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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.
"grit" = stockholder profit potential
Just hire H1-B visa workers for pennies...
"Their intentions are no doubt good, but some will be troubled ..." What a terrible way to start your summary.
Two children enter the standardized testing center; one child leaves!
If the little people start cooperating, doing stuff, changing the world, that's really, really bad. So we must compete, win prizes given by the big people, follow their agenda. Hence, also, attempts to buy into or hijack open-source, communism and altruism on the hoof, cannot be allowed, everything must be monetised.
I'm currently doing voluntary work in schools in the UK and the 'push' coming from Google, Microsoft 'partners' etc. is extrordinary. One would be mad to believe that any of this is altruistic, it's just a big, stable, undemanding [I deal with crap computers and software during the volunteering gigs] market.
Sorry that this sounds so ranty, unusual for me, but I don't trust them, don't trust their motives.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
The current education system doesn't work, and some will be troubled as we attempt various other ways that might work. Some will be troubled as we displace people who currently operate the system that doesn't work.
As for the linked complaint about grit implying that poor kids are poor because they don't try hard, who cares what it implies? I don't care if it hurts someone's feelings to misinterpret what this may or may not imply. I don't care if poor kids are poor because of external reasons. What does it matter? Should we spend our time explaining to them that they are victims of a system and have no hope, or should we teach them how to work hard? Perhaps grit is even more important for poor kids who have to work even harder to get out from where they started?
Politically correct jerks can be offended all they want. That doesn't help kids achieve.
That's because it's bullshit! They are only trying to pacify the call to tax Wall Street. You know, the people who are stealing our pensions and strangling the legitimate economy? Fuck them. They are thieves!
It turns out standardized testing was not the solution to bring everyone's educational standards up to par.
So, we have decided the only alternative is to turn it into the Hunger Games.
That is all.
The education market is largely untapped and trillions are there to be won in this new "industry" by creating a marketplace from what was a public service with altruistic motives.
Their agenda is to foster a market and transition education into an industry from which great profits can be had for training worker drones who are specifically tailored to the job market. Employers no longer want to train employees - the numbers on that are so low that most people do not even think about employer training or realize that employers used to have full time instructors of their own. It's all about cost externalization - they externalized employee training and are acting like the education system is failing them when it never did their job for them.
Perfect is the enemy of good. Education in the past got us all the successes of today. But that isn't perfect, the perfect little snowflakes are not to blame... we have to get 100% success with every child and if not, it is NEVER their parents fault or the society. So lets completely revamp education which worked so well because it's not perfect. It's similar to how they destroyed the UK Postal System (Royal Mail) with tons of waste and destruction just so they could improve the service by a few % to become perfect. Now they've completely privatized it - it's still far from perfect...but new money can now corrupt the system so perfect now won't matter...
I don't care if 40% can't read out of high school; send those people to another school targeted at their failure within the old system. The major steps forward were done by a minority of people who thrived in the old education model -- not everybody is a genius and whatever was done that let those people shine and deliver the progress we had should be left alone. Don't kill the golden goose people! You can experiment on the teenagers or children who fail but you should leave the successful ones alone! You can also not claim that somebody who did poorly (Einstein) did not benefit from the system; it is foolishly simplistic to measure success by short term simplistic metrics. In reality, human learning and development is far from understood - it is far more of a black box than people realize. (besides, learning to cope with failure is a huge lesson to learn properly. )
One size does not fit all. Policy makers are always obsessed with making universal policies. Utopia is an incredibly evil goal.
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The whole learnstorm thing was fundamentally flawed. You earned points in the competition by completing "mastery" challenges, of which there are a limited number. However, if you had completed most or all of the available mastery challenges before the competition had started then you were at a distinct disadvantage during the competition.
Kahn Academy is trying to pacify the call to tax Wall Street? I think you're letting your political views affect everything there, bro.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
There was a TED talk on this recently: http://www.ted.com/talks/angel... This isn't necessarily about pitting kids against each other. This is about emphasizing an objective measure of potential.
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).