Ask Sal Anything! Homeroom Thursday, October 29

Hi everyone, Sal Khan here. Welcome to our homeroom live stream! Today, we have a disappointing guest—it is me. We'll be doing an "Ask Me Anything," so feel free to start putting your questions in the message boards down below or wherever they are on the side on Facebook or on YouTube, and we'll try to get to as many of those questions as possible.

But before I begin, I'll give my standard announcements. First of all, a reminder that Khan Academy is a not-for-profit organization. We can only exist through philanthropic donations from folks like yourself, so if you're in a position to do so, please think about making a donation at khanacademy.org/donate. I also give a special shoutout to several organizations that have stepped up when they found out that we were having a deficit even before COVID; and then with COVID, you could imagine traffic on Khan Academy has grown dramatically.

So special thanks to Bank of America, Google.org, AT&T, Fastly, Novartis, and the many other folks who have helped fund Khan Academy. You know, I had given—we had a guest several weeks ago talking about how to be a happier person. One of the best ways to be a happy person is to give to others or to give to missions that might help others. So I believe all of these organizations are now going to be happier organizations because of the work that they know they're doing for others, and all of you all who are donating hopefully feel the same.

Extra announcement: Reminder about "Homeroom with Sal," the podcast. It's essentially what you're getting right now but in podcast version—safe to drive while you are consuming it. So with that, I'm eager to answer any questions that you have about anything.

Let's see, it looks like we already have a few from last time, and we're going to add more. Let's see, Aaron Brandt says, "How do your kids feel about math?" So, I have an 11-year-old, a 9-year-old, and a 6-year-old. My 11-year-old is really into math—very much into math. So, you know, if you give them an interesting math problem, et cetera, et cetera, they want to tackle it—they're really curious about it. My nine- and six-year-olds, I think they are well on their way, but they are still in the kind of early phases of their math progression.

But you could imagine this is one area where it would be—I feel it would be a shame if my children did not grow up knowing the beauty of actually all of learning, but especially math. And actually all of the learning, I want them to see wonder wherever they go in the world and realize that in all of this wonder we can start to understand it through math, through science, through the humanities. So I'm working on it.

Let's see, next question from Christopher McNaid on Facebook: Are there any specific new subjects that you want to include in Khan Academy? Sorry, I just had a keto popsicle; that's like a—anyway, that's a whole other conversation if y'all want me to talk more about that. But it's going down a little bit still. Other subjects to add on Khan Academy?

So, you know, we've talked about math, and we already have, you know, pre-K with Khan Academy Kids, K, first grade, and second grade. Now we're adding Khan Academy MA on Khan Academy Kids, and that also has reading, writing, and social-emotional learning at those same grade levels. In math, we go all the way— in fact, we've just launched multi-variable calculus. We've always had videos, but now we have exercises as well.

So I hope to keep adding and building out our math science. A lot of you all know we already have a lot of science content, but over the course of the next year, expect to see even more science content. By next back to school, I'm hoping that we have significant chunks, or if not all, of the major things you need in middle school and high school across all of the sciences.

And then over time, you know, we already have some English and language arts and history content and other humanities content. I hope that we can add a lot more over time. But, you know, it goes back to my fundraising ask at the beginning—you know, we're limited by the resources we have on not just the ability to create the content, but also to make sure that our platform, our software, the practice works really well and is really important; the teacher tools work well for the kind of content we are trying to address.

So, let's see—there's a question here about incorporating art for Khan Academy. I don't think we're going to be doing any deep dive in teaching the arts, but we do have art history on Khan Academy done by Beth and Steven, who are close partners of Khan Academy, Smart History. All that content is available on Khan Academy, so I encourage you to look into that.

So let's see, from Facebook, Snehanath asks: Do you think standardized testing will always be here, or do you think something else will replace them? Well, you know, sometimes, you know, standardized testing—a lot of people say, "Oh, well, that gives stress" and all of these types of things. But I always remind folks that, you know, the opposite of standardized testing is non-standardized testing or not testing at all. If you're not measuring something, it's very hard to know whether you know it or whether you're growing or how well you know it.

