The Khan Academy Changes Mindsets

I read a blog post a few days ago (which unfortunately I now can’t find) about how the Khan Academy doesn’t change anything. The author said that the real problem with education is in what’s taught, not how it’s taught. He said that everyone is getting worked up over the Khan Academy when it doesn’t solve a thing.

Now I’m very willing to hear people’s views on the effect new products are having on society. But to me, the viewpoint that the author of that blog showed was outrageously simple.

I completely believe that the Khan Academy is the start of a fundamental improvement in education around the world. The Khan Academy, besides letting people take lessons online, is changing many people’s mindset in regard to education. And it’s that change in mindset which is needed the most.

Previously, students have known that if they miss a lesson in class, or don’t understand a teacher, they’ll have to try and learn something just from a textbook, or take extra tutoring. A teacher was the primary gateway to being able to understand concepts. But all too often, students would get discouraged if they didn’t understand a teacher explaining a concept, and then the whole class moved onto a different topic before they could understand something. There’s nothing more frustrating as a student.

But now, students are starting to learn that they have a great teacher available to teach them anything that they want, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and every single day of the year. No matter what concept you’re stuck on in school, Salman Khan is there to explain it again, and again, and again, until you understand it. And it’s not just Salman Khan – you can find hundreds of other teachers on YouTube to teach you anything that you can possibly want.

That’s mindset shift number one that the Khan Academy is bringing about. It makes students realize that they can learn something as many times as they need to until they understand it.

But perhaps more importantly, the Khan Academy is showing people that the role of a school has entirely changed over the past few years. Schools are no longer the sources of knowledge. They are simply places where you can get help from a teacher on your homework – personalized help that Salman Khan can’t give you – as well as the place you go to do tests. (Along with sports, friends, cultural activities). That’s a huge shift. People are starting to question the value that they get out of going to school, and whether they could learn more by going to physical school less often.

The Khan Academy has got people questioning the role that schools play. And that’s been needed for a while. When students all around the world start thinking that something isn’t right, that they can learn more on the Internet than when they’re actually at school, that’s when things will start to change for the better as more people become frustrated.

A change in mindsets is, in my opinion, one of the prerequisites of a total revolution. This is why I think the author of that blog post totally missed the mark. He looked at the Khan Academy in isolation, rather than looking at the broader changes it’s causing.

The bigger, and more important part of the Khan Academy, is starting to come. That’s the ability to test yourself through Khan’s website. When people can not only learn concepts through a website, but be tested on their understanding of them through the website too, that’s when education is really going to start going through massive change.

The Cost of Information and Education

I gave a talk today at the Ministry of Education leadership conference. It was an event for the Ministry’s leaders to work out a strategy going forward, and how to go about changing things. I talked about the future of education. Given the chance to talk with the people who call the shots in regard to education in New Zealand, I didn’t want to waste it talking about the way things are, but rather how things could be in the future.

However, I did have to give some context. Specifically, I felt as though in order to talk about the future of education, I needed to establish why things need to be improved from where they are now.

There are a multitude of reasons for why change is necessary in education, but one sticks out because it encompasses the majority of the others.

For decades (even centuries) schools succeeded because they were places where you could gain access to information that you could not find elsewhere. You had a virtually endless source of knowledge in the form of textbooks and teachers.

But now, I can access more information on my phone on the school bus than I can once I actually get to school.

That changes everything.

The cost of information has continued to decrease ever since the birth of the Internet, and will only continue to decrease as processing power of computers increases. At the same time, however, the cost of education, in a formal environment, has continued to increase, and will continue to do so.

And there’s our problem, in fundamental terms. Schools no longer offer as much to students. They can’t even offer a better way of learning, because some of the best teachers in the world teach online through YouTube for free.

The rest of my talk was around the importance of harnessing people’s creativity, and the use of different technologies going forward. I’ll write about them here in future, but wanted to set up those posts with why education needs to be improved.

Lessons From Singapore

From the time I first visited Singapore a few years ago, I’ve been in love with the place. Everything about it has seemed so perfect to me, from the buildings and infrastructure to government policies and education. It’s a city that just works, and you’ll never run out of things to do there. Its citizens are hugely patriotic, and it continues to attract top talent from around the world.

