Transcripts For KCSM Overheard With Evan Smith 20160308

I guess we cant fire him now. The night that i win the emmy. Being on the Supreme Court was an improbable dream. Its hard work and its controversial. Without information, there is no freedom. And its journalists who provide that information. Window rolls down and this guy says, hey, he goes to 11 00. [laughter]. Salman khan, welcome. Great to be here. Very nice to meet you. Im in the presence of greatness, according to bill gates. Are you looking over your shoulder . Is there Something Else here . I dont know. I would like to meet them. [laughter]. Well, your reputation is so outsized that in some ways its almost impossible to ask you to live up to it. Its disappointing to meet me, yes. [laughter]. Im quite happy. But the fact is what you have accomplished in diy fashion, lets be honest. You know, you saw a problem and over time took it on and created something that never has existed before. Its Pretty Amazing what youve been able to build. Can you say that . Can you acknowledge that . Its i would say its been a kind of an amazing journey for me and its kind of wild for me. And, you know, now its not just me, our whole team of actually not just our fulltime team but our volunteers and supporters. Right. And the fact is, over the course of these now 11 plus years, millions, tens of millions of people around the world, in all kinds of languages, in all kinds of places, who are now suddenly accessing this educational content as a result of what started as a little germ of an idea. Yeah, its been crazy. I mean, as you know and a lot of yall probably know, this started off in 2004 with me literally tutoring a cousin. Tutoring your young cousin. Everyone has a cousin nadia. Thats it, right . Exactly, exactly. And so she needed some help with math. Thats the Foundation Story here. She needed help with math. I helped her in math remotely. I was in boston, she was in new orleans. She learns it was unit conversion that she was having trouble with. Right. Then she actually, you know, catches up with her class. I start tutoring her younger brothers. Then word got around the family that free tutoring was going on. [laughter]. Right. Who would not want free tutoring . Yeah. But, in fact, let me stay with nadia. Because part of the story that i think is so interesting is nadia was, if i understand the story, she is the child of a cousin or what is she . How is she related to you . I mean, she is my cousin. So she is my mothers brothers daughter. Mothers brothers daughter. So you find out from her parent that shes on the verge of not being put into the regular math, or the advanced math. She had maybe not done well on the test or there was some concern about her tracking. But you realized, in the course of tutoring her, she was actually able to handle pretty complex concepts. Well, this is the thing, they were visiting me in boston yeah. And i had just gotten married, so it was right after my wedding, they were just kind of hanging out in boston with us. And shes a super bright young woman. Right. But, you know, just when we talk about politics or anything, she was really sharp and it just came out of conversation that she had taken a placement exam at the end of sixth grade, and thats when start to really start to track students. Right. And she bombed it. And when i asked her what happened, she said well it has all this unit conversion, i just dont get it, my brains not right, so unit conversion you mean like converting cups into quarts or quarts into pints. Yeah, and miles to kilometers, all of this kind of stuff. Like i know that you can get this stuff. She didnt think that she could so i said, hey, when you go back to new orleans, lets get on the phone, lets use instant messenger, whatever lets figure it out. To work on it. And, you know, i would say the first two or three weeks were tough because she had just convinced herself that she wasnt capable of learning math. Right. But once she got over that it started to click. And once that started to click, then she started to not only catch up, but actually even get a little ahead of the curve. And i joke at that point i became what i call a tiger cousin. Yeah, right, exactly. [laughter]. And i called her school and i said i really think nadia should retake that placement exam from last year, and they said they said, who are you . Who are you, yes. And you said, shut up, im just telling you to give her the exam again. Im sure they love these calls from random family members, but yeah. The best, the best. But my question is why you . Why were you wellpositioned . So youre an mit graduate, youre a Harvard Business school graduate. I dont know if you had been through Harvard Business school by this point. I was a year out. I had just graduated. I was working as so youre clearly an underachiever academically yourself, right . Youre a smart guy going into this but you didnt necessarily have an education background, right . You didnt have any knowledge on your own that you had that pedagogical, you know, youre not someone who had been situated to do this