And if it's done in a non-standardized way, well, that's not much better because how do you understand where you are compared to where you need to be in a standardized way? So I would say that, you know, generally speaking, in the world, you do need standardized measurement, and standardized testing is a form of standardized measurement that we use in academics.

Now, I do think over time, standardized testing is going to be expanded, or it's going to evolve. I think the types of standardized testing that we're familiar with—I think you'll always have standardized tests. That'll be, you know, how well can you factor a polynomial? How strong is your reading comprehension? But I think then those are going to be expanded with new forms of standardized assessment, where, you know, maybe there's some type of how well can you teach a subject?

How well can you, you know, compose a poem or something like this? And that, you know, having interesting ways for maybe the community to help evaluate you in a standardized way. So I don't think the notion of standardized measurement or standardized tests are going away, nor should they go away. But I think over time they will evolve and will have a kind of a broader aperture of what and how they can measure things.

So let's see, from Facebook, Rahm says: Why do you use your name? Why don't you use your name Salman instead of Sal? So Salman is my full first name; my full name is Salman Khan. So the reason why I go by Sal—you know, it’s really what my mother has called me from the beginning. So, you know, a lot of times folks, especially folks who have a name that is not familiar to folks where they live, they'll sometimes shorten their names.

And you know, definitely a lot of folks in my family have done that. My mother's name is Masuda, and for convenience purposes, I was probably around 12 or 13 years old when she decided to tell people who are not familiar with the name Masuda that her name was Sue. You know, I have an uncle, Azad; he goes by Zach. I have an uncle, Makbool; he goes by Mac. I have an uncle, Khalid, who actually goes by Jason—which is completely unrelated—he worked on a ship for a while, and he was always fascinated by Jason, the famous sailor.

I have an uncle, Ershad, who goes by Daniel—once again, not an obvious shortening of the name—he liked that song, “You Know It’s Traveling Tonight on a Plane.” Anyway, long story short, that's not the cause of my name going from Salman to Saul to Sal. It really is that my mom, I think, just found it convenient to call me Sal when I was growing up, and then it did just happen to kind of stick in my head.

But I respond to either Sal or Salman, whatever works for folks. Let's see other questions here from—you know, I answered that one. So from YouTube, Joshua Cataville said: How do you think artificial intelligence will either help or damage the current world of technology? That’s a big question. I don't claim to be, you know, the world's leading expert on artificial intelligence, but I do like to traffic in futurist ideas.

I mean, I first of all think the genie is out of the box; artificial intelligence is going to be increasingly used. I think one of the hard things about artificial intelligence is it can create, you know, positive optimizations for a lot of things, but sometimes you don't know why it's choosing one thing or another. And so I think artificial intelligence can have many, many very, very positive uses.

You know, a lot of mundane human tasks will not have to be done in a mundane way by human beings. You'll have—I could imagine artificial intelligences that can help improve your motivation, that can help you learn. You know, hope one day Khan Academy can incorporate things like that, that can improve your relationship with someone else— you know, that it asks the right questions so it builds bonds between you and another human being.

You know, yesterday we talked a lot with the former Surgeon General about kind of a loneliness epidemic, and you know, it seems a little dystopian if your loneliness is partly addressed with an artificial intelligence, but there is, you know, maybe something powerful about, you know, sometimes being able to confide in something that you know isn't going to—it where your secrets are safe.

So I don't know; there could be some positive use cases, but then there could be a lot of weird new use cases, too. I mean, that last one I gave, where people’s best friends end up becoming not a real human being but an artificial intelligence, you know, there are several examples of them developing their own biases based on the data. I mean, in fact, a lot of machine learning is all about kind of forming a bias.