I’ve also been astounded by Singapore’s growth. Less than thirty years ago, New Zealand provided aid to Singapore. Now, its GDP is over two and a half times that of New Zealand, and is growing at a much faster rate.

Recently, I’ve been trying to find out how Singapore achieved this growth and turned itself around, in the words of Lee Kuan Yew, “from third world to first”. It went from a nothing-country, with no natural resources and screwed-up politics, to an international powerhouse in a few decades. How many other countries can claim the same feat? And what aspects of Singapore’s growth could be replicated by other countries, like New Zealand?

There are huge numbers of factors that contributed to Singapore’s growth. But through reading Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs (the leader of the PAP, the leading political party that turned Singapore around) I’ve found a few key things that the growth can be attributed to. Indeed, Lee Kuan Yew himself gives them huge importance, and says that they helped to turn Singapore around.

Read these points, and consider them on their own, regardless of your pre-held views about Singapore. Whatever you think of Singaporean politics, we can all learn from and discuss these policies.

Here in New Zealand, and in most western countries, it is largely looked down upon to live in government housing. Government flats (“council houses”) are rented to people who need them, and are in most cases very run down and not in pleasant areas of cities. But it’s precisely because they are rented that they end up being run down.

In Singapore, the government builds and sells most of the apartments. It doesn’t rent them. People are allowed to purchase the apartments under certain conditions, for example by being a recently married working couple. They purchase the apartments at low cost from the government and are entitled to the capital gains from the property.

Lee Kuan Yew says that because they let people own their property, people have a vested interest in making Singapore a better place. The value of their property is tied to Singapore’s success, and therefore they want to improve Singapore. Also, they take pride in their house and wouldn’t dream of damaging it. It is because people own their houses that people care so much about Singapore, and work harder than they would otherwise.

Why don’t we pursue similar policies on a large scale?

In Singapore, politicians are regularly paid over SG$1million per year (the Singapore and NZ dollar are about 1=1). In New Zealand, and most countries around the world, we’ll scoff at this and call it ludicrous. “There are people working for $12.50 an hour and they’re earning over a million!?”. But in New Zealand, we will never have as many talented people willing to run our country with what we pay them. Many people are not altruistic, and are not willing to take huge pay cuts to work for the government.

Singapore takes the view that to get the best people leading the country, you need to pay them what they’re worth in the private sector. As a result, they’ve had incredibly competent leadership, and have seen huge success.

Think about it. Before you go up-in-arms against high pay, think about whether having the best leaders available to us is something that you want.

Singapore’s healthcare system is among best in the world. Unlike New Zealand, they don’t call it “free healthcare”. But let’s face it – healthcare isn’t free in New Zealand. You pay for it every day of your life, in higher taxes.

Instead, every worker has a compulsory health savings account that they contribute to each day they work. If they fall ill, they pay their medical bill out of this savings account, which adds up over the years. The savings account is transferable amongst family, so you can use money from the account to pay for anyone in your family’s health bills.

“But what if you run out of money in the account!?”. Then the government steps in and pays the rest for what you need. You’re not left without help when you need it, but the government doesn’t pretend that you’re getting something for free.

Because the health system runs privately, it has healthy competition, and they are forced to continue to keep the highest standards in the world and use the newest medical equipment. In this way, you could say it’s a better health system and cheaper than in New Zealand. Because it’s more efficient, people get access to it at a lower cost.

Lee Kuan Yew made it one of his first priorities in office to reduce the power of the labour unions in Singapore so that Singapore could become a true meritocracy. He found that people couldn’t hire and fire at will in too many industries, so there was mass complacency and people were very inefficient at their jobs. By reducing the power of the unions, Singapore became based on merit – and this has allowed the competitive, high-achieving, productive society that Singapore is today.

It also allowed Singaporeans to travel to top companies and universities around the world, and allowed foreigners to work and study in Singapore. No one expected anything, but knew they had to work for it – and therefore everyone worked to their full potential.

This also helped to create a strong financial centre, which is the core of Singapore’s growth (although a reduction in taxes, especially capital gains, also helped to achieve this).

