Words matter. These are the best Sal Khan Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I’m a fan of hard science fiction, which is science fiction that is possible.
There is too much acceptance of people saying, ‘I am a math person, or I am an artsy person.’ It makes me cringe.
Suffice it to say that our over-reliance on testing is based largely on habit, wishful thinking, and leaps of faith.
We want to make access to a world-class education like clean drinking water or electricity.
We’re so used to the tests telling me if I’m smart or not. It’s telling me if I know the material or not.
Every school is different and serves different populations.
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.
Education is not an end to itself. You need to know algebra but also how to navigate the world.
Creating a clear and engaging video explanation of a complex concept is a great way to demonstrate mastery and to help others understand and love the subject, too.
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?
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.
Rather than saying, ‘I can’t do this,’ ‘Sesame Street’ encourages us to say, ‘I can’t do this… yet!’ That one word changes everything. It emphasizes that your capability isn’t fixed. It highlights the reality that our brain is like a muscle.
I’ve learned that certain things are much harder than when you write about them in a book.
Education has helped me a lot.
In Idaho, we hope to see educators using Khan Academy to individualize their instruction. Instead of a one-size-fits-all lesson, teachers will be able to focus their attention on specific students who are struggling while the rest of the class engages with material appropriate for them.
Something happens in school sometimes where you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m not an expert, and I have to defer to people who are.’ And it happens not just in school: it happens in religion, too. Defer to the experts. A printing press is a big deal – they got the Bible, and all of a sudden they could read it for themselves.
What I did by virtue of skipping a lot of classes was get two undergraduate degrees and a master’s in four years. It wasn’t slacking. There were much more productive ways of learning everything than sitting in lectures.
My parents separated when I was two, and then my father passed away, so I never really knew that side of the family.
I’m actually a bit of a technophobe, which surprises people. I like to stay unplugged as much as possible.
Just as computer science is missing from our school system, so is science fiction.
Louisiana was as close to South Asia as the United States could get: it had spicy food, humidity, giant cockroaches, and a corrupt government.
I am infamously bad at asking for money.
Education should be a fundamental human right.
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.
I’m not the kind to hang out on Facebook or Twitter or even talk on the cellphone, really.
India, with one of the largest education systems in the world, has always been a priority for Khan Academy.
I learned from my peers, and I learned from doing projects, and I learned from mentors, but I learned very little from lectures, and I’ve talked about how little I attended them.
My father’s side of the family was very active in education.
Great people are attracted to great people and great visions.
I do believe that education should become as close to free as possible.
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.
Some of the beauty of a university is that every professor is given a lot of autonomy over what he or she does. That’s also what makes it very hard for even a very forward-thinking president to change courses.
I’m starting a virtual school for the world, teaching things the way I wanted to be taught.
As technology plays a major role inside and outside the classroom, we want to make sure education innovation is accessible.
My personal narrative – I was lucky early on in my career to have some really strong mentors. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s what really built me up.
I’ve already got a beautiful wife, a great son, and a house. What else do you need?
One’s perception of themselves has a much bigger role than has been acknowledged to determine who succeeds and who does not.
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.
Our goal with Khan Academy Kids is to inspire a life-long love of learning.
I went to a fairly normal, middle-of-the-road public school in a suburb of New Orleans, but it gave me huge opportunities.
To be clear, people are the most important part of any classroom. If given the choice between a great teacher and the world’s most advanced education technology, I’d pick the teacher any day for my own children.
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.
We don’t believe that you should ever replace physical education. Even in a thousand years, a computer will never be able to do so.
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.
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.’
Teachers’ unions don’t act in the interest of most teachers.
If high-quality content can be effectively delivered via technology, teachers can devote more time to creating innovative experiences, leading Socratic dialogs, or coaching students one-on-one in more targeted and focused interventions.
I’m big fan of soulful music – classic rock with a folk-ish twist.
I love Victorian novels, the way they capture the nuances of the human condition.
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.
Later in life, when my kids struggle to understand a tricky concept or master a new skill, I want them to have the strength and experience to tell themselves, ‘I don’t know how to do this… yet!’ I want them to be confident that, even if something seems challenging today, they have what it takes to figure it out.
Far too many bright, motivated kids are being badly served by their educational experiences – ones at elite, wealthy schools as well as underfunded ones.
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.
What you have in most education software is that they’re catering to the decision-maker who makes the budget allocations, and that decision-maker has a lot of check boxes. Does it do this? Check. Does it do that? Check. They could care less about the end user experience.
Education has to be more than tests and formulas.
When I used to try and describe what the Khan Academy was, I would tell people that if it were a for-profit, I would be on the cover of ‘Forbes.’
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.
As my kids grow up, I think a lot about the lessons and values I want to impart to them. More than any particular skill or even financial support, I believe perseverance and resilience will serve them best, regardless of what curveball life inevitably throws them.
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.
I was always asking people about their work. How do you do a job like that? Do you love it? What does it pay? I was lucky to have access to people who could answer my questions. Otherwise, my life could have turned out very differently.