But some of those biases can be very, very unhealthy, and you don’t—and it might be expressing in very subtle ways. So yeah, I think it's going to be very—it's going to be a brave new world in the next 10 or 20 years as we really grapple with how artificial intelligence is used or not. But it's gonna be interesting.

So from Facebook, my name is Patrice, and I will be 60 years old next year. Would it be possible for me to study mathematics ab initio using Khan Academy and work my way to a first degree BA or BS in mathematics? Can Khan Academy give me a good foundation? So Patrice, first of all, I love that goal. I think you're fully capable of doing it. My advice to you would be start on Khan Academy at the basics, at like— you know, you could probably—whatever level you think is kind of a little bit easier than where you are, and it could be as early as if you haven't even done, you know, basic arithmetic for many, many years.

Go just go back to the beginning; go to kindergarten math on Khan Academy, or maybe second or third grade math on Khan Academy. Start from the beginning and master everything. I think if you put—you know, you'll get through those first three things very quickly—those first many grade levels. I think if you're like a lot of adults, probably around, you know, some of the more advanced arithmetic with decimals and maybe some exponents and negative numbers—that's when you're going to start needing some significant refreshers.

That's going to be in 5th, 6th, 7th grade math, and then a lot of adults I think need help refreshing in the algebra. But if you did that, I would say for 30 to 40 minutes a day, say five days a week, I think you're going to, first of all, be at your learning edge in about a week or two, so you'll probably be at some of that early algebra stuff. And then you keep going: master algebra, master geometry, algebra 2, master trigonometry, precalculus, calculus, statistics.

And if you want to be a math major, I would say then go on into multi-variable calculus. Now, you can do all of that on Khan Academy. Now that's going to take you some time, depending on where you are. I think that might take at least probably a year or so depending on where you are on your journey. But we've had—I’ve gotten letters from people in your boat who've done it in about that time frame; maybe it might take a little bit longer.

And if you did that, you would have an excellent foundation for becoming a math major in college. On top of that, we have videos on differential equations and linear algebra. We don't have exercises on those yet, but I encourage you to watch those, pause the video, and try to work through it yourself before I work through it. Because if you have a good foundation in algebra, in calculus, and especially more advanced calculus and linear algebra, I don't think the math degree will be a problem.

But, you know, it'll be a journey. I would predict if you do this diligently, you'll be ready to enroll at a local university in about a year or two, and then you'd be off to the races on your degree.

So, let's see—next question. From YouTube, Michael Walker asked: How do you stay motivated, Sal Khan? I mean, sometimes it's hard to see the big picture when you're an undergraduate and graduate student. What did you do to keep on track? You know, the thing that I remind myself is that life is short.

And I, you know, I maybe was an old soul even when I was in high school or when I was in college, but I always felt that life is short, and you know, the last thing that I wanted to do is to kind of, you know, not make good use of, you know, whatever precious moments I had on this planet. And so for me, you know, I—like everyone, I have those days where things are not going my way and I'm not— you know, let's call it—I don't have the best self-esteem sometimes.

But I just remind myself that, you know, as much as I can, I try to coach myself to say, "Well, you know, that's not going to help me." So let me do some small steps that might get me out of my funk. And I've talked about this before: You know, I’ve made my bed religiously now for about 20-something years because that's one small step—you're like, "Hey, at least I made my bed."

And then, you know, every morning I try to do some push-ups. I try to do some pull-ups. A new thing I've started over the last two or three years is I take cold showers. All of these things have a way—I meditate every day for 30 minutes—and all of these things, they do two things for me; they give me wins, no matter what the day is going like. No matter what headwinds I'm facing or how I'm feeling about myself or the world, I'm like: I made my bed; I got in there; I took that cold shower—which is like a reboot of your brain; I meditated, which is also like another type of reboot of your brain; it kind of just, you know, opens it up.

