
Khan�s videos are anything but sophisticated. He recorded many of them in a closet at home, his voice sounding muffled on his $25 Logitech headset. But some of his fans believe that Khan has stumbled onto the secret to solving education�s middle-of-the-class mediocrity. Most notable among them is Bill Gates, whose foundation has invested $1.5 million in Khan�s site. �I�d been looking for something like this�it�s so important,� Gates says. Khan�s approach, he argues, shows that education can truly be customized, with each student getting individualized help when needed.
Not everyone agrees. Critics argue that Khan�s videos and software encourage uncreative, repetitive drilling�and leave kids staring at screens instead of interacting with real live teachers. Even Khan will acknowledge that he�s not an educational professional; he�s just a nerd who improvised a cool way to teach people things. And for better or worse, this means that he doesn�t have a consistent, comprehensive plan for overhauling school curricula.
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Even if Khan is truly liberating students to advance at their own pace, it�s not clear that the schools will be able to cope. The very concept of grade levels implies groups of students moving along together at an even pace. So what happens when, using Khan Academy, you wind up with a kid in fifth grade who has mastered high school trigonometry and physics�but is still functioning like a regular 10-year-old when it comes to writing, history, and social studies? Khan�s programmer, Ben Kamens, has heard from teachers who�ve seen Khan Academy presentations and loved the idea but wondered whether they could modify it �to stop students from becoming this advanced.�
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Many schools do not want students to progress at different rates.