Ignore your prejudices for a moment and just think about if any of this could be applied to New Zealand, or whatever country you’re from. My aim is to get a debate going. If the consensus comes out as a “no”, that none of this could realistically work in New Zealand to create growth and prosperity, then so be it. But if some of these could help to improve New Zealand, then let’s get thinking about it and doing something.

These points have come from Lee Yuan Kew’s book From Third World To First. He’s also written other memoirs, titled The Singapore Story. He is someone whom I admire hugely. It is not often that someone can say that they led a modern powerhouse from nowhere to a position of such power and wealth in a matter of decades.

Education, Entrepreneurship, and Creativity

An article was published in the New Zealand “Sunday Star Times” paper today with my thoughts on the future of education and New Zealand. I was happy with how I was quoted in regard to where I think New Zealand is heading, and what it should be doing differently – they quoted me word for word and didn’t add in any of their own views. But in regard to what I said about education, I was taken out of context. I thought I’d write here about where I really think education should be going.

After introducing me, the article quickly jumps to lengthy thoughts from Dr. Andrew Cardow, a “creativity expert” (what on earth is that?) from Massey University. He begins talking about how entrepreneurship and creativity should be “integrated into the school system”, and how he “wasn’t surprised” that I am bored with school.

This is where I need to clarify my thoughts, as I hold hardly a single similar thought to Dr. Cardow.

I do not think entrepreneurship should be taught in schools. Entrepreneurship is a process that can be encouraged, but not taught. I actually think that the more ignorant people are as they enter the business world, the better they can perform in some aspects, as they can “think outside the box”. Entrepreneurship also needs to be discovered naturally, not shoved into people’s faces in a classroom.

Schools should not try to teach entrepreneurship. What they can do, however, is simply introduce the concept to students. They can show people that there is an alternative route to being an employee for your entire life. This is a lot easier for schools to do. They do not need to take an active role in “teaching” anything, and they have no formal “outcomes” that they need to meet. They can help just by pointing people to information about entrepreneurship on the Internet, or by inviting successful entrepreneurs to speak to students once in a while.

I was also quoted saying “I see value in the education system getting people up to a certain point but we have to recognise that is not good for everyone.” This is one of the things that I strongly believe, but because of the context of this quote, what I meant was not made clear.

Everyone is most creative at a different point in their life. Some people are most creative at age 12 or 13, others past 30. But our education system says “it doesn’t matter when people are creative, because they all need education first and foremost”. I think it does matter when people are most creative. When people are bubbling with ideas and just want to focus on getting the ideas into the world, that’s a time when education will probably do more harm than good. The world needs that creativity to launch great products and ideas that improve the world, and give people joy. The world does not need another worker thinking the same as everyone else.

So education is necessary up to a point. For some people, that point will be an advanced university degree. For others, it will be after primary school. Our current education system punishes anyone who is most creative at an early point in life, by greatly increasing the risks they have to take in life in order to act on their creativity.

What we need instead is an education system that allows people to come and go at different points depending on how they want to be using their creativity or learning, and not punish them for leaving at an earlier point than others. In other words, education is important and should always be available to everyone – but it should not be tied to someone’s age or test scores. This is what I talk about in the article when I mention “individual education systems”. And creating a system like this is something I strongly believe in.

I hope that clarifies what I meant and where I’m coming from.

PS: A condition of any interview I do in future will be that I am not referred to as “whiz-kid”. That term makes me physically cringe.

Don’t just change the world. Improve it as much as you possibly can.

A month ago I wrote a post titled “Don’t change the world. Improve it.” I talked about my frustration with the huge amount of talk about “changing the world”, and how I believe this focus on change rather than “improving the world” leads many people to feel satisfied and successful with mere change, rather than large improvement.

I now realize that what annoys me even more are the people who try to improve the world, but don’t improve it as much as they could have.

There are a huge amount of smart people on this planet. From engineers at Facebook to biologists discovering new forms of life, there are people who have the knowledge and skills to improve the world. Indeed, many of them do improve the world. They don’t just change it, they fundamentally improve it. This is good.

But too many people don’t improve the world as much as they could.

They’re satisfied once they have improved the world and have earned respect from other people for this improvement. And they stop right there.