You start to really still your mind. All those negative thoughts become a lot less than they were, and you start—you know, some positive thoughts start to slowly, slowly come out; at least I find that when I meditate. And then you do some exercise, get your blood flowing, and it makes you feel accomplished. And then, you know, if you can do that—that set of things—at least for me, that set of things, you know, if I can do that in the first hour or two of my day, I'm like, "This is going to be a good day."

And, you know, sometimes it is; sometimes it isn't. But I gotta say, especially the meditation—even when something happens at work and, you know, it's disappointing or something in the family and I'm like, "Ah, this is gonna be so hard," the meditation helps you from getting overly attached to whatever that scenario is or even overly attached to your own ego or your own fears. And when you're not overly attached to those things, then they don't feel as heavy, at least that's what I feel for myself.

So, you know, if I had to pick out of all of those habits, I would probably pick making the bed and meditating if I had to do only two things. And meditating—I start with five minutes and literally, there's nothing mysterious about it. You just sit, you know, I try to sit upright in a chair, hands on my lap, and you know, kind of close my eyes and take some deep breaths in and out. In fact, do that right now—just take some deep breaths in and out.

And then I just start, you know, focusing on my breaths, and I try to still my mind as much as possible. Actually, I was going there just now. But anyway, that's what I do. Maybe—maybe one day we'll do a meditation over this live stream, but I encourage you to— you just—even those deep breaths, you're taking the deepest breaths of your week or your month in and out—you'd be surprised what that does for you. And there's some good biology behind it; it activates your parasympathetic system, which is the opposite of your sympathetic system, which is your fight-or-flight response.

So it forces your body to relax, and then if you still your mind, then all of a sudden, everything feels a lot less heavy. Let's see—YouTube, Jason Souhay says: Sal, I have learned many subjects in my young life and have trouble retaining that knowledge over time. How do you retain the vast amount of information that you've procured over the years?

So I would say there are two or three ways to really retain knowledge. One is, while you're learning it, try to make as many connections as you can. Say, "Okay, yeah, that's what I do for the test, but let me draw some more connections. Let me derive that formula." Okay, this formula in physics class says this, but I think I saw something very similar in my calculus class. Or, "Hey, they're talking about entropy in computer science, and they're also talking about entropy in chemistry. How are these things related?"

And the more that you ponder these things, the more that those connections will be there. The second thing I'd recommend is just applying them. And, you know, the best way to apply a lot of these skills is actually to teach it to other people. So if you teach—if you make a habit of, after you take a course, the students who take it the next year, you want to teach that course—trust me, not only are you going to learn it much, much deeper, but you're going to retain that information much, much better.

Some of you all know I have the side project, Schoolhouse.world; separate effort from Khan Academy, but it is a place where you can do that, where if you need tutoring, you can get free tutoring. But if you want to go deeper in your subject matter, you can go tutor, and I actually had an announcement with the University of Chicago recently that they are going to be looking at students who are really good tutors of a subject because they see if you can tutor the subject—not only do you know the subject, but that means you have great communication, you have empathy, and frankly you're probably going to retain that subject.

And I think you're going to see more and more of that in the future, so I highly recommend you to start tutoring the subject yourself and using it. And then the third thing is, you know, if you can—if you can keep revisiting the subject, either because you're tutoring it or because you, you know, just continue to stay curious—that will also reinforce it so the ideas stay in your head.

So let's see from YouTube, Fateh Sidesal says: Your English is very fluent. What tips do you recommend to improve my English? Well, I can't take too much credit for my English being fluent because I was born in the US—in Metairie, Louisiana—and actually many people are surprised that I have what they perceive as a very neutral American accent despite the fact that I grew up in southeast Louisiana. But people don't realize that Metairie, Louisiana, has kind of a neutral-ish accent, although there's a little bit of a—it's called a "yat" accent that you kind of hear there. You'll hear my "y'all" every now and then, but that's why I have very fluent English.

