Sensei does not scale
Hello Edmund, thanks for this. I agree that the Khan Academy (although my experience with it is very limited to the test drive I did of it for Edgeryders) is probably not very good at telling you what it is important to study. It is a fair point, and I think you are the first one to bring it up in this discussion. Thanks!
But let’s be fair here: schools are also famously bad at telling you what it is important to study. If your school system is modelled on Napoleonic France, you would have a centrally decided national curriculum, decided perhaps in the 1930s and tweaked around with a couple of times. Sorting the stuff that gets in from the stuff that stays out is an incredibly arbitrary, ideologically loaded and messy operation. So, for example, you get taught history from a very national point of view: students comparing history notes in Britain and France feel like they are living in alternate realities. In the 1980s, in school, I was taught Latin. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great subject in itself: plus Latin was really the European connecting language in the Middle Ages, and if you did not speak and read it you’d be cut off from the action. But I have yet to see a convincing case for Latin to stay in the curriculum. If you want to teach me metalinguistic structure, why not Chinese? All in all, I’d take the random exploration over the national curriculum commission of fascist-era Italy any time.
And yes, of course we all yearn for a wise sensei that will not just teach us stuff, but will make us better women and men, helping us to reach our full potential. But there are not many of those around: this education model seems fundamentally aristocratic to me. A development economist once said to me: “there are too many teachers for them to be much better than the average.” So, any viable education system has to assume normal people doing the teaching. They will typically care about their own well-being more than they care about yours, some will be passionate, some are just looking for any job, some will be smart and some will be stupid, or evil. Same as everywhere else.
Sensei does not scale. You are a mathematician: well, Dr. Khan’s videos are pretty much the best shot at access to an outstanding math teacher I have ever had - and that’s after science high school and two degrees in economics. And I love math! Only, I discovered that when I was 20, because in school I was taught a caricature of it.
Or does it? Do you have any idea of how sensei might be accessible to all?