Yes, Facebook improves the world. It enabled the Arab Spring, which is something that could not have occurred six years ago. Facebook also has many of the top engineers in the world. Can every single one of those engineers say that their skills are being used to their utmost potential to improve the world? I highly doubt that.

To entrepreneurs creating the huge numbers of mobile and web applications: Yes, many of these apps do improve the world. Yes, many of them make you a fortune. But are you spending your time creating the thing that would allow the biggest improvement in the world?

Math geniuses working at large Wall St. banks making fortunes, biologists, physicists, doctors: ask yourselves. Are you really improving the world as much as you possibly can with your skills?

In some cases, people will underutilize their skills but make a bigger impact. Salman Khan, the creator of the Khan Academy and someone who I admire hugely, for example. He is an incredible mathematician, and was working at a hedge fund before he left to start the Khan Academy full-time. The extent that he uses his skills now (at least publicly) is teaching advanced calculus to high school students. He isn’t fully utilizing his skills, no, but he is having an immense impact on the world of education, and I am sure he can feel satisfied knowing he is improving the world. Even still, perhaps he isn’t improving it as much as he possibly can – that I cannot answer.

If you’re a teenager starting a company, or in your forties and want to quit your job and start one, don’t just go and create a new mobile app. Think to yourself first whether you’ll have the biggest impact you can with your current circumstances.

It seems as though all the brains in the world these days are rushing off to Silicon Valley and starting mobile apps that “help you share your photos more easily with your friends”, and “make your nightlife better”. They may improve the world. But I beg the founders to think about whether they could be having a bigger impact.

When I wrote my last post, I had a few people commenting and asking how I’m improving the world. I gave this answer:

“I’m creating a library of experiences and advice through They Don’t Teach You This In School (http://tdtytis.com).

It’s helping people in over 120 countries [now 150] gain an emotional and social education that they otherwise couldn’t gain. Where Khan Academy provides an intellectual education, TDTYTIS is providing the other side to education – social intelligence.

I’m also helping people to remember their personal history and communication through Duo (http://duoboard.com). People are by nature nostalgic, but the Internet does not allow them to be because we lose the vast majority of our communication. Duo changes that.

These are not just changes – I’m not just creating a product because it’s cool to. They both fundamentally improve the world, because they solve clear problems.

This is just the start for me, but it’s a start that I believe in and will set me up to solve the huge problems that I see with the world.”

Before you ask, I can tell you that I am improving the world as much as I possibly can right now.

I started TDTYTIS and Duo without a minute of real-world business experience. I started them with hardly any money. I started them with my time very limited as I complete high school this year.

I feel proud knowing that TDTYTIS is helping thousands of people in over 150 countries learn life lessons that they couldn’t otherwise, and knowing that Duo is helping people be nostalgic – something which I believe the vast majority of humans fundamentally are. In thinking back, of course there are things I’d do differently, but I feel good knowing that at each step of the way I wouldn’t have done something entirely different.

In the process, I’m gaining experience and learning huge amounts. I’ll also have a lot more time later this year when I’m done with school. This means the amount that I’m able to improve the world will continually increase, and I will increase the amount that I’m improving the world along with that. Like I said in that quote, this is just the start for me – and I’ll be solving the biggest problems I can find going forward.

Think about it. Ask yourself whether you could be doing more to improve the world. And ask others the same thing. If more of us can gradually answer that question with a “no”, the world will be making leaps and bounds.

Encountering Ways of Life

There’s almost nothing in the world that excites me as much as visiting a new country or city for the first time. I wanted to write here about why I so love discovering new places, and how we can all gain empathy for different ways of life.

When you go to a different town or city within a single country, you’ll begin to see differences in lifestyles. You’ll see people of different demographics doing different things each day. They might be eating local delicacies or speaking local dialects. Children will be wearing different school uniforms. Adults will have different priorities with how they look. You can always see differences between different cities.

When you travel to a different country entirely, the differences in ways of life are amplified. You might have more trouble finding similarities between your home country and a new country than finding differences. People act in entirely different ways, and different countries have different vibes to them.

Here in New Zealand, we’re unlucky in that we can only easily see the first types of differences through traveling to different towns and cities. We can drive for a few hours and start to see differences. Some towns have older populations. Some have different ethnic majorities. Some are focussed on work. Some are focussed on lifestyle. But wherever you go, people will by and large be speaking the same language and acting in similar ways.