kind of thing necessarily. You know, thats true. There was definitely no formal background there, but it was a you know, as you go through your own academic career, so to speak, i mean, one thing i observed is, you know, i was lucky to be, you know, doing well in things like math and science. And, you know, when youre in that position, you can either tell yourself one of two things. You either tell yourself, oh, well i just have certain dna that makes me better at math or science. Right. Or you say, well, actually maybe ive had a Good Foundation or im looking at the problems in the right way. Right. And some of my peers, and this is what i did observe, a lot of my peers who could beat me at chess, who could, you know, learn other things way faster than me, all of a sudden they hit a wall in algebra or all of a sudden they hit a wall in trigonometry. And my you know, i observed this throughout my own academic career is that for the most part they were lacking the foundations or they just didnt have the time to really digest things. Or were they not taught well . See, thats the part that i wonder. Is this about the ability to learn or is this about the experience of not having been taught properly . I think it could be a little bit of both. I think what happens, especially in Something Like math, but its true to some degree in all subjects, you can have amazing experience, you know, in first grade, second grade, third grade, and then all of a sudden in fourth grade maybe you have a teacher that you dont fully connect with, but maybe it has nothing to do with the teacher. Maybe you got sick, maybe something happened at home correct. And you lose track of maybe youre covering fractions that week and so you didnt really understand fractions that well and you kind of get a c on the exam or something. But then the, you know, it moves on, the class moves on and now you have to do algebra with fractions and prealgebra and all this. And you didnt have that, sort of foundational and the current model just right. Well, you have that gap, thats too bad, were going to keep going. And in nadias case, what really interested me about the way you told the nadia story was it was also about her own confidence. Yes. So it took a couple of weeks because she had lost confidence in her own ability to do this and you had to rebuild her confidence. And the one thing that one thing that ive observed, and this is just working with nadia who is, i think i know in hindsight, is that this special age because i think right around 12 or 13 you pretty much solidify your selfperception of yourself. You say, oh, im a good writer, im a bad writer. Im a good math person a humanities person. Im a humanities person, im creative, im not creative, whatever it might be. Right. And so ive found is, you know, even with my experience with cousins and other people, you know, anyone can change their mindset, but its that middle school years that are really formative. So youre starting late 03, early 04. By 06 you set up a Youtube Channel . Well, no, it was in 05 i was tutoring these, like, 15 cousins every day after right. After work and so right, be careful what you wish, right . Yeah. So i started that the first version of khan academy had nothing to do with videos, it was software. Right, indeed. And so i got the domain name khan academy was available, so thats what it was. And it was a way for my cousins to get practice, build these foundations, these gaps that i had saw that they were accruing. And this was effectively an intranet in that you were only targeting the people in your little world, right . Yeah, i was just handing out, emailing user names to just people, my cousins. And it was in 2006 that i was showing this software off to my friends at a dinner party. They all knew i had this crazy project with my cousins right. And one of them, his name is louis rimzon, said, well, this is cool, sal, but how are scaling up your actual sessions with your cousins . And i said, well, actually im not. Its actually hard to do with 15 cousins right. So i was doing one. And he said, well i have an idea, why dont you record some of your lessons as videos on youtube and then you can help scale. And i immediately said thats a horrible idea, youtube is for cats playing piano. [laughter]. Right. It is not for serious math. But i went that weekend, got over the idea that it wasnt my idea right. Because any idea thats not your idea yes. Usually, yes. Is not a good idea. Right, but this one and ive seen some of these early videos. The production value is it was more roger corman than martin scorsese, right . Yeah, its not lord of the rings, yes. Lower, lower rent stuff. But of course over time it became more sophisticated. Yeah, but, you know, but i would say even today, you know, i made three videos yesterday and theyre still me talking, you just hear the voice, you dont see me, luckily. And then you see writing, different colors. How many videos in total have you posted over these 11 years . So i personally have made, i think the count is around 4,000. But, you know, in khan academy as a whole, in