“The teachers who use them were very enthusiastic about the children’s willingness to study.”
This is a MAJOR WARNING SIGN to me. Teachers were (and are) also very enthusiastic about Fuzzy Math (i.e., using calculators starting in Kindergarten) and Whole Language.
When I hear kids complain, I know that they are actually learning something. When I hear teachers complain, I know that their students are having to learn stuff. When teachers are happy - kids get NOWHERE.
For the student who **has** to sit through the lecture ( a passive learner), Khan academy will not do such great things. Khan academy cannot do the magical equivalent of putting a book under your pillow at night and learning the book by morning.
I had to do a crash course on probability with my two daughters and we spent a whole day going through his lectures. I had a good background in the material already, but had not used it for years. I found that several times per lecture (to my daughters annoyance) I would stop the video at a critical point and ask them if they understood the point. They would almost always say they did and I would ask a question to make them prove it, and often they often did not understand the point. That is one of the downsides to these lectures. Good problem sets usually fix that up. However, those lectures were invaluable for getting through the material in the short time we had.
-—This is a MAJOR WARNING SIGN to me. Teachers were (and are) also very enthusiastic about Fuzzy Math (i.e., using calculators starting in Kindergarten) and Whole Language.-—
All true. But take it up a level.
Who says that anyone needs to learn math, beyond adding and subtracting? I graduated from engineering school, changed careers, and have never used math beyond simple arithmetic. Yes, math can be beautiful, useful, and crystal clear, but for most people it’s esoteric and useless.
My point is that we need to focus on the larger questions regarding education. What is a good education? Does education have to be formal? Who has the authority to determine what a child should learn?
My answer is that parents should be a child’s primary educator, and that they should be given wide latitude in determining their child’s course of education. I’m equally happy with the elimination of compulsory attendance laws, and/or the establishment of a voucher system. If the latter, the only criteria for accreditation would be reading instruction, grammatical instruction for young children, training in logic for older children, natural law, and basic math. The rest is optional.
Why? We want citizens to be able to communicate their ideas, and to know how to think and argue. These skills allow children to learn on their own.
I have deliberately left out the most important object of education, which is religious instruction, since eternal life with God is man’s final end. But this is the province of parents, and they should be free to choose a school in line with their beliefs.
it could be possible that these teachers may be learning right along with the kids.
Remember...while the teachers were being “trained” - it was all about “progressive” techniques, and making kids feeling “included”. Building self esteem.
The teachers might be attracted to something they didn’t receive before.