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Google and Gates-Backed Khan Academy Introduces "Grit"-Based Classroom Funding
theodp writes: Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled by Google and Khan Academy's recently-concluded LearnStorm initiative, which pitted kids-against-kids, schools-against-schools, and cities-against-cities in a 3-month learning challenge for prizes based not only on students' mastery of math skills on Khan Academy, but also their perceived 'hustle' (aka 'grit'). "Points are earned by mastering math skills and also for taking on challenging new concepts and persevering," explained a Khan Academy FAQ. A blog entry further explained, "They've earned points and prizes not only for mastering math skills but also for showing 'hustle,' a metric we created to measure grit, perseverance, and growth. They competed over 200,000 hours of learning and 13.6 million standards-aligned math problems. In addition, thanks to the generosity of Google.org, DonorsChoose.org, and Comcast's Internet Essentials, 34 underserved schools unlocked new devices for their classrooms and free home internet service for eligible families, increasing student access to online learning tools like Khan Academy." Apparently funded by a $2 million Google grant, the Google, Khan Academy, and DonorsChoose grit-based classroom funding comes on the heels of the same organizations' gender-based classroom funding initiative. Supported by some of the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations, Khan Academy's Board members include a Google Board member (Diane Green), spouse of a Google Board member (Ann Doerr), and the Managing Partner of Bill Gates' bgC3 (Larry Cohen); former Board members include Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt.
Ok, so I went to Khan's Academy, and actually tried it. It took me several weeks, but eventually I was able to "prove" that I could do fourth and fifth grade math. I nearly finished sixth grade math, but burnt out and didn't return.
Keep in mind that I have a minor in Mathematics, and actually like Calculus, Linear Algebra, Probability, Statistics, etc. The level of the material wasn't the problem, it was the course.
All I can say is that many of the "lessons" on Khan's are so dry and mundane that basically you have to have a will of iron to work through them. Some of the material is poorly tested, such that when you miss a question it isn't always clear why. The concept of practice till you die makes all the topics tedious. Doesn't matter if you can answer correctly 16 times out of 20, because you need five correct in a row! And if you keep pulling up something that you swear has a wrong answer, you're back at the first of five correct.
The entire process takes all the fun out of math. If this is the future, we can expect much worse than what we have now (although I can see how we will save money on teachers, as we can hire ones that don't need to know how to teach because we'll have the website teach worse than any trained teacher would).