just in english, we have 7,000. We have other folks now. Because there was a period of time when you were the only time doing these lessons and then it gradually, as the entity grew, now other people are doing them. Yes. In just in english we have 7,000 videos and now were translating into the worlds major languages, so then we have people all over the planet now. Its a big operation. How do you know how to do this stuff . How do you know calculus well enough to teach it . How do you know because you really make videos across a range of subjects. Are you that deep and broad in your knowledge of everything . Yes. Why you . [laughter]. So i think on certain areas, you know, by virtue of what i was interested in in school my first time around yeah. You know, so the math i felt that, well, i get this stuff. I can do this. And that was actually something i wanted to share with my cousins and other people who were just like, theres actually a holistic view of this thing. Its actually really beautiful and theyre all connected, and theyre not these just droit formulas. And so math was very natural and physics, but as soon as, you know, i started to see, well what are the other things that are holding students back . Oh, chemistry, organic chemistry, biology. Right. And these were all things that i enjoyed when i was in school, but the first time i went through it i was like, well, i enjoy them but i dont get them at the same level of depth that i got the math and the physics. But i said there must be that level of depth. And so, for example, organic chemistry, im not an organic chemist. I spent a month where all i did is i pondered. I was like, there must be more than just memorizing reaction mechanisms. And i started calling my friends who are professors and grad students. So youre cramming before you do these lessons. Oh, yeah. But i make sure i wont make a lesson until i feel like i intuitively understand it, unless it has the connective tissue the way that math or physics does. Right. And, you know, the funny thing, i mean, i view it as kind of a challenge to myself. And i think the, you know, learners like it because they start to see, oh, well you dont have to be a chemistry person or a math person or a history person, that if youre just a curious person then all of these things, theres patterns to learning and thats what you actually want to learn. And in some ways, actually being taught by somebody who is not down in the weeds, an expert at this, is probably better because that persons disposition toward the subject is more like the average persons disposition toward the subject, right . Yeah. I mean, when i do the organic chemistry videos, you know, i wont do them until i feel like i really have a deep understanding, but i remember that three weeks ago this issue was something that i was hitting my head on a wall and i was reading a ton of textbooks and i was like, wait, this doesnt make sense. How does a lead to b . How does a lead to b . And i, you know, every textbook is not answering and i eventually call up some friend whos a professor and i was like, how does a lead to b . Explain this, right. And hell say, oh, we dont know. Thats an area of research or thats you know. [laughter]. Its amazing how few textbooks in basic science will tell you we do not know. They just pretend like its all figured out. Well, certainty is the enemy of everything, right . Which is the enemy of science, really. Yeah, and its really about i mean, thats what makes science interesting is the stuff we dont know. Thats what makes it curious. How much time does it take you to do an average video . So from im going to do this subject, im going to do this lesson. Prep time, recording time, distribution time, like whats the window . It depends what im doing. If im doing if im doing something where i am teaching myself, i might spend days just learning the material and really digesting the material. So if its, you know, im doing the french revolution, thats something where i will spend, you know, a lot of time reading and preparing and talking to people. And then when i get it, then i might start putting out two or three videos a day. But if its if im doing, you know, algebra or algebra work to example video, then i can, you know, then its like i almost do it in realtime. I put the exercise up there. And people you know, the feedback we get is people like the fact that they can tell that im doing it in realtime, that i didnt, you know, prepare it ahead of time and then i give them just the finished product. Can you quantify the reach of these videos in this approach over the years . How many people are you reaching now . Do you know . So on a monthly basis theres about 14 Million People who are using the site. You know, we estimate last year roughly 15 we dont know the exact number. 