Of books in any big library, and you got a lot of competition. The first thing you want to do, if youre an author, is to at least have somebody pick up the book. And so when i was thinking of a title issue thousand what i can title this book that would get somebody to take a peek, read the first paragraph. And i thought, well, nigger. Nigger is a strange career of a trouble selfword. And i thought that would just think hard about words, think hard about examples, get the readers attention. Thats what i was trying to do with the title. Up next on booktv, afterwords with guest host, the president of the National Alliance of public charter schools. This week, sol month and his book, the one world schoolhouse. In it, presenting the benefits of online universal education for primary and secondary School Students and discussings his Career Change to public educator. Host hi, sal, tell us about the book and the journey you went that led you to writing the book . Guest the book is about the journey, but how that informed what khan became and how that could inform what learning could become, and not just in a pies in the sky way, but this is really happening and feels like were in this Inflection Point in whats going on in classrooms. You know, the whole adventure for me started somewhat inadvertently. It was 2004. I was working as an analyst at a hedge fund at the time. Just got married. Family from new orleans visiting me in boston after my wedding, and one cousin, nadia, was having trouble. 12 years old, a bright girl, share some of the beauty, and when i asked her, her mom told me, and nadia said she was having trouble with units. I said, let me tutor you. She thought i was bluffing. She went back to new orleans, got on the phone, we used some tools on the internet to see each other and pen tablet things, and long story short, you know, she went from being a struggling student to catching up with the class and becoming somewhat advanced student, actually. I joke, i became a tiger cousin at that point. I call the school saying nadia needs to take a placement exam. They said, who are you . I said, im her cousin. I tutored her brothers, and then fast forward two years, word got around free tutoring was happying, and it was at that point that a and the firm i was working for, it was a firm, but my boss, his dog, and me, we moved to Silicon Valley, and i was telling a friend about what i was doing, and i was complaining that its getting hard to scale. I thought a day job, all students around the country, time zones, ect. , ect. , and he said make tutorials. Make them up on youtube, and i thought that was really youtube are for cats playing piano, not serious, but i gave it a shot. Long story short, that go a ton of traction. People looked at it. The word is i was working on a Software Tool for my cousins. There was a view, hey, maybe could be used to help people. The set up is a nonforprofit, and in 2009, i had trouble focusing on my day job, so i became fulltime. Tell me about the khan academy . Start with the Business Model. The big Audacious School and the Business Model you have been on. Guest yeah, so, well, maybe ill go the other way around because, you know, when i started this, i came from a forprofit reality. I have friends who are venture capitalists, saying, we can fund this, a Double Bottom line business, whatever that means, and there was a lot of temptation there. Nothing wrong with that, but the feeling, i was getting all this emotional reward from the thank you letters people sent me and the cernes that, hey, i was making simple things for my cousin, and first a few and now millions use it around the world. I want this to be around in 500 years. I dont want a collection of software and content and disorganization. I dont want it to skew the mission to be able to reach these people. When i look at other organizations in the universe that are able to do that, last many, many, hopefully, centuries, and stay true to a mission, its a nonforprofit with no ownership, but a public charity. I said, well, its a nonforprofit, and i remember doing the paperwork for, it the irs asks you, whats your mission . I kind of thought about it for three or four minutes. I said, well, a e free world class education for anyone anywhere. Host why not . Guest why not. You just dont want something to say, check, its done. Its an aspiration, a delusional one at the time. I was operating from a close et. The Business Model is were not a business. Were a nonforprofit, but we have to sustain ourselves, and the way we want to because we always want the learning side of education, we want that to be free because that empowers people. Its primarily foundation and philanthropist driven so far, but we sustain ourself in other ways like licensing content or who knows what. We are exploring that, but were true to keeping the contents free. Host how many students are you serving now . How many instructors . Do you have aceps a sense of how large . Whats a typical profile of those visiting your website . Guest so the organization, itself, 36 people, still relatively small, but for us, huge because last year we were 13 and year before that it was one. Weve been growing fast, but in this past month, rereached 7 million students, unique students. Weve reachedded a total of 60 million, the way you measure them on the web, delivered 180 million lessons, 700 million problems, and weve been done on the site. Its, you know, its students all over the wore. All over the world. Students have used the academy this some way. 20,000 teachers, as far as we can tell from the data are using it in their classes or are their cohorts in a type of a way. Its surreal for where it came from. Host yeah. Talk about how a classroom or school can use you, this concept of a flipped classroom. Explain that to our viewers. Guest yeah, two things. A flipped classroom has been tied to khan academy, and it is an interesting idea and forward