Wired, NYTimes: The new face of math, science, maybe everything-else education?
One of these pubs hits the steps every day and the other comes in the mail each month, so this reflects a pretty small and wretchedly passive sampling routine. But they brought two stories in the last few days that plucked the same cord of hope for future collective brain power.
- Wired – Clive Thompson: The New Way to Be a Fifth Grader/ How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education ; All about the video library assembled by Salman Khan (no, Bollywood fans, not that Salman Khan), simple things in which only his stylus is seen doing equations, unstacking chemical reactions, exploring biology etc., and his voice heard, and that have been an internet sensation and now are making some teachers swoon at how smart their students suddenly seem to have become.
- NYTimes – Rachel Cromidas: A Sleepaway Camp Where Math is the Main Sport ; Different propellent (Summer Program in Mathematical Problem Solving), similar results. Kids who one might expect to be math-phobes are gobbling up quotients, tangents, and integrals like popcorn.
Our son-in-law over the hill, an IT pro, mentioned the Khan videos to us a while ago, but it didn’t quite sink in. Thompson’s story makes one giddy. Which means he probably overlooked a few things. I did go to the Khan site (see Grist below) and came away impressed. I impulsively chose his lecture on domains, and found myself goggling at the idea that gradeschooler would be so effortlessly learning a little bit about equations, a little bit about abstract algebra’s conventions, and a whole lot about math being just a short cut to clear thought. Those aren’t equations (shiver), they are sentences that can be made easy for almost anybody to read. I enjoyed the part where one teacher sends students home for their lessons, via internet videos, and spends classroom hours on, essentially, what would ordinarily be homework. Ditto for the discussion of school board befuddlement and pedagogical tumult if every child is on his or her own path toward knowledge. Where’s the standardized test schedule, the course syllabus, the control, the unified system of grading?
The summer camp for math is not so unconventional, but also a reassuring indication that remarkable achievements in education, and in extracting the best from the present generation of school children, are occurring. Both are written with enthusiasm and in colorful, intimate style. This is high-end reporting in each case.
Grist for the Mill: KhanAcademy ;
- Charlie Petit