So I can't take much credit for that. Other languages that I kind of know—my Bengali and my Hindi/Urdu—are not very fluent. That was my Bengali. So anyway, I just told you, you know, that it's always a journey when you're not looking at your native language. Actually, those are my languages where my family grew up, but those aren't the ones that I grew up with. But my advice for you, if you know my theory—and I'm not a linguistics expert—is to try to find people you can have conversations with.

And the beauty of the Internet now is you don't have to necessarily travel to meet people who are fluent, who are native speakers in whatever language you want. So I would recommend if you want to become fluent in English—I've got to believe—in fact, I'm 100% sure there are places on the Internet where you can practice your English with native English speakers. And I think if you do a lot of that, not only will your English improve, but you'll probably meet some interesting folks, and they'll have a chance to meet you.

So let's see, from YouTube, Andrew Briggs says: Do you have anything about religion on Khan Academy? We actually have a good bit about religion on Khan Academy from a historical cultural lens, especially if you look at our world history content. We have a lot on kind of the eastern traditions on Hinduism, on Buddhism.

We have a lot on what I would say, you know, the more, I guess you would say western religions—I guess mid-eastern religions. You know, so we have a lot—we have a reasonable bit on the core of Judaism; you know, at least understanding the narrative of the Old Testament. We have a good bit about the, at least the gospels, the kind of the life of Jesus and how Christianity evolved from the time of Jesus under the Roman Empire all the way through Constantine when the Roman Empire, you know, they transitioned from persecuting Christians to becoming the, you know, the kind of the seat of Christianity.

And we talk about—we have a good fourth or five videos on Islam where you can understand, you know, the historical underpinnings of it—how it started and how it grew historically. So that's what we have right now. I hope one day, you know, we get a chance to go deeper in all of these because regardless of whether you follow any of these religions or you don't—whether you are religious, whether you're atheist, whatever your belief system is—it’s really valuable to understand these religions, which are, you know, form the base of so much of our thought and our culture.

So I highly recommend, you know, taking a look at those things on Khan Academy if you're not familiar with any of them. So let's see—other questions. Let's see; I'm scrolling. There's a question here from YouTube. Mr. Spector asks: Is your job stressful? How do you make all these educational videos? How do you manage to make this non-profit organization bloom?

So it's a good question, Mr. Spector. I'll tell you, there are times that it is stressful. I'll tell you the video making is not usually my source of stress; sometimes it's a little frustrating because, you know, I keep bumbling over myself or I really want to make sure I understand something really, really well, so I can get a little bit compulsive about that. But for the most part, I find the video creation side to be almost the relaxing side of my job. It allows me to kind of—that's when I get into my flow, when I get into my zen.

I think the stuff that gets stressful is that there's a lot of folks who are dependent on Khan Academy. There’s, you know, we have over 200 employees; there are thousands of volunteers around the world; we have hundreds of thousands of donors; we have tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of users. So yeah, when people are dependent on it, you don't want to disappoint folks.

And you can imagine, you know, raising money—if I don't raise enough money, then we're not going to have the resources to serve tens of millions of folks. So we're not able to hire folks; or, you know, even in—you know, in the past we've had to downsize some at Khan Academy, which is an incredibly painful thing. So those types of things develop a lot of stress.

I would say there are times also when, you know, you have passionate people who are trying to do the right thing. You know, the root of passion is worth suffering. When you really care about something, you know, we can have heated debates within Khan Academy of, you know, with the scarce resources we have, what is the best way to deploy that, or what is the best way to execute on that?

And so, you know, I often do think about, you know, am I supporting our team properly? Are we aligned? Are we working on the right things? You know, are the funders satisfied? You know, am I communicating with them enough? So, yeah, these can sometimes make you wake up in the middle of the night, but that's why I meditate and take cold showers and do my push-ups and pull-ups and make my bed—and I make videos, too—that all—and I don't want to make it sound like my whole, you know, my job is like, you know, some super stressful thing.

