First of all, I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be inspired by an impressive redesign of our education system. (And I would highly recommend it as an audiobook–Khan reads it himself!) Regardless of how you feel about Khan Academy as a resource, Sal Khan has a dream for what student-centered education can look like and he is actually putting it into practice. The Khan Lab School opened its doors in 2014 based entirely on the innovative principles outlined in “The One World Schoolhouse”. It’s happening! …and that is just so exciting! Consider this my shameless plug for wanting to go visit this school 🙂
My main takeaways from this (audio)book:
- Our education system is out-dated. I know this–we all know this. Furniture, class time and space are all too rigid but it was very interesting to hear Khan include things like grade levels and (gasp!) summer vacation–two things that are arbitrarily based on world our students no longer in. Why do students have to be grouped with kids their same age? Same-age grade levels also convey the idea that learning stops at 22.
- “The certainty of change, coupled wit the complete uncertainty as to the precise nature of the change, has profound and complex implications for our approach to education. For me, though, the most basic takeaway is crystal clear: Since we can’t predict exactly what today’s young people will need to know in ten or twenty years, what we teach them is less important than how they learn to teach themselves.” (Khan, pg.180).
- Math (among other subjects) should be self-paced for mastery. This was really affirming to read since our new curriculum design for math follows this philosophy. He discussed how our current system is based on the idea that time spent on a concept is fixed while individual mastery of that concept is variable, but shouldn’t it be the other way around? Individual mastery should be the constant while time spent to reach mastery is variable for each student.
“It was observed that students in mastery programs ‘developed more positive attitudes about learning and about their ability to learn.’ To use a contemporary expression, they were more likely to claim ownership of their educations. Another study concluded simply that ‘students who learned under mastery conditions…accepted greater responsibility for their learning. I stress this because I believe that personal responsibility is not only undervalued but actually discouraged by the standard classroom model, with its enforced passivity and rigid boundaries of curriculum and time. Denied the opportunity to make even the most basic decisions about how and what they will learn, students stop short of full commitment.” (Khan, pg. 43)- This self-paced for mastery curriculum design can potentially be scalable on a global level. How cool would that be?
So much of what was said in this book resonated with me because it seems to closely mirror our vision for curriculum and use of space (especially with the new building). It is really exciting that these changes are already taking place at a school in our area…and yes…I already reached out to see if they offer tours for fellow educators. I wonder if they could help us with this transition to a more student-centered curriculum.