step, but the point of the book was to show people were not necessarily about the split. Were about pushing the envelope further than the flip. In a flip model, you know, right now at home, problems, homework, and in the classroom, a lot of time in the traditional classroom, its lectures, and the flip is predates khan academy, and you made a motion on projectile motion, i dont have the give the election. Students watch it on their own time and pace, remediate without taking up class time, and when they go to class, they can ask me questions, clarifications, and we can do problems together. It used to be homework, but now the problems are done in the classroom. The advantage there is the real learning occurs the engagement, and traditionally students dont do homework, have trouble doing homework because theres nobody home to help them out, but now they do it in the classroom, the teachers, the peers, not only to help you, but when you help others, you learn better. When youre lecturing, its hard to know where people are. I mean, you might be able to pull them, ask questions, but its hard. Students are blank faces, but if you do problem solving together, much more you can understand where students are and diagnose them. Thats the flip. What used to be homework in the classroom, what used to be lectures are now at home. It makes the classroom interactive, students get lectures at their time and pace. Great. What i foe e cues on in the book is lets go further. Still, even the flip, assume that all the students are going to cover the same material at the same pace together, and what i talk about is this weve been in the system, and when i talk about the system, its not what should be the student teacher ratio, but the system, grouping kids by agebased cohorts. They cover certain subjects at a set pace, grade them on their variable understanding and push them forward. We assume thats what school is, but what i go to show is, no, its a relatively knew phenomena, 200 years not that new, but 200 years old, inherited that from a country that no longer exists, the prussians, and in fairness to the prussians and to us, i guess, during the Industrial Revolution was the first time people seriously thought about how can we educate everybody . Before that, it was, you know, youre the son of a lord, and you would get to be king and have a private tutor. That was the gold standard. They work at your pace, but now, we want mass education. How do you do in in a practical way, oh, the Industrial Revolution, stick them on an Assembly Line, as they go through, do something to the product, and at the end, have a decent product. They applied the same model to classrooms. Kids are in the buckets based on age. I was talking to a friend, and her child already knows how to read and everything, and she was trying to get the child into kindergarten, born in october or something, and the school said, oh, yeah, a bright kid, but we cant. Hes too small. I told she came back, yeah, hes too small. Look, if thats what they were concerned about, group them by size. Host right. Guest thats the obvious, natural, but thats the model, and so what even the flip is in the context of that model. On week three, we cover parabolas, systems of equations, and we give students grades. We give them a b showing they have a gap in the knowledge, a c or a d, but you move on to the next topic moving you to failure. What we advocated, and schools are experimenting in this direction is if you take lecture out of the classroom, theres no longer the need for everyone to move together at the same pace. As soon as you get rid of that assumption, you can completely rethink what a classroom can be. Everyone can learn at their own pace. Leverage class time when humans are together for interactivity. Why cant we have two teachers in the room . Why does a bell ring . This is like a factory in 19th century, why is there a bell ringing saying stop what you are doing on chemistry, you have to now start english. Anyone who does anything creative, thats the way to stop it, you have 55 minutes, and then youre done. Host right. Guest what we advocate is move to reality with possibly with the help of tools like khan academy, teachers have dash boards, tools to empower them, and use classroom for activity and creativity. Host right, right. You touched op this a little bit, but explain a little about why is it that your platform has taken off, getting so much attention when others were trying to do the same thing on the forprofit side, some on the nonprofit side have not succeeded. Guest its an open question. We ask that ourselves. Whatever the secret sauce is, we dont want to lose it in the process. My best guess of why theres this initial wave of traction, you know, from 2006 to even continues to grow, is the first videos, i think, it was fortunate that it was a guy making it for his cousin. I think host easy to use. Guest easy to use, felt human, and the big learning thing is people were hungry. I was not the first person to put videos on youtube or teaching. With radio, oh, well use this to teach the world, tv, vcr, and now on demand. But historically, it was a videotape of someone at a chalk board, you know, traditional class, feels very feels distant even in the class roosm. Youre there, im here. The next step in the equation, and you do it like that. When you make that in the video, its harder 20 see. What are they writing there, i cant hear them, and these feel personal. Youre next to me. I think the other dimension of it is the conversational tone. Its, you know, a lot of people, they try to make it polished, which is not bad, but in that process, you lose the humanity. It sounds like your gps system, the next step in the e cation host exactly. Guest i think, hopefully this is something i tried to put into it is one of the things that allowed me to do to thrive in math or science or eventually finance was i felt like i had a holistic understanding