I'm here today to talk about the two ideas that, at least based on my observations at Khan Academy, are kind of the core, or the key leverage points for learning. And it's the idea of mastery and the idea of mindset.
Saya di sini hendak berbicara tentang dua hal yang, setidaknya menurut pengamatan saya di Khan Academy, merupakan inti, atau kunci pembangkit untuk belajar. Dan dua gagasan tersebut adalah: penguasaan dan pola pikir.
I saw this in the early days working with my cousins. A lot of them were having trouble with math at first, because they had all of these gaps accumulated in their learning. And because of that, at some point they got to an algebra class and they might have been a little bit shaky on some of the pre-algebra, and because of that, they thought they didn't have the math gene. Or they'd get to a calculus class, and they'd be a little bit shaky on the algebra. I saw it in the early days when I was uploading some of those videos on YouTube, and I realized that people who were not my cousins were watching.
Saya melihat ini pada masa awal saya mengajari sepupu saya. Mereka kesulitan dengan matematika pada awalnya karena mereka punya banyak gap pemahaman yang terakumulasi. Oleh karena itu, kelak saat mereka sampai pada pelajaran aljabar dan mungkin pemahaman pra-aljabar mereka agak rapuh, dan karena hal itu, mereka berpikir mereka tidak punya bakat matematika. Atau pada pelajaran kalkulus, dan pemahaman aljabar mereka agak rapuh. Saya melihat itu pada masa awal saat saya mengunggah beberapa video itu di YouTube dan saya menyadari bahwa penonton yang bukanlah sepupu saya menonton.
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
And at first, those comments were just simple thank-yous. I thought that was a pretty big deal. I don't know how much time you all spend on YouTube. Most of the comments are not "Thank you."
Awalnya, komen-komen itu hanyalah ucapan terima kasih. Saya pikir itu cukup mengesankan. Saya tak tahu berapa lama Anda berada di YouTube. Kebanyakan komen bukanlah “terima kasih.”
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
They're a little edgier than that. But then the comments got a little more intense, student after student saying that they had grown up not liking math. It was getting difficult as they got into more advanced math topics. By the time they got to algebra, they had so many gaps in their knowledge they couldn't engage with it. They thought they didn't have the math gene. But when they were a bit older, they took a little agency and decided to engage. They found resources like Khan Academy and they were able to fill in those gaps and master those concepts, and that reinforced their mindset that it wasn't fixed; that they actually were capable of learning mathematics.
Agak lebih gaul dari itu. Tapi kemudian komennya jadi agak lebih intens. Murid demi murid mengatakan mereka besar tak menyukai matematika. Makin lanjut ketika pelajaran matematikanya makin sulit. Saat sampai mereka pada aljabar, mereka punya banyak gap pemahaman mereka tak bisa mengikuti. Mereka kira mereka tak bakat matematika. Tapi kemudian saat dewasa, mereka mengambil alih dan memutuskan untuk terlibat. Mereka menemukan jalan seperti Khan Academy dan mereka bisa mengisi gap pemahaman dan menguasai konsep itu, dan itu menguatkan pola pikir mereka itu bisa berubah, bahwa mereka sesungguhnya mampu mempelajari matematika.
And in a lot of ways, this is how you would master a lot of things in life. It's the way you would learn a martial art. In a martial art, you would practice the white belt skills as long as necessary, and only when you've mastered it you would move on to become a yellow belt. It's the way you learn a musical instrument: you practice the basic piece over and over again, and only when you've mastered it, you go on to the more advanced one.
Dan dalam banyak cara, inilah bagaimana Anda belajar banyak hal lain dalam hidup. Seperti itulah cara Anda belajar bela diri. Dalam bela diri, Anda akan berlatih keterampilan sabuk putih selama yang dibutuhkan, dan hanya setelah Anda menguasainya, Anda naik tingkat menjadi sabuk kuning. Seperti cara Anda belajar alat musik. Anda berlatih keterampilan dasar berulang kali, dan hanya setelah Anda menguasainya, Anda lanjut ke yang lebih sulit.
But what we point out -- this is not the way a traditional academic model is structured, the type of academic model that most of us grew up in. In a traditional academic model, we group students together, usually by age, and around middle school, by age and perceived ability, and we shepherd them all together at the same pace. And what typically happens, let's say we're in a middle school pre-algebra class, and the current unit is on exponents, the teacher will give a lecture on exponents, then we'll go home, do some homework. The next morning, we'll review the homework, then another lecture, homework, lecture, homework. That will continue for about two or three weeks, and then we get a test. On that test, maybe I get a 75 percent, maybe you get a 90 percent, maybe you get a 95 percent. And even though the test identified gaps in our knowledge, I didn't know 25 percent of the material. Even the A student, what was the five percent they didn't know?
