Grant Sanderson: preference

Transcript context

…Should the top 0.1% of educators exclusively be on the internet because it seems like a waste if you were just a college professor or a high school professor and you were teaching 50 kids a year or something. Given the greater scale available should more of them be trying to see if they can reach more people? I think it's not a bad thing for more educators who are good at what they're doing to put their stuff online for sure. I highly encourage that even if it's as simple as getting someone to put a camera in the back of the classroom. I don't think it would be a good idea to get those people out of the classroom. If anything I think one of the best things that I could do for my career would be to put myself into more classrooms. Actually I'm quite determined at some point to be a high school math teacher for some number of years. There's such an opportunity cost that it’s probably something I would plan on notably later as long as there's not other life logistics that occupy a lot of mind share because everything I know about high school teaching is like it just kicks your ass for the first two years. One of the most valuable things that you can have if you're trying to explain stuff online is a sense of empathy for what possible viewers that are out there. The more distance that you put between yourself and them in terms of life circumstances. I'm not a college student so I don't have the same empathy with college students. Certainly not a high school student, so I've lost that empathy. That distance just makes it more and more of an uphill battle to make the content good for them and I think keeping people in regular touch with just what people in the classroom actively need is necessary for them to remain as good and as sharp as they are. So yes, get more of those top 0.1% to put their stuff online but I would absolutely disagree with the idea of taking them out of their existing circumstances. Maybe for a year or two so they don't lose that sharpness but then put them right back in because it makes them better at the online exposition. The other thing I might disagree with is the idea that the reach is lower. Yes, it's a smaller number of people but you're with them for much, much more time and you actually have the chance of influencing their trajectory through a social connection in a way that you just don't over Youtube. You're using the word education in a way that I would maybe sub out for the word explanation. You want explanations to be online but the word education derives from the same root as the word educe, to bring out, and I really like that as a bit of etymology because it reminds you that the job of an educator is not to like take their knowledge and shove it into the heads of someone else the job is to bring it out. That's very, very hard to do in a video and in fact even if you can kind of get at it by asking intriguing questions for the most part the video is there to answer something once someone has a question. at's very, very hard to do in a video and in fact even if you can kind of get at it by asking intriguing questions for the most part the video is there to answer something once someone has a question. The teacher's job, or the educator's job, should be to provide the environment such that you're bringing out from your students as much as you can through inspiration through projects through little bits of mentorship and encouragement along the way that requires you know eye contact and being there in person and being the true figure in their life rather than just an abstract voice behind a screen.…

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