Why Sal Khan’t: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling
3rd September 2026
I used to play this clip and then ask the audience a simple question: Look at everything Sal Khan does to learn something. He reads widely. He scaffolds. He draws. He questions. He calls friends. He argues. He makes connections across fields. He builds intuitive understanding from the ground up. And then he builds something to capture all that he had learned to share with others.
Now… how does Sal Khan want my kid to learn?
Watch a video.
The room always got it immediately.
Because nobody in that room would accept that for themselves. We all know, intuitively, that watching someone else explain something is not the same as understanding it. We would never settle for that as learners. And yet, somehow, we accept it as a solution for other people’s children. This is a version of a phenomenon that I have written about earlier: The reductive seduction of other people’s problems.