Learning in a classroom is equivalent to listening to an audio book, which cannot be paused or rewound, in a nightclub. And, the book has a highly complex plot. If anything distracts you, and if you miss anything, nothing you hear after that makes sense. Because a nightclub is a highly social setting, there are many things that would distract you. And, you have to cope with a variety of anxieties and fears. To minimize these problems, you read the book at home before going to the nightclub, but now you are bored because you already know what happens next; so you would just focus on partying. I would bet that in 100 years, people would read about how we used to teach, and wonder how we ever learned anything in a classroom.
The writer of this article completely misses the point of Khan Academy. She is stuck in her own tiny bubble, unable to see the big picture. She goes on about the content of Khan’s videos. Obviously, the specifics of how he explains each topic would not be as good as how professional educators would do, but the point that Khan is trying to make is that the problem is not what we are teaching but how we are teaching. The form, not the content, is the problem.
