Learning
Khan Academy completely engulfed Alexander’s world today. The obsession sprouted as mere side glance into the platform. An innocent and busy passerby, catching a glimpse of a shiny surface, or an obliquely shaped frame, stops to get a better view and take in the majesty of the form. If this was window shopping, Alex would have stared at the piece of jewelry, asked to play with it, turned it in his hands a few times and imagined the difference it would make in his self image and the function it would serve in his everyday life.
As the Academy opens into a learning platform, Alexander, instead took a number of brief tests: a small pop up window, with beautiful UI that asks him a relatively simple question about math, that he learned eons ago. The search through his memory brought up thoughts of his childhood in grammar school in Moscow. His class had the same teacher from 1st grade through the 7th. The group of kids didn’t change throughout those years, same students and one teacher.
The programs congratulated Alexander on the correct response and showed waterfall of points adding up to the sum total score earned as his first achievement. The problem truly was elementary, the points rather meaningless, but the combination of a tiny challenge and a rather sweet visual reward warmed the heart. He tried more, succeeding most of the time but finding occasionally surprising holes in his elementary math.
After an hour or so, his head felt heavier. It didn’t quite hurt, but he could tell a different muscle area of the brain was flexing, a mental workout. In the same way that an athlete finds peace and rhythm in doing the most elementary parts of her routine, so did this practice of grade school math, growing steadily yet slowly in complexity offered both a respite and an exercise.
World class athletes take hours to stretch to improve performance and prevent injuries. There is something to be said about doing remedial tasks to warm up the brain into awareness and heat it up into pitch perfect performance. Everyone has a routine to get themselves in the zone. What if that routine slightly changed all the time. It would make for a better worked out muscle and or in this case a better rounded individual.
As Alexander listened to the faceless voice of the professor lecture on Biology, he found himself comparing the style of the diction, the metaphors used and the direction of the movement throughout the subject similar to watching an athlete, like a soccer player catch a pass from their defender in midfield, advance through the field, avoid several opponent defenders and take a shot at goal.
Appreciation of mastery must be universal, like attraction to beuaty, wired into our psyches by thousands of years of evolution. And yet the world is about to start changing very quickly. Lots of people won’t keep up.
People love certain players and hate others. “He never passes. He is too slow.” “The other guy dribbles as if dancing”, or “He has a rocket for an arm”. We are entertained by certain performances more than others. Similarly, we relate to certain teachers more genuinely and eagerly than to others. Their style parallels our understanding of the subject.
The cornerstones of our comprehension mirrors the concepts which the professor uses to build from a simple base to the hardest problem. This teacher may use the same words in the same context as us, thus not only are we not confused, but we are finishing his or her sentences. Commonality builds a bond.
The professor and I understand each other. We have the same passion for the subject for the same reason. The truth of common incentive drives home our intention for being interested in the subject in the first place. Yay for being like other people.
We like to study subjects for their beauty in relation to the world we observe or wonder about. If a teacher destroys this precious construct, she can turn a student off the subject very quickly. At this point even an adept student will not become a virtuoso, because one achieves the flow and superman like focus, leading to mastery, only through the combination of understanding and enjoyment.
A student feels the rush of genius as he solves problem after problem of increasing complexity. Off course she or he will stumble at times. It takes a certain amount of patience, pain resistance and again, passion to build depth. Again, at this extremely important juncture, it’s the teacher who opens the key to the door of enlightenment, or lifts the draw bridge from the moat, cutting off access to the same.
If the professor and the student share the passion for the subject at this inflective pain point, the teacher can show the student the beauty and the mystery of the place where she got stuck and then amaze the pupil with the symmetry which nature requires and in which the equation reveals the answer.
Symmetry, or balance is the beginning and the end of science and art. A simple underpinning with one or two rules of change leads to infinite complexity. Likewise, one can alter the world in innumerable ways, as long as she keeps the overall balance of the original system, open or closed. At least that’s the concept with close systems. When you look at rules of physics at a universal case, this may not be the case. But we are mostly talking about silly math here.
The beauty of Khan Academy doesn’t hide very deep. It sits on the surface and smiles at those pay attention. It’s the constant feedback loop, the ease of use and the trackable interconnectivity of concepts that builds the strongest muscles of the future academician.
You can see all the problems you’ve ever gotten wrong and the concepts behind them. You can rewatch the videos explaining them, or look at step by step hints for every problem which will increase your understanding and give you a sense for how far along with that concept.
If the video doesn’t help. Watch another one. Look at a different site explaining a the same concept, or 20 sites. The internet contains an entire humanity worth of information in many iterations. A student doesn’t have to rely on the one teacher for all of her answers and inspirations. Half the professors from the top universities in the world are now her personal mentors. No royal family throughout history had that type of privilege at their fingertips - especially for free.
Khan Academy doesn’t monetize. It was started by Sal helping out his relatives with homework. The project was born out of love of people and love for science. Thankfully people like Bill Gates and the VCs who backed Khan Academy recognize the seismic shift in education and how this planet will transform itself by an intelligent middle class in this century. I hope to see the fruits of love and labor by the youth of Khan Academy come to change the world in my lifetime.