of things. My basics were really, really solid, and my basics in algebra were good. When i went into corporate finance, this is intiewtive. Theres nothing new here. You see other really, really smart people just learning for the next exam, memorizing formulas, and forget it. Theres a related con concept, and they are like, whats this . Draws connections between things so that when you see a concept, its not new, but its connected to everything they learned before, and i get a lot of letters saying i would assume that would have been appealing to the motivated kids so to speak, but i get letters from kids were traditionally disengaged or demotivated, and no one just explained the why or giving them the connections. Hopefully thats why people are have been, i guess, connecting to the content. Host yeah. So lets talk about Virtual Education and offering the types of things youre offering. People are still a little weiry of these reforms. They see it as a mechanism to ultimately get rid of teachers in the classroom or reduce class sizes. You talked about this in the book, and explain that a little bit. Guest yeah, yeah, super important point. Over the last 1520 years, when people see virtual x, its going to replace the physical. Barnes noble against amazon. Com, theres a contention there. Exact opposite of whats going to happen in education. Everything we do is not going to replace physical school. I have young kids. I want them to go to a physical school. I want them to get interaction. What it will do, i think, is give all of our children the experience that i think every parent and every teacher or student wants to be a part of. Even now, were going into the physical experience, but were not leveraging the human. Were going, but people are sitting passively there, listening, and its hard for the teachers too because its hard to speak for 60 minutes without getting that connection with the students, and so what we advocate is leverage tools so you can get information delivery out of the way, get some of the problem solving out of the way, but so when people go, and they have class time, the scarce class time with other miewbs, thats ultimately interactive, and interactive in the human sense. Class time is all conversation. Class time is all peer tutoring and working with the teacher. Class time is open ended projects, and so, you know, i talk about this in the book, and i gave a talk, and the irony here is i strongly believe, and its not just talk again, but seeing this in the classrooms is that you can actually use technology to make the classroom more human. Im careful. You mentioned skepticism. There should be. Im skeptical when someone ordered 500 ipads for the school. What are you going to do with it . How will you integrate that in the curriculum or leverage it to transform whats going on . There are not a lot of answers there. I think it is good to be skeptical, but at the same time, there is i think, a reason for hope. Uhhuh. How do you evaluate the impact of the courses since, again, you talked about grades in your book and how you dont like grading. How do you know they have actually worked . Guest yeah, and ill tell you, i mean, a lot of times, when i grew up, i remember i would meet people saying i dont believe in grades, and i thought they were a gray granola bar hippy type people, but i appreciate what they are saying now. People who dont like grades are being touchy feely, but they are not being rigorous enough. Oh one, they are somewhat arbitrary, depend on the test and how its measured, but more than that, when you give grades, especially in the sense, if you got a c on an exam, you have obvious weaknesses, assuming it was a good exam, theres obvious weaknesses. That should be used as an assessment to say you have to improve on the weaknesses before we move on. Its common sense, get the basics down. But now its a value judgment, youre dumb, youre fast, youre smart, youre slow. What we say is, no, make sure everyone masters the concept. Rather than having a superficial understanding of algebra and moving on to trig no , maam try. Understand it deeply and then trig no , trig will make more sense. In terms of how we do it, we work with schools, los altos using khan academy, probably one the best in the country, using khan academy for 5th8th grade as one of the tools they use. We have formal studying going on how to understand how this impacts students and teachers, both objectively on things like test scores and grades, but also on things on subjects. Are the teachers more excited about the work. Are the students excited about their work . On top of that, you know, we have 3 million problems done a day on the site. Theres a huge number of students a month. We have a treasuretrove of data on the site itself. Host monitoring it . Guest all the other Web Companies are able to do, we, as an education nonforprofit can do using analytics, optimizing for engagement, seeing what learning is going op. Host so tell me a little bit about so you gave a great historical overview of how we came to educate students today, the way we are educating them. Did you always hold these views and know the information before you stumbled on the khan academy or the platform created or these things you studied afterwards . Just so happens everything flows so beautifully, thats why i was curious what came first. Guest you know, its been a combination. I think its more of the latter. You know, obviously, all of us spent time in the system. I think the whole timing and nip who knew me growing up, knew i was like, why is that this way . Why cant i tutor. No, this is a positive interaction. Theres a question, you know, you go to college, and, like like people are in a lecture hall, anything happening . The learning happens in the cram session three days before the final. Theres always these ideas, and then, obviously, i work with the cousins, saw my cousins were motivated. They were good