One World School House

According to a peer-reviewed journal “National Teaching & Learning Forum”, a student has an attention span of around 10-18 minutes. The study was published in 1996, a pre-internet and social media era; the attention span in today’s world may be much lower.

Similarly, the Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric.R.Kandel explained the process of learning in his book “In search of memory”. The process of learning is actually physical and every time we learn something our brain literary grows. The more we learn from different angles, the more neurons link together forming a web of connections which we call understanding. The durability of the information depends on how actively we learn information in first place.

Studies have shown that there is no direct relationship between the amount of homework and the performance of students. For e.g. Among the nations whose students ranked near the top of international test results, some, like South Korea and Taiwan, were assigned a lot of homework. whereas other equally high-scoring countries—Denmark and Czechoslovakia and Japan—assigned very little.

These studies contradict the current practices of our education model. Have you wondered why? In today’s article, I will summarize the book “One World School House” that addresses these questions.

The tax-supported, public education started in the eighteenth century in Prussia. Currently, Prussian model is at the roots of almost every education system. This move, however, is considered to be equally political and pedagogical. The ideology of the model was not to create individual thinkers but rather to create citizens who submit to authority. Classes became the perfect media to politically brainwash individuals. The breakdown of ideas into subjects was also not by accident. It is easier to rote-memorize subjects. Similarly, the introduction of class periods was also the move to slowly kill self-motivation through endless interruptions and switching between curricula. The development of the testing system was also part of the Prussian model that decided who would pursue higher education and who would continue labour because labourers don’t need to work from their minds. This tracking system made sure to produce an ample amount of labour that helped early industrial society. This model was then further standardized before its introduction in America. It has not been rethought in the last 120 years and the after-effects of such a system are vivid as economic realities no longer favour a docile and disciplined working class with just the basic proficiencies in reading, math, and the liberal arts. Today’s world needs a workforce of creative, curious, and self-directed lifelong learners who are capable of conceiving and implementing novel ideas. Unfortunately, this is the type of student that the Prussian model actively suppresses.

If the education model is flawed then why are we sticking to it?

Because there is vast inertia in the education system and it is deeply integrated into other parts of our lives. Therefore, it is very difficult to imagine a system without it. Let's take the analogy of having three meals every day. Now the research claims that intermittent fasting is a healthy option. Despite the fact that we do less physical work than our ancestors did, why do we stick to the habit of eating 3 meals everyday?

This simple habit of eating 3 meals is now connected to different aspects of our lives like lunch hour at work, business of local restaurants, and a meal where family sit together. Due to this connection in multiple aspects of our lives, changing this habit will have severe consequences like adjustment of industry hours, a change in television schedules, and less probability to share time with family.

Similarly, if we change the teaching habits there will be a ripple effect on testing companies and giant publishers. Due to such vast inertia, it is very difficult to reimagine the system but that does not mean it is impossible and this is what the founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan, did in this book.

What are the fundamentals of Khan academy?

Salman Khan, the author of the book, started to teach his cousin Nadia because she struggled in Math. Over few years, the tutoring transformed into a community that was perpetuated because of the messages conveying that the education system is serving motivated students, all around the world, badly. This community is Khan academy which is helping millions of students to educate themselves.

Khan academy, like any other organization, grew over a period of time. Decisions made by the academy are backed by scientific research (some of these decisions were due to restrictions on the founder at that time). This directs a question of why the education system did not apply these findings? In the book, the writer talks about 4 key areas:

1. Attention Span: Initially, the lectures he delivered to his cousin were on the telephone and there was no time constraint. However, when he started to upload videos on YouTube he had to abide by the guideline that only allowed the upload of video max of 10 minutes in length. This restriction was the right amount of time to help students understand the concept because the research (as mentioned above) clearly states the attention span of students is around 10 to 18 minutes, and the focus can be regained when there are change-ups in the lectures.

