Salman Khan is the most important revolutionary in education in recorded history.
One man’s afterthought by 2015 was educating 26 million students.
Khan Academy is a 501(c)3 nonprofit with a mission to change education for the better by providing a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. We believe that students of all ages should have free, unlimited access to the best educational content, and that they should be able to consume and master this content at their own pace. In addition, we believe that there are incredible opportunities to use intelligent software development, deep data analytics, and intuitive user interfaces to more effectively surface and present these educational resources to students and teachers around the world. Our library of content covers kindergarten to early college math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and reaches into humanities with tutorials on economics, finance, music, philosophy, and art history. We have over 26 million registered students and to date, we have delivered over 580 million lessons and 3.8 billion exercise problems.
That was way back in October, at the beginning of the school year. Take a look at its most recent Alexa traffic ranking.
It will grow to 50 million students by 2025 — maybe sooner.
No one in history has ever educated more than a few thousand, and only in one or two courses. He is educating them K-12.
This is historically unprecedented. We are seeing a world revolution taking place, yet no one is factoring this fact into their projections.
THE THREAT TO PROGRESSIVE EDUCATION
The stalwarts of American progressive education would be horrified. The supreme pedagogical winner in the 200-year education marathon is a graduate of M.I.T. and Harvard Business School.
Think about this. Progressive education has been based on control over American education by the central institutions of teacher training and certification, what used to be called “normal schools,” but which academically were always below normal academically. They were the teacher colleges that trained armies of narrowly educated young women to teach in tax-supported public schools. Then there are the universities that train teachers in education departments, which are extensions of the government.
We all learned this aphorism early: “He who can, does. He who can’t, teaches. He who can’t teach, teaches teachers.”
Khan has relegated them all to teachers’ assistant status. He has no teaching credentials, yet he is providing both the content and the pedagogy of modern education, K-12. He is exporting it around the world.
(For the rest of my article, click the link.)
