KHAN Academy: The future of education?

[LooseWilly]

78. In my experience, kids don't pay attention "past 90 seconds" mostly because other kids are talking..

and when you have an overcrowded classroom and the kids are shoehorned in ... then they start talking (or arguing) among themselves... and then other kids turn their attention to that... and soon the class is bordering on anarchy.

You can try to blame it on "the teacher centered lecture model" being dead... I think it would be more accurate to say that "the teacher centered lecture model" is incompatible with class sizes over 35... and therefore incompatible with underfunding of schools.

It would be more honest, I think, if you were to just admit from the start that your aims are to find "solutions" to educating kids without the bother of investing in reasonable remuneration for those doing the teaching of ever-increasing numbers of children.

Lecturing a class of 20-25 is very effective. Beyond that size, lecturing becomes more and more difficult.

I don't see any evidence that letting the kids work together will somehow be more efficient at teaching.

Having kids watch videos at home, and then "concentrating teacher resources" on those still having difficulties isn't a "revolutionary method for teaching"... it's a means to take the responsibility for teaching the students who can learn from a YouTube video off the hands of the teachers, and leaving the teachers to try to concentrate on those kids who actually need instruction on a topic to learn.

Is this more efficient? Probably. Is it liable to lead to students who can "learn to the test" themselves, without the need of a teacher, completely losing access to whatever "not test required" knowledge that a teacher might be able to share/impart?— probably.

As the programs progress though, I wonder... I'm sure the teachers will be able to help the students who run into difficulties at different points in the lessons... or even on different lessons depending on how different their relative rates of progression are... what I wonder though, is, what will prevent those having difficulties from becoming distracted, disruptively disengaged, and thereby exponentially distracting to their neighbors— while the teacher is helping another student? (especially if the other student is working on a completely different lesson)

I was in a class run on the same model, in analog, back in 79-80 (it's really NOT a revolutionary new model of teaching)... and I can assure everyone that the classroom was relative bedlam. It's fine for the self-directed (the "self-starters&quot ... but it's hell on the rest. And, once the teacher is occupied with a student, the only hope for anyone else with a question is... another student.

Having fellow students teach for free may be Newt Gingrich's wet-dream... but realistically it helps promote kids realization that only by working together can they all "prosper" academically. And, you know what that leads to?— Communism.

I'm actually only being half-sarcastic. Sacrificing one's own self-interests (if you're really far ahead in the modules, you can "take a day off" and there's absolutely no repercussions) to help fellow students is the basis of a "class consciousness". The more it happens, the more obvious it will become.

I was that student that held up his own lighting fast progress through the (analog) modules to help other students with questions... and I'm a Communist. Coincidence— I don't think so.

You and Bill Gates are promoting & fostering Communism.

But, in the meantime, your program leads to distracted teachers and kids doing whatever they like, kind of like the current system. Maybe the solution is to stop trying to force teachers to be behavior engineers as well as educators, and instead allocate the resources to the schools to provide personnel to deal with behavioral issues so that the teachers can concentrate on teaching (on their own terms).