Hacker News Reader

Comment by stiff | Hacker News Reader

There is plenty to be criticized about KA, but this has politics written all over it, if the above Freudian slip doesn't convince you, consider the following bits:

Behind paywall, but someone at Khan Academy is an NCTM member, right? Right? If not, shoot me a note. We’ll get a copy to you.

Or from the other article:

Khan could tap into any number of existing networks of exemplary teaching, perhaps from recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching or the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards. He could seek these teachers’ advice and collaboration on issues large and small.

Meaning, they are not interested in contributing in any way, but they are feeling pity he did not ask for their permission before starting KA.

View on HN

Perhaps a HN-appropriate analogy is in order here. Imagine someone came along who claimed that they could break the expensive stranglehold programmers have on software development and improve on the often mediocre code they produce by teaching anyone to program. Now imagine that it was widely lauded in the press and there was political pressure within the company you worked at to incorporate this new technique - except that the code produced was a bunch of dreck which you had to waste far more time cleaning up than it would've taken to do it right in the first place.

Further, imagine that every time you complained about this a bunch of people with no technical clue jumped on you and claimed you were just out to get the new scheme because it'd "successfully challenged a rusty status quo" and your "job security was at risk" if you didn't.

Of course the teachers are pissed off!

I think a more appropriate analogy is open source software which got described by the incumbents as an "un-american cancer" and is still being successfully fought off by many who are ripping off our governments and providing appalling service at a shockingly high price.

Is any random open source project perfect? No. Is open source the answer to everything? No. Is it obviously a better way to do things than the status quo? Yes. Are there people benefitting immensely from even the buggy projects? Yes.

"Behind paywall, but someone at Khan Academy is an NCTM member, right? Right? If not, shoot me a note. We’ll get a copy to you."

If I was supervising the way the NCTM goes about the dissemination of information via the internet I'd have serious concerns and would be pointing out some concrete and important gaps in their use of modern technology.

I have to agree with this, for sure.

What is the Freudian slip you are talking about? Do you mean the "if we were supervising" bit? A Freudian slip is a misspoken word that reveals unconscious intentions, often with a sexual implication. For example, you're sitting with someone who's eating a muffin and you ask, "Can I have a bite of your mother?"

Where is the politics?

Maybe you can find some between the discussion of the pedagogy, because you obviously aren't comfortable with that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com