students, but they were having gaps in the knowledge, not learning intuitively. Host swiss cheese learning. Guest swiss cheese learning. I started building tools, a process of discovery saying teachers emailing me, and conversation of how do i learn, how do others learn, what am i seeing with the teachers, with my cousins, what are teachers telling me . As this got more traction, i had people tell me about this stuff. I knew about the history before. You know, i heard about this committee of ten and, you know, i was told lookout that in high school, but it was interesting that, you know, even the research. The reason why i made the video short was because Youtube Limited me to 10 minutes, but research said theres cog cognie research that, actually, like, people, especially dense academic content cant Pay Attention for more than 1015 minutes. Why use hour long lectures . Cant we get people to interact more . The more i researched, the more these basic common sense ideas jelled with research. Thats when you are best about it. Every its weird when research tells you something nonintuitive, but here it is very, very intuitive. Were indoctrinated into a strange model. Host it all makes sense. Tell me about your own education. I mean, something despite the system you grew up in, something must have gone right. Your teacher . Your parents you think who built this sense of inquiztiveness or did you go to a particular type of school open to nurturing you as an individual and paying attention to the specific needs or, yeah, did none of these things guest i would delusional, although i am sometimes delusional, but just two probably a bunch of factors and probably forgetting, but, one, blessed to have an older sister who was a very good student so i think that projected when i would walk into a classroom, the teachers remembered my sister. Oh, youre her brother, you must be i was in speech therapy, but they would project that. Theres now studies showing that projections has implications on your selfesteem. That was luck. On top of that, i went to a Public School in Jefferson Parrish outside of new orleans, and i would say its the average american Public School, all of them. Elementary, middle, and high school, but, you know, there were some incredible teachers there. I think in high school in particular, mr. Hernandez, ms. Kennedy. She was a journalism teacher. Thats where the ideas that, look, class should not be a lecture, but working alongside the teacher in the journalism class. We had a creative product. I was the art editor. She gave us feedback, the senior peer, and i remember the experiences from that and i think about that. I think early in the schools, i mean, key and also lucky, i got into, you know, i dont know what they call it now, but gt programs, and what they did is you had a structured prussians curriculum most of the day, but a day a week, they take you to a different classroom, and there you go into this classroom, essentially the kind of classroom ideally everyone should have, where you have it was the two teachers, ph. D. In education, and i walked in to gt, and he asked what do you want to do . I was, like, 8. I was, like, i like to draw. She says, draw more then. She introduced me to things, different styles, tools to draw. What else are you interested in . I was like, i like puzzles. Heres some puzzles. She gave me brain teasers. It was selfpaced. Other kids working op things, and i was inspired by them. I think we needed that breathing room to have i wonder if i did not have that experience early on, whether i would have had the ability to kind of selfdirect or have the ability to say, oh, let me solve that problem. You know, thats an interesting thing to tackle. Host right. So along those lines, do you have any advice for parents out there, first graders, second graders, and i ask you that because in the book you highlight how students in Southeast Asia go to school in order to show you off what they know, not to learn in schools. Are there habits parents can start to, you know, put in place early on despite how the schools are approaching education . Guest yeah, you know, take everything i have with a grain of salt. I have a 3yearold and 1 yearold. Maybe i should get advice from other parents. Im trying to get my 1yearold off the passifier. Myceps going through the system and observing, working with teachers and schools now, theres a couple dimensions. It is true, asians, whether its east asia, south asia, there is a culture of going to school to show what you learned at home. That giving them the advantage of having a buffer. They are learning stuff maybe ahead. Im not saying that has to be the way, but it is a way to ensure the students in the prussianssed motivated eel, and when they fall behind, negative reenforcing each other. What i would do is a combination of engaging them with a lot of content in a way before it becomes stressful so you teach when you tutor when i was teaching nadia algebra, it was stressful for her because she had to catch up. When i taught it to her younger brother in 5th grade, he thought it was fun. Theres no stress, just a fun thing. Expose kids to the ideas and algebra and everything early on so when they see it in school, they had the exposure. The other thing is dont over schedule them. Sometimes the same parents that would the same parents that would do the teaching ahead of time also, you have piano lessons, soccer, everything. I think theres a value there, definitely, but if its complete overscheduling, you have the loss of time for the child to develop their own creativity, kind of what i had in the gt class. In the ages, i was a last key child. My mom, she worked odd jobs and came home at six oclock or seven oclock. My sister end my sister and i would hang out, wasted by watching tv, but sometimes wed draw or make up games and stuff like that. Kids need that. They need that free space. Maybe if they blow it all on video game or