15 to 30 of all American Students used khan academy at least once in a year. In some fashion. And its not only being used on an individualized basis at home, in fact now, because of the way youve built out the deal, people are using it in schools, right . Traditional education is accessing your stuff. Exactly. And its not just videos, its actually a lot of what we have invested in is the extension of that software that i originally right. So it started out as just videos. Now theres assessment tools, right . Yeah, practice problems. You know, just the exercise is 150,000 exercises. 5 million are done every day on the site. We just crossed our 3 billionth question done. So, yeah, and, you know, and twothirds of our usage is north america, onethird rest of the world. Weve now localized. Theres a fully spanish khan academy. Once again, its not just the videos, its the exercises, everything. Theres brazilian portuguese, theres french, theres turkish. Right. Soon many more languages so its yeah, its growing. So it started out just sal and then it grew to a couple, five, and then maybe to eight. And then i know as of a couple of years ago it was 40. How many now are employed by khan academy . Were now 80 fulltime folks and then we have about another 100 contractors who are helping us write content. And then we have thousands of volunteers who are helping us subtitle videos. How many of them are conventional educators or experts in subjects . And how many of them are reformed Hedge Fund Managers like you . [laughter]. Its a healthy mix of all of the above. You know, if you look at the people developing our content, i would say its roughly a third are current teachers and or graduate student professors. A third are i mean, some of our best exercise creators are, theres some stay at home moms who have masters degrees or ph. D. S and now theyre able to do this as a parttime basis. Well, and the kind of people who might have actually homeschool their own kids. Yes, we have a huge homeschooling. So, see, one way that you can think about this and it sounds like its pejorative, and i dont mean it necessarily to be pejorative, is its like homeschooling on steroids, right . This is really that same approach. Were going to take it out of the classroom, were going to have it be more individualized, selfpaced, right . Well, you know, the ideal is to give the best of both worlds. The great thing about homeschooling is that it is personalized to your needs. And you master concepts and you move on. You know, you dont have that bad week where you didnt learn fractions properly and then the whole system moves on. If youre homeschooling, spend the time to learn the fractions properly. And dont move on until you have it. Yeah, thats the super foundational thing, and then build on top of that. And so the tools we do hopefully allow that. And if you are being homeschooled, leverage these tools. Some homeschooling families have trouble once youre starting to cover algebra or trigonometry or physics. Right. Now we have all the material for you. But the ideal is do it as part of a community. When you go to a classroom, instead of the classroom being around information dissemination. Yeah. The lecture. Have it be around, hey, lets all Work Together at our own time and pace but lets do some peertopeer learning. Yep. Teacher sees that, hey, those three students are having trouble with negative numbers. Right. Im going to do a focus intervention with them. All of the students understand fractions now, now i can do a project with them or have a socratic dialogue about something interesting, whatever it might be. Right. So if my 14yearold is in algebra and is having a problem with factoring, if hes in class and theres a factoring lecture and he gets it, great. If he doesnt get it, as you point out, they move on. With this, he can go back and watch the video of you or somebody else talking about factoring once, twice, three times, four times. Essentially repeat the class yeah. In a way that doesnt disrupt the rest of the class. Yeah. And doesnt take eat into his time in the class. And do the exercises and get feedback. Because, you know, as someone who has made a bunch of videos, i actually dont think most of the learning happens through the videos. Most of it happens through the practice, trying things out, getting things right, getting things wrong. And, you know, thats the exact point. If he finds factoring easy or he already knows it, move on. Move on. Move ahead and build a buffer because you probably will hit something, eventually, where youll need extra time. Right. Or if hes having trouble with it then, yes, stay on it. Take as much time as it takes. Let me ask you about a couple of things that are potential complications in this model. The first is how do you know that you have everything right . And, in fact, i think there have been accusations and perhaps you all have acknowledged that occasionally you put out videos and sometimes the stuff that youre teaching is not exactly accurate so you got to go back and redo them. Thats a minor percentage of the stuff. Yeah. Well, no, we take this very seriously. And this is you know, this is, i think, whats neat about i guess, who vets your content. Yeah, so, inhouse we have a fairly rigorous vetting process where we have, you know, i would say any piece of content is being looked at by at least three or four