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Home » Sal Khan: Let’s Teach for Mastery — Not Test Scores (Transcript)

Sal Khan: Let’s Teach for Mastery — Not Test Scores (Transcript)

Sal Khan

Sal Khan – TRANSCRIPT

I’m here today to talk about the two ideas that, at least based on my observations at Khan Academy, are kind of the core, or the key leverage points for learning. And it’s the idea of mastery and the idea of mindset.

I saw this in the early days working with my cousins. A lot of them were having trouble with math at first, because they had all of these gaps accumulated in their learning. And because of that, at some point they got to an algebra class and they might have been a little bit shaky on some of the pre-algebra, and because of that, they thought they didn’t have the math gene. Or they’d get to a calculus class, and they’d be a little bit shaky on the algebra. I saw it in the early days when I was uploading some of those videos on YouTube, and I realized that people who were not my cousins were watching.

And at first, those comments were just simple thank-yous. I thought that was a pretty big deal. I don’t know how much time you all spend on YouTube. Most of the comments are not “Thank you”. They’re a little edgier than that.

But then the comments got a little more intense, student after student saying that they had grown up not liking math. It was getting difficult as they got into more advanced math topics.  By the time they got to algebra, they had so many gaps in their knowledge they couldn’t engage with it. They thought they didn’t have the math gene. But when they were a bit older, they took a little agency and decided to engage.

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