blow it on tv, do something creative with them. They need the time for creativity. The last thing i recommend is the parents themselves engage in learning because you set that example. If youre 40 or 50 years old, and you go back and learn english lit, its a huge thing. Host right. Talk about your vision for the ideal classroom or futuristic vision outlined here about what the school of tomorrow should look like, a Lifelong Learning approach to education. You talked about the college of tomorrow. I was fascinated by this. Lets talk just about schooling. You know, notions of class size, the ideal classrooms could potentially have a hundred students in it with four instructors roaming around helping students. You talked about grades already, but testing. This is one of those topics that comes up a lot in washington and with the discussions on the hill, but how would you describe that for us . You talked about how you would get rid of summer vacations, probably not popular, but dive into this. Guest theres a lot there. The first to mention is once you remove lecture from class time, class time is a time for interaction, students working at their own pace. You can rethink everything. This is happening. Schools we work with are doing these things. They are experiments, but they are experiments that all the research and intuition point in that direction. Teaching is the most solitary profession. Host its loney. Guest its loany. You can have a hundred students, not changing the ratio, might improve it, but theres four teachers. If one is sick, theres not a substitute teacher. Students connect with different teachers. Do group things. Theres a comangs to add. You can have a physics teacher, math teacher, chemistry teach herb teems simultaneously. All the sciences and math blend together but not siloed subjects. The test themselves, you need some aspect of testing, but someone should be be skeptical of testing because all tests measure is what they test. Theres much more facets to a human being than that. The dimensions that, you know, there could be some testing to make sure that students are getting core competency and skills, but the most important unmeasured now are creativity. You can never give a creativity score, but you can generate a portfolio of creative works. We are hiring engineers, and we get the people great gpas from top schools in the country. What have you created . Thats what engineering is. Building new things. They have not created anything because they were on the treadmill trying to finish problem sets, and they are very, very smart people so the idea is students can show what they created. Its like a paper thats graded and thrown away, but write a paper, its graded, and then they keep writing it, when theyre 18, they have a book. On top of that, this is another dimension thats completely missed in the prussianss model so to speak is as i think in any field, those you want to work with the most are people with deep subject matter expertise, but always willing to help others. They have a communication and ability to empathize, and in our cart system, we make everyone focused on themselves. Way are your grades . Are you going to pass the test . Cram for the next exam. What we see in a lot of schools is lets focus everyone on each other. You go at your own pace, racing ahead, thats great, youre engauged, but you also have a chance to reengauge with students who might be having difficulty. When you explain that, hopefully, and you develop your ability to explain, you learn the material better and learn to communicate and everyonetize. These, that is measurable. Students with rate each other, write assessments for each other. He understood it, but he spoke fast. You can develop that aspect. Id imagine the transcripts of the future, and i say the future, and what i mean by the future is actually now, is, yeah, have scores, that shows competency, yeah, i understand eel jay bra and renewedded that i know eel jay br well. Im a writer, hes the writings. You have a portfolio of your work in multidimensions, and you have reviews from people you helped saying a great person to work with, understood the matter, communicated well. Those are the things anyone would care about more than just test scores. Host right. Talk about what happens in the classroom or school in terms of subjects. You believe you have to take math, english, language arts, science at a certain point in time. Do you, i mean, do you believe basics should be taught in the school, and at what point, i mean, another question i wanted to ask is do you believe all children are learn unless they is a serious disability . Can they all progress to the levels you progressed to if they learn and master and show interest in the subject matter they study, visavis the stem subjects, science, technology, engineering, and math. Is it because they did not understand it or were not pushed or limitations, perhaps, how we get students to learn the subjects . Guest yeah, on the latter question, if you asked 20 years ago, yeah, maybe some are disposed to math and science, and that made me feel like i was meant to be there, was not luck. My experience with the cousins, nadia in particular and others, and what we see in schools. The schools are transitioning to the type of the model where all students learn at their own pace, building foundations. Were seeing, you know, day five, yeah, some kids raced ahead. Those are gifted. Some fall behind. Maybe they need to be remediated. In a traditional model, you separate telling these kids youre smart and saying youre not as smart. What we see is if you keep them together, allow them to work at their own pace, mentorship from each other and the teacher, many times its hard to predict, trying to, but its very hard, some of the students who were falling behind, maybe its in an algebra class, some didnt know how to add fractions. Give them the opportunity to build the foundation on negative