people before it goes out. Theoretically subject experts. Exactly. But then on top of that, you know, in a typical lecture environment, you know, i could give a lecture to a ninth grade algebra classroom and even if i make an error, maybe one of the students will notice and say, hey, mr. Khan, that doesnt look right up there. But, you know, as soon as we put something out there within the first day youre going to have several tens of thousands of feedback is instant. Exactly. And its transparent. Like the sun is shining on it. And youre good with that. We love it. I mean, thats what makes us better. So we actually have a much more rapid feedback. You know, in the textbook publishing world, you publish that textbook, once you find that out error, its out there until version two comes out three years later. Right. We fix it in, you know, minutes usually. Well, speaking of textbooks and of curriculum more broadly, heres another potential complication i want to ask you about. So certain subjects, math, one plus one is two, full stop, right . Theres no disputing that. Yeah. But you get into some of the history, say. Yes. You may have different people who for small p or big p political reasons view these subjects, these curricular subjects differently. And, in fact, in the state in which we are sitting currently, texas, there is the occasional controversy over ive heard. Science textbooks and over history textbooks. So how do you square that . How do you present curriculum, in quotes, that doesnt run afoul of some of these political yeah, youre right. And history is fascinating. I mean, you know, theres a video that i did this was several years ago. Like the cia literally published their documents about their intervention in chile decades ago and, you know, i was just a, kind of an amateur person who was interested in these things. I was like, this is interesting. More people should know about this. So i made a video showing the primary documents from cia. Gov. They actually did intervene and they helped orchestrate this coup, and i put this video up there about just explaining the history of it and right. You had primary documents. I had primary documents and i was like, this is interesting and some people might say this. And i try to be as balanced as i can, but i always tell people, look, everyones got some form of bias, so be skeptical of everyone. But i put this video up there and immediately the comments just start coming in. And, you know, some people, some American Students were starting to say, hey, you know, this was really interesting, i didnt know about it, but, you know, i dont think youre being fair to the cia here. You got to understand the context of the cold war more. We were scared. Right. And then i got chileans saying youre an imperialist pig. Right. You have whitewashed history, my uncle died in that intervention. And im like, this didnt happen in the algebra videos. [laughter]. Nobody wanted to argue about factoring, right, thats it, yeah. Parentheses are not controversial. And i also said, well, you know, this didnt happen in the history classes that i grew up in. But then i said why didnt it happen in the history classes . Like, if were teaching history right now and if im giving you a narrative. And, once again, we all have some bias from our context of how we grew up. Right. There should be some chilean kid who says, no, youre all wrong, youre lying. My uncle died in that intervention. And the system should allow for that conversation. Exactly. Which it doesnt always do. Exactly. And thats the beauty one of the beautiful things about the internet, its out there. Right. And we want, as long as people are respectful with their language, we want that comment from that chilean student to be there so that the american student sees, wow its part of the education process. That actually is the education. To some degree, the video is just the context for bringing that out there. Right. And then on exercises, i mean, there are things in history that i would think are, you know, regardless of what someone feels about columbus, he did sail in 1492, or so right. So that you should know. And then you could be tested on that. But then and that also gives you the context to now have a debate about was this a good thing, was this a bad thing, et cetera. Who funds you . This is one of the issues in a nonprofit entity that puts content out in the world. Who funds you is important. Do these people take the knowledge of who funds you as a sign of whether or not youre independent of considerations that may run into, you know, independence, integrity, and all that kind of stuff. So Gates Foundation is a supporter of yours, carlos slim in mexico has given you money, the Lemann Foundation in brazil. Yeah. Who are the other big funders of your operation as a nonprofit . Yeah. Google, ann and john doerr. You know, theres a guy in ireland, sean osullivan, dan benton. Do you disclose your donors . The ones that want to be disclosed, we disclose. But dont you worry that by not disclosing all your donors that some people would be led to believe the people