Education is not an end to itself. You need to know algebra but also how to navigate the world.
— Sal Khan
My parents separated when I was two, and then my father passed away, so I never really knew that side of the family.
I'd like to see a reality where, if someone wants to work when they turn 18 to help support their family, and they learn at their own pace on something like the Khan Academy or other things, that they can just, on their own, get a bunch of the credits they need just by testing out of things.
Our goal is for Khan Academy's software and content to be the best possible learning experience and for it to be for everyone, for free, forever. This is why we are a non-profit, and it's also what drives our small team and supporters.
I always wanted to start a school. I talked about it in college - but I didn't do anything about it.
Great people are attracted to great people and great visions.
You only have so much time in the day, and you only have so many working years. Where do you want to invest that life?
People who are looked up to in America will often say, 'I don't get math.' And they'll often say it like they're being humble, but they seem almost proud of it because it's acceptable to act this way.
I was a good but not super serious student until about 10th grade, until I was about 14 or 15. Then I started to realise how competitive the world is. I started to meet kids who were more high-performing.
I see no reason why there still are large lectures in universities throughout the world. When people gather, they should be interactive, problem-solving, and experimenting; not passively listening.
Formal education must change. It needs to be brought into closer alignment with the world as it actually is, into closer harmony with the way human beings actually learn and thrive.
Far too many bright, motivated kids are being badly served by their educational experiences - ones at elite, wealthy schools as well as underfunded ones.
I'd set up the Khan Academy as a not-for-profit in 2008, but I was doing well in my job and initially thought I could fund the Academy myself. But by 2009, I was getting so much good feedback that I told my wife that I wanted to do this full time. We had some funds to fall back on, and I knew doing this made me happy.
India, with one of the largest education systems in the world, has always been a priority for Khan Academy.
I think history shows us that there is not one credible credential that has come from the for-profit reality, and that is because the for-profit reality is inherently motivated to maximize the level of people that take it.
The ideal direction is using something like Khan Academy for every student to work at their own pace, to master concepts before moving on, and then the teacher using Khan Academy as a tool so that you can have a room of 20 or 30 kids all working on different things, but you can still kind of administrate that chaos.
I'm starting a virtual school for the world, teaching things the way I wanted to be taught.
At the end of the day, what matters is whether your product works and whether people like it.
My father's side of the family was very active in education.
I've been surprised at how motivated a lot of people are that you wouldn't traditionally think would be that kind of a motivated student.
Many of the best teachers I know are being laid off because their unions value seniority over intellect, passion, creativity, and drive.
It's definitely important to have a vision, to have kind of a sense of what might be possible, but not to be dogmatic about your beliefs about the way something has to be done.
The answer is pretty clear that your intelligence can actually be changed.
I am personally an idealist. I was lucky enough to follow my dreams in my own life, so you should definitely follow your dreams.
A good traditional conceptual instruction is what I got from my better professors at MIT. They would be at a chalkboard, and they would literally be explaining something and working through a problem, but it wasn't rote. They were explaining the underlying theory and processes and intuition behind it.
As technology plays a major role inside and outside the classroom, we want to make sure education innovation is accessible.
I do believe that education should become as close to free as possible.
Can watching video lessons or using interactive software make people smart? No. But I would argue that it can do something even better: create a context in which people can give free rein to their curiosity and natural love of learning so that they realize they're already smart.
Some kids grasp a subject faster and race ahead to the next level, while others continue to struggle with the first. The great thing we've seen is that if you let a student take his time to master a concept, he will probably race ahead on the next one.
After my parents' divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn't super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
A one-size-fits-all lecture is not the way to go about education.
I hope I could spend the rest of my life learning and communicating.
I've already got a beautiful wife, a great son, and a house. What else do you need?
You have all this education theory, and people try to make larger statements than maybe what their data would back up, because they've done these small experiments that are tied to a very particular case with a very particular implementation... theory definitely matters, but I think dogma matters less.
I went to a fairly normal, middle-of-the-road public school in a suburb of New Orleans, but it gave me huge opportunities.
Education has helped me a lot.
Education should be a fundamental human right.
Teachers' unions don't act in the interest of most teachers.
One cannot be dogmatic about the right solution.
At a lot of college graduations, you'll hear people say, 'Follow your passions,' and that is important, but no one talks about the stress of not having enough money, the issues of debt, and the issues of work stress.
People in the media and press often say they've never been good at math. It might be that people that consider themselves creative didn't consider themselves good at math or didn't find math interesting at those early stages. And those creative people are disproportionately represented in those influential roles.
The reason the gifted students of the world like Khan Academy is because we don't say, 'Memorize this formula,' but say, 'Let's try to derive it from core principles,' or, 'I forgot my trig identity, so I'm going to just try to prove this to you.'
We want to make access to a world-class education like clean drinking water or electricity.
Free educational materials will, at minimum, prepare more people for college and allow them to be more successful once they get there. Most students want credentials that employers respect, and free educational materials alone will not do this.
Kids and adults alike are having their curiosity drained away by boredom in class or the workplace, and by the unremitting background noise of a dumbed-down pop culture.
Education has to be more than tests and formulas.
If you're going to charge someone for something, you have to show them value for it.
The ancient universities was not as based on how many credit hours you're taking and whether you've completed your credit hours. The ancient universities were much more interested in customized, personalized learning... Where you have a mentor and where you're learning at your own pace.
The whole reason why we have this kind of assembly line model of education that we inherited from the Prussians, is they were the first people - it's a very egalitarian motive - to say how do we educate everyone.
I'm the 'Dear Abby' of math problems. But if you understand something, shouldn't you be able to explain it? Isn't that the whole point?
