When it came to education, I always
believed there were two kinds of people in this world, the ones who go to their
classrooms with competitive minds full of obsession for excellence These guys are driven by achievement. They
want to be at the top of every list here is. We call these guys nerds! Or the ones
who do not go their classrooms at all, or if they do, they don’t take the
proceedings very seriously. To them, education is more about the social
experience about being cool, about making friends, about having a good time. We
call them the “cool guys or girls”.
Then, I had the fortune to come across a third
kind. A person that changed my view, a person that forced me to think, a person
that inspired me. Fellow toastmasters and dear guests, this speech is dedicated
to that third kind of person, his name is Salman Khan and I shall introduce you
to him in a minute.
For now, I am sure
all of you are aware that this quote is taken from the famous movie “Rang De
Basanti”. Dear grammarian that translates into “Color me Saffron”. Saffron
being the color of sacrifice, this is a story of a cool sacrifice, made by a
nerd.
This nerd started his life in a public
school in New Orleans. He recalls his classmates as anyone would, the typical
two kinds. “Some of them were fresh out of jail”, he says, “while others were
destined for top universities”. He completed his school and then took further
giant leaps in his personal education. His credentials include MS in Computer
Science from the prestigious MIT and then an MBA from Harvard. What would any
of us do after working that hard for all those years to earn those credentials?
Look out for our plush corner office, hope to sit there day and night, making loads
of money, right! Guess what he did? Well he did the same thing in the
beginning. He started work as an analyst at a hedge fund, making tons of money
in the process.
But then in 2006, things changed, Salman
Khan opened up a YouTube account.Not a big deal, isn’t it? Many of us have a
YouTube account, and all of us can have one for free! But this was no ordinary
account. This was the beginning of a revolution. Salman Khan started tutoring
his cousins remotely. He would upload video lessons on YouTube to tutor them.
Since he had no reason to make his videos private, he kept it public, just by
accident. Then something strange started happening. Students from all over the
world started stumbling on his video lessons on YouTube. These lessons became
more popular than Khan would have imagined in his wildest dreams and he
received moving testimonials from his students and their parents. Now, Salman
Khan was no longer tutoring his cousins only. He was tutoring the world. The
channel was named “Khan Academy” and Khan continued making videos after videos
literally out of his garage, while the number of hits on his YouTube channel
was exploding.
In 2009, Salman Khan quit his job and Khan
Academy was now not only a YouTube channel, it is now a non-profit education
company that delivers lessons to people across the globe. Khan Academy not only
delivers world class video lessons to anyone on the face of this planet for
free, they have changed the face of classroom education too. They have done
this by what Khan describes as “flipping the classroom”. He believed that the
classroom was basically a dehumanizing experience. Students were supposed to
assemble in one place and not interact with each other for hours together. They
would all listen to a lecture instead of learn by doing. Now with Khan academy,
what was earlier classwork is now homework.
Students can listen to video lectures at
home, they then need to solve a few questions to go forward. The teacher gets a
report of these results. So before beginning the class, they now know exactly
which students are lagging behind in which concepts. They can then use the
class time to create a socially enriching learning experience where people
learn by doing things together. Projects are now done inside class under expert
supervision, making the teacher’s job even more meaningful.
Khan Academy, as an organization has raced
forward never to look back. The website has over 2.5 lakh video views daily and
teaches over 6 million unique users every month. Khan Academy’s efforts found
appreciation from the richest man in the world. After he gave his speech in the
TED conference California, Salman Khan got a standing ovation from Bill Gates
himself, He has also secured massive funding commitments from Google and Bill
and Melinda Gates foundation. He is currently ranked at #34 in Forbes list of
“40 most influential people under 40”.
The story of Salman Khan and his
brainchild, the Khan academy is awe-inspiring to say the least. This nerdy guy
has accomplished with one computer what an annual funding of $1.3 trillion
dollars from the US government could not. He has revolutionized education while
munching on Frito Lays and sipping coke in his backyard. In the process he has
propelled the profession of teaching to celebrity-dom and inspired many like me
who want to follow in his footsteps.
The point I am trying to make here, is once
again taken from “Rang De Basanti”. No country or system is perfect. We, the
people, have to strive to make it perfect. Most of us blame the lack of
resources and power to bring about a change. But the reality is that true power
lies in the will to make a difference, in the love of the work we do and in the
undying unwavering unstoppable resolve to leave the world a better place than
we found it. Every now and then, a Salman Khan comes forward to remind us that
true power lies within.
That is why I say, I always thought there
were 2 kinds of people, the nerds and the cool guys, until I came across the
coolest nerd. The couch potato that has created a global revolution!
