In August 2004, Sal Khan began remotely tutoring his cousin, Nadia, who was struggling with math. As she gradually improved, word got around and Sal started tutoring a handful of his cousins and family members. In 2006 he started recording videos and posting them on YouTube, so people could watch at any time. In 2008 Khan Academy was officially launched as a non-profit organization, offering millions of students a free and personalized learning experience, designed to supplement their formal in-class education.
The big insight behind Khan Academy is that the commonly accepted fixed-timeframe / variable-outcome educational model tends to produce gaps in knowledge, which in turn can have negative repercussions down the road. A better alternative, according to Sal, is to allow students to take agency over - and optimize - learning outcomes, and do so at their own pace. Rather than grouping people by age and perceived ability (“shepherding them all together”, as he likes to say), Kahn Academy focuses on proficiency building, by giving everyone a chance to fully assimilate what is being taught before advancing to the next level on any particular topic, whether it’s math, computing, economics, or arts and humanities.
Sal’s approach might still be considered the outlier in the world of education, and it may very well have its challenges, as some critics have suggested - scalability being one of them. However, it may also herald the dawn of a new era when it comes to not just personalized learning but also personalized medicine, personalized nutrition, and personalized almost everything, really.
A decade or so from now we will probably be looking back at 2021 and find the idea of administering a teenage boy exactly the same medicine or vaccine as his grandmother laughable, if not downright absurd and irresponsible. We will probably remember the government’s dietary guidelines and recommended caloric intake with a sort of nostalgic embarrassment. And we will hopefully realize that temperaments, interests, abilities and needs vary greatly by individual.
Will this bring an end to ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches based on broad population averages? That’s a difficult question, namely because it is in our nature to also want uniformity, efficiency and convenience. On the one hand, we crave a customized selection of Netflix shows, a hand-picked Spotify playlist, an ideal Twitter feed, and a unique pair of sneakers that no one else has; yet on the other hand, we don’t want to deviate too much from what others are doing. If you were the only fan of Game of Thrones, you wouldn’t be able to discuss it with your friends or colleagues, would you? If every parent ended up home-schooling their children, what would happen to our common understanding of the world around us?
When I first switched to a vegetarian diet a few years ago, I immediately saw a spike in my cholesterol levels. Never in my life had I experienced this problem, and, to my absolute horror, my doctor handed me a prescription for statins. I knew intuitively that I wasn’t meant to go down that path, so I tossed the tablets and went to visit a nutritionist instead. She helped me tweak a few things in my food intake and the problem went away in a matter of weeks. Eventually she persuaded me to reincorporate moderate amounts of animal protein into my diet, because my bloodwork kept showing I was missing essential nutrients. What I learned from that experience is that we are not just unique individuals with particular requirements, but we also change over time, so our needs evolve accordingly.
Our world is going through very interesting times, no doubt. The huge push for automation and data aggregation is somewhat at odds with the advances in artificial intelligence and genetic research. Reconciling them will bring us some inevitable growing pains. But in the end, effective decision-making will likely continue to rest on our ability to exercise good judgement and be in sync with what our heart desires. Arguably, one of the biggest decisions will be to figure out the degree to which we allow our lives to run on auto-pilot.
In one of the great classics of science fiction, Gattaca, the main character, Vincent, defies a world that discriminates against individuals who have not been genetically engineered in pursuit of his life’s dream.