If you’re in Europe, or Asia, you drive for a few hours and you can be in an entirely different world. A good example is driving for thirty minutes from Singapore to Malaysia. First you’re in a booming, wealthy modern city with a strict law and where everyone speaks relatively good English. Next you’re in an entirely different world, where different languages are spoken, people look different, a different currency is used. First you have a proper toilet to use, next you’ll be getting long-drops until you get to another huge city.

That’s a thirty minute drive that can get you that contrast. The same happens in Europe. From wherever in Europe you are, you can see an entirely different way of life just a short flight away.

For decades this has been a disadvantage to New Zealand. It’s been too far to travel to see different cultures and ways of life. Let’s face it, even Australia isn’t hugely different to NZ.

But now, through the Internet, we can learn a huge amount about different cultures and ways of life from wherever we are. Start by reading other countries’ local newspapers online. Walk along streets in different countries on Google Street View. Watch some YouTube videos of events in other cities around the world. Look at street photography from different cities.

All of these things are so easy for anyone to do, and they’ll teach you a huge amount about what it’s like being in a different city. I especially recommend looking at street photography from different cities. Street photography is an art – people walk up to strangers on the street and take their photos in their natural setting, without giving them warning. The photos as a result show you precisely the things you’ll see when you walk down a street in another city. People are depicted in their everyday contexts, and you’ll gain a huge amount of empathy for the people you see in the photos, and understand what their lives are like. Check out street photographers like this for a great example.

Whenever I hear about a country that I’ve never been to and have no idea about, I’ll spend a bit of time doing the things I mentioned above. In twenty minutes or so, I’ll have a much better understanding about what it’s like to be in that city or country.

Of course the Internet will never (in the near future) replicate the feelings that we have through experiencing a place first-hand. But we can gain more of an understanding than we ever have been able to before without visiting the place. I think everyone should take advantage of this ability to learn about other cultures and ways of life.

Note: I spoke on this topic at the StrategyNZ conference in Wellington last year. I only had five minutes to talk, so didn’t go as in-depth as I did here. Nonetheless, if you’re interested, here’s the link to my talk.

Why I’m In Love With PandoDaily

Most of you who know me are aware that I follow tech news avidly – if there’s a day where I haven’t heard about a new financing deal or startup launching, I’m probably either so sick I can’t lift up my phone, or on a plane. But something that probably only my closest friends know is why I read tech news so avidly, and what I do with all the news that I digest.

For a while now I’ve been keeping a notebook (started in Evernote, moved to pen & paper, now in Penzu) where I’ll write about the tech news each day. Some days I’ll only write a couple of lines (yes, slow news days), and yet other days I’ll be writing heaps (conference days, big announcements).

Individually, each note isn’t very important or interesting. But as a whole, they provide a curated, annotated record of the technology industry over the past couple of years. I think this is hugely valuable.

At the end of last year (2011) I read through the notes that I’d been taking for the year. In the space of maybe an hour, I was able to look at the broad picture of where technology has been heading and the progress that has been made in the space of a year. I avoided getting caught up in the little details of daily tech news, and instead could look at the core progress that had been made and the roles of different companies and individuals in that progress.

PandoDaily is a new tech blog that launched just a few weeks ago. It was founded by Sarah Lacy, who used to be with TechCrunch. Here’s the post she wrote introducing Pando, and explaining why she started it.

“We have one goal here at PandoDaily: To be the site-of-record for that startup root-system and everything that springs up from it, cycle-after-cycle”

The moment I read that, I knew that I’d be reading PandoDaily for the rest of my life. And I can say “for the rest of my life” with a high degree of certainty, because Sarah’s also said that she’s not building the company to sell it.

My passion for following daily tech news, and recording it, is to see the impact that technology is having on the world, and the progress it is making. Existing technology blogs provide the daily tech news, but none of them have the focus that I love, on recording tech news for permanence, in order to see the big picture. That is, none of them did until PandoDaily.

Pando’s focus, combined with Sarah’s goal of not selling the company, gives us a website we can trust to provide us with the big picture of the tech industry, year after year, for decades into the future.

I love Pando, and I’d love to be a part of it.