“MASTERY BASED LEARNING…” “TAKE AGENCY OVER YOUR LEARNING…”

...These are the words I kept hearing (and I’m sure you too will hear) when I watched this video by Sal Khan, Founder and CEO Khan Academy; and, as an enthusiast of children education who have worked with children of different ages for, some, over five years now,  I can't agree less with him. 

I believe this is one of the missing ingredient in our education system – the education that is grade-based and not ‘whole-concept-mastery-based’, one where learners have to learn to take exams to come tops in class (with the pass grades of A, B, or C as the case may be) only for the purpose of promotion to a higher class (where previously learnt or missed concepts are built upon) leaving unattended to those knowledge gaps created by those 40%, 15% or even 5% failures. So, really, is 75% or even 95% pass mark which equates to an A (and an excellent grade by the current education system) really a measure of a child’s knowledge of a particular subject? Is that the best a child can do on a particular subject? What stands in the way of learners gaining mastery of subject taught in school (let’s not begin to talk about the kinds of subjects we subject our children to learn in schools (nursery, primary, secondary, tertiary and the rest) at the expense of those that will enhance their natural abilities and get them to become self-reliant, articulately expressive and think logically to be able to solve real life problems – maybe I will do a post on that one some other time). How come most students who finish school genuinely with excellent grades are really not productive in practical terms? Well, the analogy used by Sal in this video will give you an idea of the graveness of the situation we find ourselves today, let me hold my breath. Happy viewing.

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Would you choose to build a house on top of an unfinished foundation? Of course not. Why, then, do we rush students through education when they haven't always grasped the basics? Yes, it's complicated, but Sal shares his plan to turn struggling students into scholars by helping them master concepts at their own pace.  –Sal Khan.