JOHN STOSSEL: Do your kids have a good teacher?
How do you know?
Maybe the teacher next door is better.
Maybe there's a better teacher in another state.
Maybe there's a world's best teacher, or several.
Wouldn't it be great if your kids could have that teacher?
Well today, yes you can.
SPEAKER 1: Yay, I got it.
JOHN STOSSEL: These kids are this excited about a math
website.
SPEAKER 2: It's amazing.
SPEAKER 3: Negative 4 minus 4, and we are done.
SPEAKER 1: It taught me lot of things.
JOHN STOSSEL: Five years ago, hedge fund analyst Sal Khan
created videos like these to tutor his cousin.
SALMAN KHAN: That worked out well.
So then I started tutoring her brothers and more cousins,
and all the rest.
And I had to do the same lecture over and over again.
So I had a friend who said, hey Sal,
why don't you put some of your lectures on YouTube?
I decided to give it a shot.
SPEAKER 3: Welcome to this presentation on basic addition.
JOHN STOSSEL: Soon, thousands watched his lectures.
SALMAN KHAN: I started getting letters
from people and comments on YouTube.
And they're not like, hey, I think
this kind of might have helped my math exam.
They're like, I failed calculus the first time.
I've started watching the videos,
now I'm acing the class.
JOHN STOSSEL: The YouTube numbers kept rising,
and he got letters from the Middle East, Africa.
BILL GATES: What Sal Khan has done is amazing.
JOHN STOSSEL: Now Khan is funded by Bill Gates,
and he offers web lectures on everything from history
to economics to computer science.
His videos are viewed millions of times.
SALMAN KHAN: Not only is it reaching millions of students
right now, but even if, God forbid, I got hit by a bus
when I walked outside, it'll still
be able to reach millions and maybe
eventually billions of students.
JOHN STOSSEL: You just happen to be good at teaching?
SALMAN KHAN: Well, I'll take that as a compliment.
JOHN STOSSEL: It is a compliment.
He's a great teacher.
SPEAKER 3: I hope that helps.
See you in the next video.
SPEAKER 4: It's really helping us learn a lot more.
JOHN STOSSEL: It's exciting that he
gets kids so excited about math.
In most parts of life, things have gotten much better-- cars,
computers, cell phones.
Education?
Not so much.
SALMAN KHAN: Right.
You rewind 80 or 90 or 100 years,
and you would have the local band--
if you had a party, that was the only gig in town.
JOHN STOSSEL: Each village might have a storyteller or singer.
SALMAN KHAN: Exactly.
But then once you have mass media coming out,
then people say, wait.
Why don't we take the best musician, the best actor,
the best storyteller, whatever way, and record it?
And put it out on radio, put it out on records, or whatever?
And I think, in theory, that could
have happened with education before.
JOHN STOSSEL: But it hasn't.
Even for basic math, multiplication tables,
I thought they'd be using video games.
SALMAN KHAN: Yeah.
JOHN STOSSEL: Why not?
SALMAN KHAN: There's a huge bureaucracy, most of which
wants to say no to change the system.
JOHN STOSSEL: It's the blob, people call it.
SALMAN KHAN: It's the blob.
And it is.
And I think what's fun from our point of view
is that we are able to reach students outside of the blob.
JOHN STOSSEL: This California school district
started using Khan's videos in fifth grade classrooms.
The teachers were skeptical, but now they're
impressed at what it does for the kids.
KAMI THORARDSON: They're happy to walk in the door
every morning.
They're excited about math.
It isn't, oh, we're doing math.
It's like, oh my gosh, we have math this morning.
That's great.
SALMAN KHAN: We assume that most people on their own
don't want to do, don't want to learn,
or don't want to get engaged in mathematics.
And--
JOHN STOSSEL: Yeah, they didn't.
SALMAN KHAN: I think they're just frustrated,
because most of them are in classrooms
that are not catering to them.
JOHN STOSSEL: At first, teachers worried
that the online instruction could replace them.
But--
SANDRA McGONAGLE: I think it's so wrong,
as my teachers would tell you.
They have taught more math than they've ever taught before.
JOHN STOSSEL: Now teachers can tutor kids one on one.
SPEAKER 5: Colleen, I notice you were
having some issues with fractions.
SPEAKER 6: You can go at your own pace.
JOHN STOSSEL: And because kids can go at their own pace--
KELLY RAFFERTY: I've got students
who are still working on easy multiplication.
And then I've got students who are
working in high school math.
JOHN STOSSEL: Some kids enjoy Khan's lessons so much,
they study at home.
KELLY RAFFERTY: Some of them are doing two and three
hours a night at home when I'm asking for 15 minutes.
SPEAKER 7: When I'm at home and I have some time, I just
log on, and--
SPEAKER 8: It's way more fun to do math.
JOHN STOSSEL: So finally, after all these years of kids
being bored in school and not learning math, that's over?
SALMAN KHAN: I think it might be.
JOHN STOSSEL: Hope so.
If it happens, it'll be thanks to those
of online classes, or the charter schools,
or other experiments that break out
of the union-dominated government monopoly.
Let 1,000 flowers bloom.
It's competition that's given us better medicine,
transportation, technology, everything.
Don't our kids deserve that too?
That's our show.