As a student at UCLA I can say that I have learned more from a handful of Khan's Calculus and Linear Algebra video tutorials than I have from several quarters worth of math courses at school.
Clearly there is controversy in this statement. Conservatives insist that receiving a "quality education" at the university level should cost $40k+ a hear. A man that shatters this notion by providing free videos superior to many university courses cannot do so without creating an uproar from the old-fashioned.
In any case, Khan has done a great service to this world. I hope this publicity will help his videos reach the corners of the world.
I am a conservative/libertarian and dont think university level education should cost 40K per year. I have no idea where you got that from or why you injected politics into this. If anything the university establishment is overwhelmingly liberal and would be the one taking issue with this.
Let's not forget the fact that "conservative" is an actual word in the language and that it means "opposed to change". The change here would be not paying 40k for a university education, and arguing for preserving the status quo would by definition be a conservative position to adopt. I did not read anything political in your parent post, though I could be wrong, but in any case, why the knee-jerk reaction?
*I am not from the US and the word "conservative" does not carry political connotations for me.
He said he went to UCLA (so I knew he was from the states or at least accustomed to the culture/lingo), he also used the word 'Conservatives' as a label for a group of people which given normal conversational English here in the states means he is referring to people who adopt a certain political position.
For the record, conservative is actually a pretty poor adjective for the US political movement that bears the name. While some old fuddy-duddy white dudes may hanker for the days of old and wish we could go back - most people my age are 'conservatives' because we are against the growth of government and its encroachment into our affairs. We dont want to conserve anything, we want to change it and make it better.
I think political labelling, especially in the US, is fundamentally broken. "Conservatism" isn't really about not changing things, while "Liberalism" in the US sense has only a little in common with its historical meaning (sometimes called "classical liberalism").
Meanwhile, "progressives" have somehow managed to capture a label which is pretty much an unalloyed good, even though many folks would think that the kind of "progress" which "progressives" want is not progress in the right direction.
It ought to be possible to reframe the debate, but unfortunately that would require people to fully and honestly comprehend the differences between various political ideologies, and very few people seem interested in understanding what their political opponents actually believe.
Ah, that's enlightening. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps due to the cultural gap, I've always had the impression that conservatives (the political movement) in the US were actually conservative.
Clearly there is controversy in this statement. Conservatives insist that receiving a "quality education" at the university level should cost $40k+ a hear. A man that shatters this notion by providing free videos superior to many university courses cannot do so without creating an uproar from the old-fashioned.
In any case, Khan has done a great service to this world. I hope this publicity will help his videos reach the corners of the world.