This is a very important book, not just because of the successes that Mr. Khan’s Academy have spawned, but because it includes a serious historical critique of our current system of education. The current system is broken, but why? Khan sees a system anchored in Prussian practices (a contextualization which is designed to create spine chills) that are no longer viable in light of our common knowledge (the human attention span is approximately 10 minutes) and our new capabilities.
The key notion is ‘mastery’ learning. In my state I am surrounded by drivers who ‘passed’ with a 70% grade on their driving tests. How important is the 30% which they failed and how do the elements within that 30% put my life at risk? Khan would have all students receiving grades of A because no student would be able to move beyond course material without having achieved mastery of the totality of that material.
This is a far greater problem in STEM fields than in, e.g., the humanities. Each English teacher will admit to having overlooked certain ‘key’ texts. In my undergraduate years, the director of the Woodrow Wilson fellowship selection committee in my section of the Midwest (a significant position) admitted that he had never read the most important (or second most important) English novel of the eighteenth century, TOM JONES. In science this will not do. If you learned nothing about carbon in freshman chemistry, you are going to be challenged when you take organic chemistry. This will be the case in any field that involves cumulative knowledge. So long as we continue to ‘pass’ students who have not achieved mastery in individual STEM fields (particularly mathematics) we will foreclose their options in postsecondary and graduate education and in their future career options.
Khan attributes many of our problems to inertia; we have simply done things in a certain way for so long that we have difficulty even contemplating changing. An obvious example is the summer break, a wonderful idea when the majority of America was agrarian and students were needed to help with the harvest. Now we let expensive infrastructure sit (largely) unused from the second week in May to the third week in August.
He also scores a series of very worthy targets: bloated administrations, absurdly-high costs and the endless dividing of subject matter into isolated microspecialties. He argues that we definitely need foundational material (in contrast to many of the so-called progressive educators who depreciated the importance of core learning), though he believes that much of this could be acquired with approximately 1-2 hours of dedicated work per school day. He wants to free up students to pursue their interests wherever they might take them. This works very well, of course, in an Oxbridge tutorial system, where students are free to depart from a lockstep syllabus and, with their tutor’s guidance, follow their curiosity. It is more difficult in a system of near-universal education with large enrollments, large classes, and tight budgets. I would add that it is increasingly difficult when the presumed foundational knowledge no longer exists. For example, he gives the example of the Louisiana Purchase, arguing that (in our days of narrow coursework with rigid borders) American students are likely to be told that this was a stunning bargain, testifying to Jefferson’s genius and cunning, rather than a Napoleonic necessity, given his need to fund his military adventures. I agree wholeheartedly with his desire to see knowledge wholistically, but in a contemporary college course in American history at many American institutions the lecturer will be dealing with a student body which often could not locate Louisiana on a map (much less the dimensions of the Purchase territory), could not identify Napoleon and may well not know which came first, the renaissance or the enlightenment.
While he is not naïve with regard to the reach of information technology he is certainly correct that the youtube material that he has developed (and the internet in general) can extend foundational learning and facilitate the individual’s quest for knowledge. He is probably correct that, ultimately (as my great 19thc teacher, Royal Gettman always said), the only knowledge that endures is that which is self-taught. He realizes that he is open to the criticism that his program will be for the very few (he gives the number of 20%; many would put it closer to 10%) who are highly motivated, tenacious and endlessly curious. He is encouraged by the results which have been attained with the usually-challenged students who have utilized his program and I want to believe that he is correct. Certainly, the GI Bill generation’s experience suggested a vast range of possibility for those with their backs to the wall and exceptional vistas before them. Contemporary studies such as that by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (ACADEMICALLY ADRIFT, 2011) suggest that this task will be far more difficult than he imagines. Left to their own devices contemporary American college students spend what looks to earlier generations as a jaw-dropping, inordinate time on socializing.
In the course of THE ONE WORLD SCHOOLHOUSE the author explains the theories behind his system; he recounts the manner in which his Academy came to be and he explores what the ideal institution of the future would look like. This is presented with lucidity and passion; no one interested in education will come away from this book without a multiplicity of fresh ideas and stimulating suggestions.
That ideal institution, which is based in part on Waterloo’s co-op program, focuses (refreshingly) on learning and personal development. His institution bears no resemblance whatsoever to the contemporary university depicted, e.g., in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION. There are no wars over Title IX, over gendered bathrooms, of alienated faculty being punished for their tweets, of athletes involved in sex and drug scandals, administrators who embezzle, a diminishing tenure/track faculty being systematically replaced by contingent faculty, of cries for safe spaces and play-doh and an ethos which puts freedom of speech at significant risk. His interest is in learning per se and the best methods of securing it and for that we should all be grateful. I have seen the kind of institution of which he speaks and its Silicon Valley internships (part of his core vision) were vital decades ago. It is a place where students work with a highly gifted faculty with relatively few constraints. I have seen its classrooms at night when a student or two were covering a blackboard in equations. Its sole student problem, it seemed, was the socialization of brilliant students who had skipped multiple grades and were surrounded by students several years their senior (a situation which SK encourages; in the one-room schoolhouse the older students tutored the younger students and served as role models and even heroes/heroines). The only problem with this institution, the California Institute of Technology, is that it serves approximately one thousand undergraduates and one thousand graduate students in a country with 20,000,000 students in higher education. It is important that it serve as a model, but while I would dearly love to see its practices generalized that is not likely to happen in an academic ethos which is now largely vocational, corporatized and politicized. Salman Khan’s alternative system would put a serious dent in the current establishment’s market share without succumbing to the manifest flaws of for-profit education. While that is something that we might greatly desire, it is not likely that we can expect its reach to expand beyond those who are serious, motivated, focused and curious. Some of those, however, who are being failed by the current system might be reclaimed. Mr. Khan should receive our aid, support and thanks for his efforts on their behalf.
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Top reviews from other countries
Mr. H. D. Phillips
A revolution in education
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 21, 2016Mr. J. M. Vidamour
What a great book. I have an interest in education but ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 14, 2016John Smith
Great for those who are new to the ideas expressed in the book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 6, 2013Sabine
Worth reading if you are passionate about Education and its future
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 14, 2018
