Comment by eslavitt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eslavitt | Hacker News Reader

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Thanks stchangg! I'm on Khan Academy's school implementations team and just wanted to add that Maureen, who is also on the school implementations team, is a former 6th grade teacher. This summer, we also have 2 experienced math teachers working with us to flesh out a significant amount of our math content: Chris Talone (teacher at Marlborough, a girls' school in LA, who taught 7 levels of math simultaneously with Khan Academy this past year) and Jesse Roe (teacher at Summit, a charter school in San Jose, who taught Algebra and Geometry to 9th graders with Khan Academy this past year). We're really grateful for their thoughtful contributions which are grounded in years of experience teaching math to lots of different types of students.

Thank you for the great work you're all doing at Khan Academy. Also, I'll take this opportunity to give a small suggestion :-)

I was wondering if you guys could make Mathematics more problem solving centric (see www.artofproblemsolving.com for an example approach. Also "The Art and Craft of Problem Solving" by Paul Zeitz and George Polya's "How to solve it")

Most of the Mathematics in school curriculum is just plug n' chug work at a slightly higher level. Students do not get any insights into how really good problem solvers solve tough problems. Mathematics competitions such as the regional and international olympiads give students an exposure to such type of problem solving, but this experience is limited to a narrow pool of students who through pure serendipity discovered how intellectually rewarding problem solving can be. Perhaps if training materials were more widely available, more students would be able to get a glimpse of Mathematical problem solving at a totally different level.

In a previous life, I used to tutor O-level and A-level students in Mathematics in Singapore. The transformation some of them had when exposed to say principles in Polya's "How to solve it" was phenomenal. All too often I wished I had access to more easily accessible training materials that I could give them (and that I myself could learn from!). I'm sure there are plenty of teachers in my position all over the world.

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