Tapi apa yang kita maksud -- ini bukan cara suatu model akademik tradisional disusun, tipe model akademik yang kebanyakan dari kita tumbuh di dalamnya. Dalam model akademik tradisional, kita mengelompokkan murid biasanya berdasarkan umur, dan sekitar SMP, berdasarkan umur dan kemampuan. Dan kita mendidik mereka dengan kecepatan yang sama. Dan apa yang biasanya terjadi, katakanlah, kita ada di pelajaran pra-aljabar SMP, dan sedang belajar tentang perpangkatan. Gurunya akan menerangkan mengenai perpangkatan, lalu kita akan pulang, dan mengerjakan PR. Keesokan harinya, kita membahas PR tersebut, guru kembali menerangkan lagi, PR lagi, seterusnya. Akan berlanjut selama sekitar dua/tiga minggu, lalu kita akan ujian. Pada ujian tersebut, katakanlah saya dapat nilai 75. Anda dapat nilai 90. Anda dapat nilai 95. Dan walau ujian mengidentifikasi gap pada pemahaman kita, saya tidak tahu apa 25%-nya. Bahkan murid yang dapat nilai A, apa 5% yang kurang?
Even though we've identified the gaps, the whole class will then move on to the next subject, probably a more advanced subject that's going to build on those gaps. It might be logarithms or negative exponents. And that process continues, and you immediately start to realize how strange this is. I didn't know 25 percent of the more foundational thing, and now I'm being pushed to the more advanced thing. And this will continue for months, years, all the way until at some point, I might be in an algebra class or trigonometry class and I hit a wall. And it's not because algebra is fundamentally difficult or because the student isn't bright. It's because I'm seeing an equation and they're dealing with exponents and that 30 percent that I didn't know is showing up. And then I start to disengage.
Bahkan walau kita identifikasi gap-gap itu, pelajarannya akan langsung beralih ke bab selanjutnya. Mungkin bab yang lebih sulit yang akan menambah gap tersebut. Bisa jadi logaritma atau perpangkatan negatif. Proses tersebut berlanjut dan Anda segera sadar betapa anehnya ini. Saya tidak tahu 25% hal yang lebih dasar, dan kini saya diminta belajar hal yang lebih sulit. Dan ini akan berlanjut sampai berbulan-bulan, tahun, hingga akhirnya, saya sampai pada pelajaran aljabar atau trigonometri dan saya mentok. Dan itu bukan karena aljabar pada dasarnya sulit atau si murid kurang cerdas. Itu karena saya menjumpai persamaan yang menggunakan perpangkatan dan 30% yang saya tidak tahu muncul. Jadi, saya mulai tidak bisa mengikuti.
To appreciate how absurd that is, imagine if we did other things in our life that way. Say, home-building.
Agar jelas betapa absurdnya itu, bayangkan kita melakukan hal lain dengan cara seperti itu. Misal, membangun rumah.
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
So we bring in the contractor and say, "We were told we have two weeks to build a foundation. Do what you can."
Pada kontraktor kita mengatakan, “Kita diberi waktu dua minggu untuk membangun pondasi. Kerjakan sebisa kalian.”
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
So they do what they can. Maybe it rains. Maybe some of the supplies don't show up. And two weeks later, the inspector comes, looks around, says, "OK, the concrete is still wet right over there, that part's not quite up to code ... I'll give it an 80 percent."
Jadi mereka mengerjakan sebisa mereka. Mungkin turun hujan. Mungkin beberapa bahan tidak datang. Dan dua minggu kemudian, inspektur datang, melihat-lihat, dia bilang, “Oke, cor-corannya masih basah di sana, yang di situ kurang memenuhi standar ... Saya beri nilai 80.”
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
You say, "Great! That's a C. Let's build the first floor."
Anda bilang, “Sip! Nilai C. Ayo bangun lantai pertama.”
(Laughter)
(Tawa)
Same thing. We have two weeks, do what you can, inspector shows up, it's a 75 percent. Great, that's a D-plus. Second floor, third floor, and all of a sudden, while you're building the third floor, the whole structure collapses. And if your reaction is the reaction you typically have in education, or that a lot of folks have, you might say, maybe we had a bad contractor, or maybe we needed better inspection or more frequent inspection. But what was really broken was the process. We were artificially constraining how long we had to something, pretty much ensuring a variable outcome, and we took the trouble of inspecting and identifying those gaps, but then we built right on top of it.
Sama. Kita punya dua minggu, kerjakan sebisanya, inspektur datang, memberi nilai 75. Sip! Nilainya D+. Lantai kedua, ketiga. Lalu tiba-tiba, saat Anda membangun lantai ketiga, seluruh bangunan runtuh. Dan jika reaksimu sama seperti reaksimu di pendidikan, atau orang-orang di dalamnya, Anda akan bilang, “Mungkin kontraktor kita jelek., atau, “Mungkin kita perlu inspeksi yang lebih baik atau lebih sering.” Yang sesungguhnya salah adalah prosesnya. Kita membuat batasan berapa lama kita harus mengerjakan sesuatu. Memastikan hasil yang tak pasti. Dan kita susah-susah menginspeksi dan mengidentifikasi kekurangan, tapi kemudian membiarkannya dan lanjut membangun.
So the idea of mastery learning is to do the exact opposite. Instead of artificially constraining, fixing when and how long you work on something, pretty much ensuring that variable outcome, the A, B, C, D, F -- do it the other way around. What's variable is when and how long a student actually has to work on something, and what's fixed is that they actually master the material.
