Let's teach for mastery, not test scores – Sal Khan

I had a chat with Khan of Khan Academy, only that I wished we had that discussion in my SS2 when I dropped further maths. I was just lucky to have met him at a TED event, on the TED website (😅😅😅) where he talked about teaching for mastery and not test scores.

Many of us are conversant with the Khan academy brand, but not with Sal Khan, who is the founder of the academy, so let us start by sharing his story as found on his TED Speaker profile

Khan’s profile

Khan Academy started as a passion project in 2004. Khan's cousin was struggling with math, so he tutored her remotely and posted educational videos on YouTube. So many people watched the videos that eventually Khan quit his job at a hedge fund and pursued Khan Academy full time.

Today Khan Academy has more than 100 employees in Mountain View, California.

Khan Academy believes learners of all ages should have unlimited access to free educational content they can master at their own pace. Its resources cover preschool through early college education, including math, grammar, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, finance and history.

More than 42 million registered users access Khan Academy in dozens of languages across 190 countries.

I felt his talk particularly because he addressed a long-due issue in our present-day educational system, where a fish is being judged by its inability to climb a tree.

One size does not fit it all, and this has led many youths to come out of school confused, and not knowing what they truly want for themselves, or even when they know what they want, knowing the next step towards that becomes a problem.

I experienced that after my graduation, but I came across LinkedIn, a digital tool that we all have access to. LinkedIn introduced me to my newfound lover – writing. Why did I say, lover? Because I fell deeply in love with writing.

It helped me gain clarity as I kept sharing my stories on LinkedIn.

I’m not a jealous lover, and for this reason, I have committed to sharing this love with as many persons who need it, particularly the students.

This is part of the reasons I have taken it up as a task to write my first book, LinkedIn Triad. But better still, as an activist for the Speak Up Stand Out program, I and my team have gone ahead to build LearnInStud, a platform that is out to assist students in that journey of transiting from the student phase to the professional stage.

Permit me to daydream a bit…

My future profile

LearnInStud started as a passion project in 2022 and was founded by Anthony Chinweuba. Anthony was stuck at home during the pandemic period, as a fresh graduate, waiting and thinking of the big question, what next? He discovered LinkedIn, a professional social media platform, where he started writing, and before long the quest to learn more, helped him find a pathway for his future career.

Today LearnInStud has more than 50 employees in Nigeria.

Khan Academy believes that undergraduates ought to be employable before graduation. Its resources cover self-discovery, professional profiling, and opportunity hunting guides for Nigerian students.

More than 500,000 graduates have been able to find their pathways to their professional lives on time through the guide from the platform.

What’s the unique message?

There is a need for us all to be able to take charge of our narrative, knowing what we want to be, and learning at our own pace, not to only pass some set standards, but to also attain mastery of what it is we’re working on.

In the journey of self discovery and mastery, there can be moments of failure, but that is not supposed to draw us back. In the words of Sal,

“When you get something wrong, embrace it”

We need to understand that mastery is not attained in one stance, but rather is attained after a dedicated commitment to a goal, and as such, failure is a way to know better ways of attaining mastery.

Good luck in your journey of mastery, and I am inviting you to be a part of our journey at LearnInStud by following our page. Our activities will kick off in Enugu state, Nigeria and all the progress will be shared on our page.

Please be our guest now