2. Distraction: While making videos; the cost was an important consideration that helped shape the approach of the author towards teaching. He decided to never film himself in the video because then he had to buy a camera and then had to take care of lighting and clothes (Diderot Effect). This approach, was a great move, scientifically speaking, as humans are hardwired to focus on faces, observing the little cues. Although faces are important to human connection but are also the primary cause of distraction to the concept. The following excerpt from Atomic habits reinforces the idea:

“The human body has about eleven million sensory receptors. Approximately ten million of those are dedicated to sight. The most powerful of all human sensory abilities, however, is vision. Given that we are more dependent on vision than on any other sense, it should come as no surprise that visual cues are the greatest catalyst of our behaviour.”

This does not mean that teachers and their interaction in the classroom are not important. It humanizes the classroom but what the author proposes is the separation of concepts with facetime. Once concepts are clear the class time can be used more purposely. This means that technology should not be feared but embraced.

3. Mastery learning: Mastery learning simply suggests that students should adequately comprehend a given concept before being expected to understand a more advanced one. Mastery learning also focuses on the following 3 aspects that include:

1. Learning of students at their own pace.

2. Teachers act as mentors.

3. Peer-to-peer review is encouraged.

This had been introduced in the system multiple times in history but could not thrive because of two reasons. First was the economics, The book printing was very expensive and the luxury to access new exercises until mastery is achieved was not possible. The second was the resistance from administrators and teachers about bringing a change because they were and are in an illusion that the model needs not to be changed.

However, a lot of studies have been published that indicate the advantages of mastery learning over traditional “time-based” learning. Here are a few of the benefits:

1. Longer retention of content.

2. The academic spread between slow and fast learners reduce because everyone continues at their own pace.

3. Teachers feel the purpose of their job.

4. Students claim ownership and responsibility for their learning.

Mastery learning in today’s world is achievable due to the technological revolution. This means a student can solve an infinite amount of questions to practice a particular concept without the need to purchase a single book and this is what khan academy’s software is all about.

There are two key aspects of the software that helps the student to develop a firm knowledge of concepts. The first aspect is the development of a knowledge map that simply connects similar concepts together and gives a recommendation to students about what to study next. This knowledge map replicates the primary working of the brain that builds connections in similar concepts. The second aspect is mastery learning, in this area the basic philosophy is if a student can correctly answer 10 questions in a row it means that the concept has been mastered. If they fell short, this means that the software can help create more problems and can guide them further down the road developing their understanding and helping them internalise the concept and consequently helping students to work on more advanced topics.

4. Active Learning and Self-Paced Learning: No student is a perfect learner and every student faces some sort of difficulty understanding advanced topics because there is always some gap. This gap, however, can be filled when the students take full responsibility for their education in contrast to the traditional model where they are taught what to do, how much to do, and what to prepare for success in exams. The current model has plagued the minds of students with passivity such that they don’t want to take responsibility for their own learning. On the contrary, if some students willingly take responsibility then they are not equipped with the right tools to help fill in these gaps. From where to revise a topic that the student read 2 years ago? The author proposes two fixes for such problems; 1) Active learning and 2) self-paced learning

But what’s the credibility of the author except people watched his videos on YouTube?

Well, this is a very legit question. We are continuously making progress; countries are becoming more educated then why do we need to reimagine the education system and whether it has gotten some benefits that the founder claims or this is just marketing propaganda for his organization?

Since the foundation of Khan academy, a lot of pilot programs have been organized where these ideas are implemented in real-world i.e. focusing on self-paced learning with a continuous feedback system to help master the concepts and then using classrooms for intentional use of time, solving problems and actively internalizing the concepts learned by the students earlier. One of the programs, mentioned in the book, was the Peninsula Bridge Program, a summer session program intended to provide opportunities to middle school kids from under-resourced schools in Bay Area. In this program, Khan academy’s videos and software were used as an additional tool to help kids learn. There were some astonishing conclusions from this program.

1. The Group of students who started learning mathematics from basics performed far better than the group who started from more advanced level. This is because the former group took responsibility for their own learning and were provided with the right tools to learn and practice the concepts ultimately filling the gaps in their learnings. The latter group, on the other hand still had those gaps.

2. The use of spreadsheets (in collaboration with databases) to analyze the performance of an individual student helped humanize the classrooms. It promoted one-on-one interaction and help teachers focus on the specific weaknesses of the students in the group. (by embracing technology).