It comes and goes, you know; there's moments of real joy. In fact, it's mostly that, but yeah, there are definitely moments of stress, and that's how I deal with it. I will say one thing, you know, I remember when I used to read... I don't know, I would read like—I would watch like movies and there'd be like someone who runs a company and they'd always be like, "Oh, it's so lonely at the top." And I'll be like, "Yeah, it seems like it would be so awesome to be the boss because then you get to, you know, whatever! You're the boss, how awesome is that?" I have to say, and not to feel sorry for me, I mean, because I feel very privileged and lucky to have the role that I have—but yeah, sometimes, sometimes the stress is because you know you really can't tell other folks everything that's going on in your head.

And so, you have to figure out ways to resolve your own head sometimes. But yeah, those are all the stresses.

See, other questions here—so Ayush is asking for the photo explanation of the photoelectric effect. I'm tempted, but we have videos on that on Khan Academy, so I encourage you to go there. And if that's not satisfying, let us know, and I'll make another video to answer any other questions you might have.

Let's see, from Facebook, Victoria Angelo Umedo says: I'm working on getting a GED, but I get overwhelmed, worried, and stressed. Any advice? Thank you.

Well, my advice is, you know, if anyone's getting overwhelmed or stressed about anything, one, you can't underestimate the power—or you can't overestimate the power of meditation. Even five, ten minutes a day—once again, this is nothing mystical; it's just you being able to observe your thoughts, recognize that you are not your thoughts, you are not those negative feelings; they are real, they're happening inside your brain, but you are something more than that.

And the, you know, when you start to observe your mind, it starts to still. You do literally feel kind of a space form, and you can see, "Okay, there's this thought that's saying, 'Oh, I'm not going to be able to achieve my goal' or 'What are people going to think of me' and all of that," but you're like, "Well, that's just a thought; that's not me." And then slowly, that kind of can die down, and that I find—once I get to that point, I'm just like, "You know what? Regardless of the outcome, let me just do what's the right next step."

And if I just do the right next step, I'll make progress hopefully, and the chips fall where they do. You know, yesterday our guest, Vivek, he talked about—which is the former Surgeon General—talked about are we acting with hope, are we acting with love, or are we acting with fear? And I think, you know, these feelings of procrastination, of feeling overwhelmed, these are feelings of fear.

You're like, "Oh, well, what if I do this and it doesn't work out and people are gonna think this about me and that's going to happen; I'm not going to get that opportunity." Instead, I would say try to act out of love or hope, or however you want to describe it. We say, "Well, you know what? I'm just going to do the right thing at any step of the way. Put one foot in front of the other, try to make progress, be a little bit further along today than I was yesterday, a little bit further along in the next hour than I was in the previous hour."

And that you're going to notice that you're making progress, and it's like climbing a big mountain. You just put one foot in front of the other, and you know, before you know it, you look back, and you've actually made a lot of progress. So that would be my meta-advice. I would say just make a habit of doing the practice. When you get things wrong, don't beat up yourself; remind yourself that's actually moments of growth. Reflect on why you got it wrong, and keep going.

You know, I'm an amateur guitarist, and you know, there are these guitar chords that, you know, I've never been a fan of, but lately, I've been like, "You know what? I need to just keep practicing them every day." And it is amazing that your brain slowly—just these things that felt impossible for you—after a week or two, all of a sudden feel very natural and very automatic.

So I would just say keep at it, keep a habit of it, and always keep perspective. Let's see—oh, we're all out of time! This goes by very, very, very fast. So I will leave y'all there. I'll give one final announcement: Next week, I'm sure many people, if you're 18 or over, have already voted through your mail-in ballots. But remember, on Tuesday, it's election day, so definitely vote.

We're only going to have one live stream next week on Wednesday. We're going to have former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, and I think there's going to be a very similar conversation to what we had a conversation with Arne Duncan last week, but really just about, you know, what's going on in education and how we can best navigate the kind of the education crisis due to COVID together.

So look forward to seeing all of y'all next Wednesday at 12 pacific, 3 eastern. See you then!