numbers, exponents, whatever it might be. It was not an inability to understand. The problem was they are in a class, and for some reason, they didnt understand how to multiply or understand how to add fractions, and then you feel silly. Youll disengage just to protect your own selfesteem. Im now more end more convinced that pretty much everyone, you know, barring certain exceptions could we dont know where. Were still learning. We dont know, but progress far ahead. Were seeing it in the classrooms. We traditionally think motivated kids, 20 of kids, but as soon as you allow those to engage and fill in gaps without feeling embarrassed, its 80 or 90 of the kids who feel engaged. In terms of the first question about what subjects and how i talk a little about it. The subjects taught now are arbitrary. They were decided in 1892 by the committee of 10, male University President s who did not know about before the Federal Reserve existed, the interstate highways existed, knowledge of dna, and a bunch of other stuff. They decided at age 14 you learn algebra, 15, geometry, and 16 trig, and senior year in high school that was when it was decided, and it has not changed since. They are fascinating subjects, but i think theres obvious questions, you know, should there be more statistics . Should there be some knowledge of economics . Who knows what it would be. For society to decide, but the general idea is at minimum, it should be rethought within the last 120 years. The world has changed. We should think more about what the subjects are. I think they should be divvied up, and these are were indoctrinated in it. Its hard to break minds from it. This is the factory model. This is, oh, youre at this machine and the factory, and this is what is poured into the product. Okay, now you have the paint applied to you, the chemistry, and now you move on. For some people, that tips that way. Thats fine. Thats a cheaper product at the end. The reality is chemistry is halfway in between physics and biology, and physics is halfway in between chemistry and pure mathematics. Theres an aspect of philosophy and as thetics to them, and whatever else and writing can be critical and logical thinking is across all the programs. You can have something like, you know, logic, across everything, and so i think the reality were moving to is, yes, theres competency in thingsment i understand this to mean well. Take an exam, renew that exam showing, yes, i understand the topic, but while in school, it could be preparation for the particular competency, but most of the time is blending it. Youre not working to pass an assessment, but to create things. In the process of creating things, whether its a novel or robot or business, youre integrating all of these things. Nip who started a business, a text business, theres a theres art design, technology, theres quantitative thinking, and theres writing, and theres human skills. You need to integrate it. Thats what matters in the real word. These when you break yourself from this Assembly Line model, you give yourself the freedom for people to pursue these things. Host so why not create a khan Academy Charter school or private school . Guest yeah, so host im sure youve thought of it. Guest we go back and forth on that, but i its were thinking about it. Were thinking about it. I mean, host where would you put it . Which country would you pick . Guest i would put it in mountain view, california, within walking distance but, no, seriously, its interesting. This shows the emphasis we put. Physical experience is incredibly, incredibly important. People in Silicon Valley say youre at scale already. 7 million, growing, doubling every year, reach a billion student, and why are you thinking about the physical or thinking about physical schools . I would say, well, thats because thats the core. I also think you need you say, well, why focus on one school that reaches a few hundred kids when you can reach a hundred million in one day . If you show examples of this, and there are schools that have already moved in that direction. Los altos, summit prep, they broke down walls, multiple teachers teaching classes in epic environments. If you show examples of this, then i think thats what moves dpsh thats what moves the dial forward. Host how much would be the tuition . Guest you know host avenues, and a school in new york is 40,000 a child. It was still without this bulk and vision behind it. Guest right. The money is faze nateing. You know, education is, you know, someone asked me recently, can you spend too much on education . Some is no. Its app important thing. At the same time, if you spend that much money, think about spending it, and i spoke to officials about this, and i just regardless of the cost, some, you know, 25,000, 40,000 a year, ask a Public School, you know, some states, its low, goes down to 5,000 a year, but most states, especially on the east coast, its 15,000, cambridge, massachusetts is 25,000 a year. Whats the class size . A number between 20 and 30. I said, okay. Private school . Charging 30,000 a year, that is for, you know, whats immac pacting the students . Maybe the textbook. Maybe theres a hundred thousand spent there. Wheres the rest . Why cant we use 10,000 a year, 20 or 30 students in a class, thats 300,000 a year. Pay the teacher 150,000. Make teaching, they Pay Lip Service to, oh, teaching should be on par with doctors, engineers, and lawyers. Thats nice lip service, but if you believe that, pay teachers the sames as doctors, jerns, and lawyers. Thats what the value is. The money is clearly there. It has to get cut from those, and i used to see cfo r s, a what am i missing . Same question. You know, 15,000 a year times 30 students is 450,000 a year, a fully loaded cost of a teacher is e less than half of that. Wheres the money going . I think you could do a very good model for what Public Schools do. Definitely some of the more, you know, the systems spending 