I want to love electric cars, but I see two big issues: (1) if they go mass market, all that electricity will still have to be generated somewhere. Coal? Nuclear? (2) The batteries need rare-earth minerals, which are brought to market through environmentally-degrading open pit mining. Furthermore, at this point, most rare-earths are available almost exclusively from China.
Interesting. Do you now see yourself as deeply engrossed in history and doing the real work necessary to become a competent historian? If so, then your example is a counterpoint to my argument. If not, then we're talking about two different things :)
Yes, good point. Now that I look over the comments, everyone seems to say the same thing. That's enough to lead me to believe it should be re-examined. Truth is, I once watched half a video but got bored.
+1 for the idea that history is more than an "incoherent torrent of factoids"
I heard Khan say recently on the Colbert Report that he read the Wikipedia article on the French Revolution as his source before making his video on the subject.
That's fine for his purposes, but somewhere up the information food chain someone must actually read the sources, weigh them, interpret, compare, and do all the other work of understanding and transmitting history. It's hard to imagine that those 'educated' by Khan can take up this work, or if they do, that by the time they become competent, they will regard his videos as anything other than inconsequential in their effort.
However, I do think it's overblown to say that Khan is any more dangerous than Cliff's notes or similar supposed shortcut to education. And I suspect his math and finance videos might be quite good, based on the response, and on the fact that he actually spent time in school learning math and finance. (But I haven't watched them.)
This reminds me of part of Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man, which talks about "trained" employees at Staten Island (or other points of entry for immigrants) in the nineteenth century, who could spot mental deficiency by looking at the shape of the head (craniometry, but without measurement, just eyeballing). I'm writing this from memory, so I can't go into detail, and I don't have a link to this particular passage. But a significant number of immigrants were put on boats back to Europe just because of the snap judgment of these spotters.