3. If a student is provided with the right environment and an opportunity to work at their own pace then they can advance/grow. This means that the idea of academic spread - associating students as slow or fast learners is not right. (refer to pg. 145)

Similarly, the book mentions an account of the summer camps organized by Khan academy and the Los Altos experiment that are the implementation of the fundamental ideas discussed above and that prove embracing technology can help students learn better.

What an ideal school should look like?

In the last section of the book, the author explains what an ideal school should look like. Here are few key areas he talks about:

1. Spirit of one room: The school must be having kids of different ages grouped together similar to what grown-up experience after school. Here, the argument is based upon the nature of humans that they can reproduce around the age of 12 which means that nature has made them capable of taking care of people. If this is how nature has designed humans then why we are grouping the same-age students? Mixed-age classes will allow young kids to find heroes, and mentors in elder students and similarly, older students will be able to practice leadership and responsibility. (Again this splitting of classrooms is again a human construct and therefore can be reimagined).

2. Teaching as sports: The big difference (from a student perspective) between coaches and teachers is that coaches are considered to be on the side of students whereas teachers are considered cruel because they terrify students by grades and they are not considered to help students but merely do their job which is to teach.

To address these problems, firstly, we need to build a multi-teacher classroom i.e. breaking the walls between different classes and teaching all the mix age students together (Spirit of one room). This means that while teaching the teachers also have constant support from their peers as in any other profession and this adds a lot of flexibility and promotes a collaborative environment in classrooms.

Secondly, teachers need to explicitly express that the whole idea of teaching is to help the students rather than themselves. The tests are to help them learn the concepts rather than labelling them as good or bad students and helping students to master their weak points (mastery learning and intentional use of class time) are a few of the teaching characteristics in which teachers can demonstrate themselves as the coaches who want to help students learn better.

3. Redefining summers: Summer vacation is a custom that we have been following blindly and it does not make sense in this century. In earlier times it made sense say, 1730 when most people lived on farms. Families needed to eat before they could worry about their children getting educated; kids of all ages and both genders were expected to help in the fields. That was then it made sense but these days it is a complete waste of time and resources. Teachers don't teach and the administration doesn't administer. Most importantly human brain is designed to lose connections if the information is not repeated. This means that students unlearn instead of learning something new during summer vacations.

So the fix to this problem would be no standardized vacations but it can be taken at any time when required (just like in the professional world). Because the learning is self-paced and easy access to information is available, students can learn during their vacations as well.

4. Transcripts: The normal judging criteria of students’ performance in the conventional education model is to look at the grades which are not precise and are meaningless. It can provide a snapshot of what a student did, whether they showed up or not, but not more than that. It does not tell about the creativity and intelligence of the students. In some cases, while applying for jobs and higher education, a letter of motivation or interviews are required which are a better solution to rely on rather than just the grades. However, this can be advantageous for students who understand how the system works. Here is the solution by the author:

1. Some sort of standardized test system with more emphasis on open-ended and design-related problems with significant changes each year.

2. A multiyear narrative for each student i.e. extracting and analyzing data by Khan academy’s software providing insights on how the student has performed on topics over few years and what it explains about the work ethic, patience or interest of the student in the field.

3. A creative portfolio which helps to learn what students have created on their own, above and beyond lessons and tests. Ignoring this part of the transcript means we miss an opportunity to appreciate what is truly special about a student.

5. Future of credentials: In the traditional model, education is a mix of three ideas i.e. Teaching, socializing and credentials. If we remove credentials from the university degree then most of the students won’t go to any of the recognized colleges because one of the major goals of pursuing a degree from a well-recognized university is to lend a good job. This consequently affects students who studied from not well-known universities.

Therefore, the ideal school house will eliminate the credentials which means that all the students will be taught based on mastery learning and will be prepared to tackle the global problems in their respective fields but for recruiters, to get a snapshot of where a student stands now, a standardized test will be required. This test will be developed with the collaboration of global companies. This means that the role of universities will be much more like an MBA, an optional thing, but a lifetime experience for the ones who are privileged. However, eliminating college will not hinder students from continuing successful careers provided that they are ready to serve the world for the better.

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This is the summary of the book “One world school house” written by Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy. The book has to offer a lot of valuable insights and I would highly recommend it to those who are interested to understand the education-related problems in the current world.