10,000 for. Uhhuh. Talk a little about how bill gates talked to you. It was interesting. What was it like to find out all the sudden that bill gates was watching your videos . What went through your mind . Guest sometimes i wake up in the morning wondering if that was made up or a dream. The suns got traction, but in summer 2010, one of the first donors sent Text Messages that bill gates was at the aspen ideas festival telling the audience he uses a site that he thinks is great called the khan academy, usings it for himself and kids, but then, you know, i didnt know what to do. Do i reach out . I dont think hes listed. His two weeks later, the chief of staff called saying bills a fan, and i said, yeah, yeah, i heard that. If youre free, we want to fly you up. My calendar was blank. I can make time for bill. I have to cut my nails, but other than that, my schedules flexible. I went up, and, i mean, really articulated this. The time, it was the videos i was doing, look, if we can get resources, and i was dreaming about a fiveperson team and office space. That was the dream at that point. We could make we could build out the software, and i did it with my cousins so students can build community on the site and help each other and build forces for teachers so that they can use it to diagnose students and leverage class time effectively, and then him and later google as well, you know, they were strong believers in that. Host great. So, you know, you talk a little bit about talent and creativity in your book, and we talked a little bit about this earlier op, but do you think, you know, in the advent of all of these not at vend, but since, you know, a couple years ago, there were books focused on talent. Talent is overratedded. The talent code, you name it. And i have a 7yearold who im trying to foster into talented individual, do you think talent and creativity are things that can be, in fact, you know, talked to children or guest i dont im not sure. Frankly, and i think no one is sure. My sense through observation and seeing whats happening there is its not something thats taught, but something that can be untaught. It can be taught or suppressed. Talent and craftivity. Theres not a 2yearold on the planet who, if you introduce a new object into the room, will not walk up to the october and manipulate it in every way, taste it, feel it, theres not a 2yearold on the planet or a 5yearold. Most 5yearolds, still, a new object in the room, they engage with it, a new idea, they ask questions, but something happens where they are taught to become passive. To some degree, its an environment where questioning is not always cool. They are so overwhelmed with work, whether its soccer practice or homework, theres no time to think about something. You know, the class is moving on. They dont think about, why, why carrying the one . Its like a formula for me. They dont have time for that type of stuff. You know, all of these things fall from the idea of breaking from the model, breaking from the one pace lecture. As soon as you take that out, now you can say, hey, why cant we if theres a 16yearold in the country with some insight on, like, well maybe cancer can be addressed, maybe this is what cancer is, and too bad. The bells going to ring. They have an ap test the next day. Oh, i have too much work to do. You know, i quote an Admissions Office in the book talk about interviewing a bunch of people who are coming to an elite college saying what do you daydream about. One said we dont daydream about anything because we then we cant get into college. Its the daydreams that lead to actual ill tell you, you know, khan academy exists because my boss at the hedge funds is a very nontraditional for the field, had a strong belief in lifelong balance, and so i had time today dream about the khan academy. My wife was a resident, medical resident so i felt bad watching tv, and so i was able to think about this problem, and make resources, and we and i think anyone is capable of doing that. We have to give them the time and breathing room to do it. Host especially now since it appears, i dont know if this was in your book or i heard it from tom friedman, the jobs of tomorrow are going to be jobs that are created, not jobs that currently exist. Guest the prussian model started with the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution we needed more educated people than we needed in the civilization, people who could read directions, have the disblip and all of that, then you had to imp kate. Theres an independence and freedom to it, and in the factory, you do this over and over again, and, you know, and we one debates whether it was done, but there was an element of instilling that passivity and indoctrine nation so that people could be good workers, but now before the pyramids, it was like that, a few workers doing Creative Things and a mass of labor. Now the pyramids inverted. We need a lot of creative people, all the real careers now are creative focused and openended and little physical labor. In that reality, you know, were training people for this while we need the opposite. Host right. So since we are in the nations capital, do you have advice for congress or the president . How can they best help bring this vision to life, understanding that . Guest its an interesting question because we meet with state officials and federal officials and, you know, even other countries and min industries of education. The one thing that i dont want to happen is, you know, right now, its been a very grassroots thing. Word of mouth, parents telling parents, teachers telling teachers, and thats good. These are people who want to make it work and figure it out and tell us how to make it work better. As soon as its topdown, it becomes no one likeses it. We want it to be grassroots. Tell people about it. Tell teachers that, look, there might be another model that you probably will enjoy more. There are ways to