(Skoll) by Sarah Zak Borgman.
Imagine that you only learned how to swim 75 percent? Or that you only learned how to ride your bike 75 percent? Or as a pilot, you only learned how to fly an airplane 75 percent? We’d likely feel the downside of partial mastery, with scrapes and bruises—or worse–along the way. As silly as this sounds, this is the framework we’ve agreed to as a society for children’s education throughout most of the world. You earn a 75 percent on a test, and you take that “C” grade into the next school year, never fully comprehending the subject matter. Why do we allow this?
The most recent Economist Magazine takes a deep dive into this subject from many different angles, including “Ed-Tech” and personal learning. It explores how our Skoll Awardee, Sal Khan asked this fundamental question when he developed his interactive video platform that allows and encourages students to move at their own pace. What began as a way for Khan to tutor remotely a cousin struggling with math, has become Khan Academy, a free, world-class online resource used by some 100 million people annually across the globe.
