At the gym, people assume anyone with big muscles must be an expert in medicine. Let's not make the same mistake here.
Building a succesful learning platform which has impacted many students, certainly qualifies someone to have an opinion on education in my book. Would you be happier if he were some elected Minister Of Education -- who, from what I've seen, are generally about as qualified as a box of donuts?
Literally no one at a gym assumes that muscular people are experts at medicine. But it is reasonable to assume that they know a thing or two about building muscle ...
16% lift in overall test scores: https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/sprojec...
11% lift in math test scores: https://bearworks.missouristate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
And Khan Academy's impact page: https://www.khanacademy.org/about/impact has links to additional studies.
I'm pretty sure he has a better than average grasp on what it means to learn and how to improve the process. And even more importantly, he's trying to! If not him, then who should we listen to?
I don't have a clue why GP reduces Sal to "good at explaining things" when Khan Academy is so much bigger than just him for a long time now. And I, for one, am very grateful that he exists. People in first world countries can't imagine the impact that free access to great education resources has in the rest of the world, like in my case.
> At the gym, people assume anyone with big muscles must be an expert in medicine. Let's not make the same mistake here.
The gym analogy falls short to me. The mistake here is assuming that someone that worked in education for almost two decades, and has achieved extraordinary results in the mean time, doesn't have any clue about education in general.
Isn't explaining things well the heart of good education?
Who would be better at building strawmen?
An average HN commenter, a farmer, or an etymologist?