reach more students. On top of that, and im serious about this, i think its a they set the example. Its too easy now in our society for people to say, oh, im not good at math. They say that about like 6th grade math. Oh, this is math, i dont understand it. Oh, i can barely write. No one says that. Politicians say that, ceos say that, people in the press say that. I think that messaging should change and the only way it can is if they engage with it. Its shocking how many people are engaged in education policy where they dont know the matter themselves. Im not good at math, but this is how we should test it. Thats crazy. You, yourself, engage in the content, and that will be a huge signal to society to help inform policy. The more they do that, theyll realize its a lot less about topdown, less about the controls. You know, the controls they do, every it ration is just about more controls op teachers, and it might derisk some of the weaker players, but it also handicaps the all the rest, and that gets to a culture of, you know, everyone getting to mediocre. What we need to do is go the other way, have it be grassroots. What i point out in the book, thats an american thing. Were a country that focused on creativity, were a country focused on people taking ownership over their lives, but our School System is a prussian one on passivity, authority, and everything about this book is lets make our School Systems more american. Host any final thoughts . If you were sitting with president obama, you know, at the white house, aside from asking him to use the bully pulpit more guest im somewhat serious. Id ask him to this is a somewhat different dimension, but it was talked about in the book. Id ask him to make content for us. Whats happening now is the publics discourse, its so destroyed in 30 seconds, but you cant have a chance to go deep on either side of the aisle. Right now, the main Adult Learning happens on the 24hour news, and its in the 30second sound bites. No one understands the issues so its emotionally chargedded. This form phak or, this way is a chance for obama to really explain why he makes the decisions he does, and maybe the opposition to really explain why and get to diagram it out, have a quiz after so people retain it. That fills in the gap in learning that, frng lay some of the most Popular Videos are credit default swaps, the health care plan, the electoral college, gaps in peoples learning and adults of any age want to learn it. Host a pleasure reading the book and nice meeting you, and thanks for joining us. Guest oh, no, a pleasure. That was after wordsbook booktvs Signature Program where authors are interviewed by others familiar with their material. It airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p. M. On saturday, 12 and 9 p. M. On summed, and 12 a. M. On monday. You can also watch online. Go to booktv. Org and click on after words in the book tv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. Lets start with green jobs. The bureau of labor has five definitions of the 3. 1 million green jobs that its counted. Energy, energy first efficiency, Energy Pollution reduction and removal, Natural Resource conservation, and environmental compliance, education, and training, and public awareness. When i was testifying on capital hill before the house energy and commerce committee, they had a paper cup in front of me. Often, its a bottle of water, but this time it was a bottle of water and paper cup. The cup said architect of the capital on one side and power to save energy on the other side. Since this cup fit the definition of education, training, and public awareness, the workers who made it had green jobs. If the cup had just said architect of the capital or just been a plain white cup, then the people who made it would not have had green jobs. When i wrote this book regulating to disaster about environmental issues, while i was doing it, i had a green job, and, perhaps, i still do right now because im talking about it, but if i had been writing about Social Security and actually at the same time, i was writing by book, if i had just been working on that, i would not have had a green job. Plumbers, if they install regular toilets, they dont have green jobs. If they install low flow jobs, they have green jobs. Farmers, if they grow corn for ethanol, they have a green job. If they grow corn for ethanol and corn for people to eat, they have a green job. If they just grow corn for people to eat, even though they are farmers, they dont have green jobs. Salvation army workers, if they recycle used clothing, then they have green jobs too. Well, there are 4665 people who produce Renewable Energy in Utility Companies according to the bureau of labor statistics. Latest report coming out in april. They are clearly green, but you have to ask are they making energy more speansive or less expensive . Its clear its more expensive. The average levellized cost for power plants entering service in 2017 according to the department of energy, if they are fueled by natural gas, this costs 66 per megawatt hour. For winds, 96 per megawatt hour. For solar power, 153 per megawatt hour. Well, five years ago in 2007 when the Energy Loan Guarantee Program was put in place and many subsidies for solar and wind, we didnt know that we were sitting on 200 years of independencive natural gas. Maybe it was logical for people then to think we need to be independent or as independent as we can be of the middle east. In fact, the first president who coined the phrase Energy Independence was richard nixon, a republican. Maybe it was logical to think, well, if we make our own energy, then we will be more independent and selfsufficient, but this was before we found that we had all of this inexpensive natural gas so now we are in the middle of the new American Energy revolution. We found that we have all of this, and as john once said, when the facts change, i change my mind. What do you do