Khan is an awful teacher. There are far better on the internet. He has some money, and his presentation looks cleaner because of it, but most people wouldn’t be able to learn from him. That’s OK because his market is AP types who probably could figure it out an their own.
I would not argue that nobody could do what he does, nor that nobody does it better (I haven’t done the research to know that). I do argue that he has proven the concept of supplementing/replacing the textbook with bite-sized video lectures made available online, free.By all means, if you can do it better - or get others to do so - I invite you to go for it. Just do yourself the favor and don’t do it differently, in a way which is worse. I respect Khan for his ability to learn subjects which he hasn’t been expert, and then teach them. If you want to improve on his lectures, you should at least take his for a starting point, and improve on them. If you don’t, chances are you won’t end up with a better product. At least, not in all the domains he has lectured on.
- From Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech at the Sarbonne:
- There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life's realities - all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves in their own weakness. The rôle is easy; there is none easier, save only the rôle of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.