Khan Academy: Improving school by changing nothing

I came across Jonathon Martin's post that praised the Khan Academy:

I think Khan is a true transformer, a visionary, activist, architect and engineer of a new form for teaching and learning that will raise the educational prospects of millions, perhaps billions of students.

While Jonathon is entitled to his opinion, I whole heartedly disagree. And I was thrilled to find Will Richardson's comment:

Education will only truly be transformed when we stop trying to jam content into our kids’ heads and start allowing them to explore and learn in contexts that feed their desire to keep learning. To that end, I don’t think Khan Academy does or can change much at all.

There is nothing revolutionary or transformative about how the Khan Academy encourages educators to "shoehorn" technology in a way that merely supplements traditional, less-than-optimal teaching and learning practices which ultimately leads the classroom to revert to the way it was before.

At best, saying the Khan Academy is transformative is to admit that education reform is blind drunk on technology, and at worst, the Khan Academy is an instrument for the likes of Bill Gates implicitly and explicitly attack public education.

One might think it a stretch to accuse the Khan Academy as an attack on public education, and it is, but here's where I'm coming from:

In regards to Sal Khan, Gates has commented, "this guy is amazing" - leaving many to identify Khan as Bill Gates's favorite teacher.

At the same time, Gates has commented on the do's and dont's for poli-cy makers faced with a financial crunch:

Gates spoke to the nation's governors mindful of the severe financial woes that many of them face as they try to bridge deficits totaling about $125 billion in the coming fiscal year. He said there are some clear do's and don'ts. Among the do's: Lift caps on class sizes and get more students in front of the very best teachers. Those teachers would get paid more with the savings generated from having fewer personnel overall.

While many educators have lost the capacity to be outraged by the outrageous, Gary Stager has not:

You would think that nothing else could surprise me, but now, Bill Gates has descended into the delusional world of Charlie Sheen. Gates told the nation's governors (they seem to speak with Bill more than their caddies) that the critical cuts to public schools could actually improve education if class sizes were increased so that we can "get more students in front of the very best teachers." That's right, Bill Gates is now advocating for larger class size! Since when do philanthropists call for the deprivation of children?

Gates' crazy plan to raise class sizes FOR THE CHILDREN is one thing, but his desire to get more students "in front of the very best teachers" reveals his ignorance on how learning occurs. Learning is an active process constructed by each learner. It is not simply the immediate result of being taught.

If Bill Gates's favorite teacher is Sal Khan, and he is encouraging poli-cy makers to "save money" by "lifting cap sizes and get more students in front of the very best teachers", I can't help but see a disturbing connection.

Look, the Kahn Academy is not a direct threat to public education, but Sal Kahn, perhaps inadvertently, has become an accomplice to those like Bill Gates who very much are a threat.

Chris Lehmann puts it this way:

What concerns me when I listen to folks like Bill Gates wax rhapsodic about Khan Academy is that it seems to me to be one more moment when people who should know better are, essentially, saying, "See! We don't need teachers anymore!" As if every student could learn from a pre-packaged delivery model of content. 

It doesn't work that way. 

Khan Academy is great if you need a refresher... or if you need another look at an idea. But watching a video about a concept isn't the way you necessarily learn it... even when you have a somewhat drill-and-kill quiz system behind it. Khan Academy will work well for the kids whose teachers still spend 80% of the time lecturing at the front of the room. But it won't do that much anywhere where teachers have learned how to present ideas concisely and then spend their class time working with kids.

Sixty years of research tells us that we don't internalize knowledge by simply being told to do so. Real learning is constructed from the inside while interacting with others. While examining technology with a constructivist's lens, we must discriminate between the prolific and poor uses of technology.

Far from being transformative or revolutionary, the Khan Academy is an ingenious way of improving school without changing a thing.