who are mucking with the integrity of your content are exactly the ones who want an anonymous designation . Yeah, well, you know, this is, i mean, this is another thing where people have to just judge the content for what it is. Right. And, you know, we take very seriously that people trust the content. Thats your whole currency. Yeah. If they stop trusting the content, the whole operations over. People are sensitive. People can tell. If were pulling punches or if were not being objective or skewing it one way or the other, its going to come out. And, you know, one of the things that we think is core to our ethos that makes us, you know, our secret sauce is that we are genuine, were open. Were just a bunch of humans trying to communicate to other humans. And, yeah, so we hold dear that this is right. That its very independent and very objective. Why doesnt in the couple of minutes we have left why doesnt traditional Public Education hate you . Youre one of these disruptive transformational innovator types. You know, the taxis hate uber, the hotels hate b b, why doesnt public ed hate you . If we disrupt anything, were going to disrupt the traditional model, but not the notion of a teacher of a physical classroom. Yeah. Youre not trying to replace the teacher or the classroom. By no stretch of the imagination. I want my own children, i want them to go to a physical classroom and interact with their peers. So you wouldnt teach your own kids just through khan academy . No. What i would want and this is what, you know, my son is going to school, is doing this, where they use khan academy and they learn at their own pace, but when theyre in the room with their peers and their teacher, theyre interacting. Its not a, you know, a passive lecture. What we want to do is work with the system to allow teachers to personalize things more for students, to make the classroom much more about conversation and peertopeer interaction and inquiry than about lecture. Yeah. To allow, to make it much more about mastery than about seat time. Yeah. And i think this is something that speaks to what most teachers wanted to do. You know, the real value of the human being is being what i was for nadia, being that mentor, being that coach, digging deeper, figuring out the emotional reasons why this unit conversion is being difficult. Yeah, and the fact is youre not just doing course work, youre also now doing test prep, right . I mean, youre extending the work as you look into the future. Youre doing more and more things, differentiating yourself. Yeah, this is really interesting. The college board, as many of yall know, makers of the s. A. T. And the a. P. Test and other things, theyre going to have a new s. A. T. In 2016. Yes. And for the first time in the 100year history they said we recognize theres this inequity in test prep. So youre going to be in there. And so they have said khan academy is the official free test prep. Were working with them to really create wow. State of the art software. Youre going to put Stanley Kaplan out of business. [applause]. And the Princeton Review and all those guys. But no credentialing. There will not be a khan academy diploma. There will be no graduation from khan academy. Thats not on our you know, we are focused on the learning piece of it. Theres already a lot of other you know, theres scaffolds of assessment and credentialing already. Right. But, yeah, you know, in the learning piece, theres a lot to do. All right. Were out of time. Fantastic. Thank you so much for being so expansive in discussing all this stuff. Its really interesting, and congratulations for your success. Thank you. Salman khan, thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. [applause]. Wed love to have you join us in the studio. Visit our website at klru. Org overheard to find invitations to interviews, q as with our audience and guests, and an archive of past episodes. Well, what if its a home run as a not for profit . In a lot of ways its harder, but what if it could be the next smithsonian . What if it could be and it was delusional for a guy operating out of a closet. [laughter]. But its less delusional now. And, you know, just felt epic. Funding for overhead with evan smith is provided in part by m. F. I. Foundation, improving the quality of life within our community. And from the texas board of legal specialization, Board Certified attorneys in your community. Experienced, respected, and tested. Also by hillco partners, a texas Government Affairs consultancy and its Global Health Care Consulting Business Unit hillco health. And by the Alice Kleberg reynolds foundation. And viewers like you. Thank you. Burgundy, like much of france, is laced by canals dug in the early industrial age. 200 years ago, canals like these provided the cheapest way to transport cargo. With the help of locks, you could actually ship your goods clear across france, from the mediterranean to the atlantic. Today, trains and trucks do the heavy hauling and canals are for relaxing an art form in which the french excel. 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