|
|
Khan Academy's Challenge to State-Certified
Educators
I have written a lot about Salman Khan
and the Khan Academy. I will continue to do so.
Today, I want to talk about what he has
done to modern theories of education. For over a century, there has been a mass
illusion that has been fostered by beneficiaries of tax money. This money has
gone to teachers and educators. This illusion is as follows: state certification necessary to be a good
teacher.
This illusion has been basic to the
creation of the teachers' union. It is this commitment to what is laughingly
known as professionalism that has been the basis of legal barriers to entry.
Progressive educators fostered this illusion early in the 20th century. They created
a theory of education out of whole cloth, except this whole cloth was tattered
cloth. There was never any scientific or any other kind of evidence that
indicated that going through a teacher-training program designed by men and
women on college faculties would in any way improve the education of children.
This is a classic case of people who
had little or no personal experience in teaching school children, who sat down
and designed a series of theories about what it takes to teach children. The
theories kept changing. There were always rival theories. But they all had this
in common: most of the people teaching these theories in university classrooms
had never had personal experience or success in teaching school children.
This is the classic example of how
universities work. People who teach in MBA programs have never owned
businesses. People who teach psychology have never worked as full-time
psychologists. Professors get themselves licensed by their own group, few of
whom have had any experience in the free market, where profit and loss
determine who survives and who fails. Then, having created a state-mandated
barrier to entry, they earn above-market wages paid by taxpayers. This starts
at the university level, and then it moves down to the very lowest levels of
the educational system.
It is all a farce. It is summarized by
the slogan we have all heard: "He who can, does. He who can't, teaches. He
who can't teach, teaches teachers."
Without any warning, Salman Khan in
2006 began posting his mathematics screencast videos that he produced for his
nieces and nephews. People began to come to his website to see the videos. He
kept producing more videos. He offered them free of charge.
By now, you know the story. Today, 10
million students are using his videos. They are using them in school systems
and also in homeschooling environments all over the world. The students must
speak English. That is the main barrier to entry, other than Internet access.
Internet access is going to get cheaper. Learning English as a second language
is going to get cheaper. And, before too long, there will be automatic
translation programs that can be applied to videos. Khan will someday be
teaching 100 million students.
The faculty at Oakland Unity High
School began using his videos and exercises. The performance of the students
dramatically rose. It is a charter school, so I don't think it is
representative of the standard inner-city high school. But the point is this: a
charter school drastically improved the performance of the students, which will
make the charter school a pot full of money. The charter school is going to be
able to defend itself against the critics inside the inner-city schools, who
hate the idea of charter schools being able to siphon off the best students. The
hostility of the teachers' union against charter schools is legendary.
Khan has proven that 100+ years of
educational theory is wrong. With no training whatsoever in a formal program of
education, he became, almost overnight, the most important teacher in the
history of the world. The teachers' union can scream bloody murder, but it
won't do any good. His program is clearly better than anything that the typical
tax-funded public school has to offer. Other charter schools will pick up
Khan's program. Why not? It's free. They get all of this educational support
material, and it does not cost them a dime. All the school has to do is buy
used computers, add Wi-Fi, and let the students loose on Khan Academy's site.
His site is living testimony to the
fact that 100+ years of rival educational theories, all insisting that you have
to have professional training to be a good teacher, were fake from the start.
The most important teacher in the history of education had no training in this
regard. His program is better than anything that has been produced by people
who have gone through the screening process of dumbed-down education -- a
system that is taught in the colleges and universities of the world. It is
simply a way of screening out candidates for teaching jobs. It is a way for
moderately intelligent people, who have gone through certification, to keep out
rivals who are really good teachers, and who would be willing to work for less
money. The whole system of automatic payments based on seniority and the number
of semester hours earned in night school programs and summer vacation programs
is about to come to an end. The teachers' union is on the defensive, and it
will never again get on the offense. Three words give the lie to the whole
illusion: "What about Khan?"
The teachers' union is by far the most
powerful single union in the United States. It is the most powerful
politically. It is the most powerful economically. It is based on an illusion.
That illusion is being statistically undermined every day by the Khan Academy.
The foundation of the entire public school system all over the world is being
undermined free of charge every day. A man with no training as a teacher is
clearly the best teacher in the world. This is demonstrated by the number of
students he has.
Any high school mathematics teacher in
the United States could now set up a rival program. There are probably 100,000
of them. If these teachers are any good, or if 10% of them are top-flight, then
any one of them could do it. Nobody has done it. They are lazy to the very core
of their being. They are not confident about their own abilities. They refuse
to sit down with $200 worth of equipment and post videos free of charge on
YouTube. They have surrendered the entire field to one man, and this man is not
a trained educator. It is too late ever to catch up with him. He has the
financial support of Bill Gates, and he has the trust of Bill Gates. Nobody is
going to displace him in this generation.
This means that the public schools of
the world can either ignore this revolution, or else they can integrate it into
their programs. If they ignore it, they are basically turning over education to
the charter schools. The charter schools are going to use it. It's a free
resource which improves student performance and cuts expenses.
Because one man has single-handedly
proven that the entire theory of progressive education is wrong, and that you
don't need to have specialized training in order to be a great teacher, other
institutions can now get involved. Institutions that are not certified by the
educational establishment will be able to provide top-flight educational
services. Churches will be able to do this. Charitable groups will be able to
do this. I hate to think about it, but inner-city gangs will be able to do
this. Anyone who wants to gain a following in the community can do so by
offering top-flight educational services free of charge, simply by providing
low-cost computers to students, and a minimal place to house them. The state
will still regulate square footage, and the teachers' union will still try to
convince people that these alternative routes to education are substandard, but
Khan Academy's success at Oakland Unity High School is proof that an uncertified
teacher and his educational program are better than what the inner-city
schools, or regular public schools, are capable of providing. That is the
affront of the Khan Academy.
This message is going to spread. It's
going to spread to universities. It already has begun. The entire structure of
education, based on false theories of what constitutes top-flight education --
state certification -- is being undermined by one man and a support staff of
statisticians, whose salaries are paid by Bill Gates and other donors.
The World Wide Web is undermining
newspapers. They are dying. It is killing network television, which is also
dying. The last bastion has been education, and while it is not dying, its
executioner is deploying a digital guillotine every day, 24 hours a day, free
of charge. He has proven, statistically and technically, that the number-one
theory of modern education is wrong, namely, that you need training in a
state-certified educational institution in order to be an effective teacher.
I don't know what Khan's politics are,
and I don't care. I don't care what his educational theory is, either. I care
about this: he was never formally
certified as a teacher. This represents a threat to the public school
system like no other in history.
No comments:
Post a Comment