Pembelajaran berbasis penguasaan adalah kebalikan dari itu. Dibanding membuat batasan, memperbaiki kapan dan berapa lama Anda mengerjakan, memastikan hasil yang tak pasti, nilai A, B, C, D, F — lakukan yang sebaliknya. Yang tidak tentu kapan dan berapa lama waktu untuk mempelajari suatu materi. Dan yang kita pastikan adalah murid benar-benar menguasai materi.
And it's important to realize that not only will this make the student learn their exponents better, but it'll reinforce the right mindset muscles. It makes them realize that if you got 20 percent wrong on something, it doesn't mean that you have a C branded in your DNA somehow. It means that you should just keep working on it. You should have grit; you should have perseverance; you should take agency over your learning.
Dan penting untuk disadari bahwa ini tidak hanya akan membuat murid belajar perpangkatan lebih baik, ini juga akan menguatkan pola pikir yang benar. Ini membuat mereka sadar bahwa jika 20% jawaban mereka salah, itu tidak berarti bakat matematika mereka buruk. Itu berarti Anda harus terus berusaha. Anda harus punya kegigihan. Anda harus memegang kendali atas pembelajaranmu.
Now, a lot of skeptics might say, well, hey, this is all great, philosophically, this whole idea of mastery-based learning and its connection to mindset, students taking agency over their learning. It makes a lot of sense, but it seems impractical. To actually do it, every student would be on their own track. It would have to be personalized, you'd have to have private tutors and worksheets for every student. And these aren't new ideas -- there were experiments in Winnetka, Illinois, 100 years ago, where they did mastery-based learning and saw great results, but they said it wouldn't scale because it was logistically difficult. The teacher had to give different worksheets to every student, give on-demand assessments.
Orang yang skeptis akan bilang, “Hei, ini semua bagus, secara filosofis, ide pembelajaran berbasis penguasaan ini, hubungannya dengan pola pikir, murid memegang kendali atas pembelajarannya. Itu masuk akal, tapi tampaknya tidak praktis. Untuk melakukannya, setiap murid akan berada pada jalurnya masing-masing. Itu akan harus dipersonalisasi. Setiap murid perlu tutor pribadi dan soal latihan masing-masing. Dan ini bukanlah ide baru. Ada eksperimen di Winnetka, Illinois, 100 tahun lalu, dimana pembelajaran berbasis penguasaan diterapkan dan hasilnya bagus. Mereka bilang, itu tidak akan terkenal karena sulit secara logistik. Guru harus memberi soal yang berbeda untuk tiap murid, memberi penilaian sesuai permintaan.
But now today, it's no longer impractical. We have the tools to do it. Students see an explanation at their own time and pace? There's on-demand video for that. They need practice? They need feedback? There's adaptive exercises readily available for students.
Tapi sekarang, ini tidak lagi tidak praktis. Kita punya alatnya. Melihat penjelasan sesuai waktu dan laju mereka? Ada video yang tersedia untuk itu. Butuh soal latihan dan masukan? Tersedia soal latihan yang menyesuaikan kebutuhan murid.
And when that happens, all sorts of neat things happen. One, the students can actually master the concepts, but they're also building their growth mindset, they're building grit, perseverance, they're taking agency over their learning. And all sorts of beautiful things can start to happen in the actual classroom. Instead of it being focused on the lecture, students can interact with each other. They can get deeper mastery over the material. They can go into simulations, Socratic dialogue.
Dan jika itu terjadi, akan banyak hal bagus terjadi. Selain murid bisa benar-benar memahami suatu konsep, tapi mereka juga membentuk pola pikir berkembang, membentuk sifat gigih. Mereka mengambil alih pembelajaran mereka. Dan banyak hal bagus bisa mulai terjadi di ruang kelas sesungguhnya. Alih-alih fokus pada penerangan guru, murid bisa berinteraksi satu sama lain. Mereka bisa lebih menguasai materi. Mereka bisa melakukan simulasi dan dialog Sokratik.
To appreciate what we're talking about and the tragedy of lost potential here, I'd like to give a little bit of a thought experiment. If we were to go 400 years into the past to Western Europe, which even then, was one of the more literate parts of the planet, you would see that about 15 percent of the population knew how to read. And I suspect that if you asked someone who did know how to read, say a member of the clergy, "What percentage of the population do you think is even capable of reading?" They might say, "Well, with a great education system, maybe 20 or 30 percent." But if you fast forward to today, we know that that prediction would have been wildly pessimistic, that pretty close to 100 percent of the population is capable of reading. But if I were to ask you a similar question: "What percentage of the population do you think is capable of truly mastering calculus, or understanding organic chemistry, or being able to contribute to cancer research?" A lot of you might say, "Well, with a great education system, maybe 20, 30 percent."
Untuk lebih memahami apa yang kita bicarakan dan tragedi potensi yang terbuang, saya akan memberikan sedikit ekperimen pikiran. Jika kita pergi ke Eropa Barat 400 tahun yang lalu, yang bahkan pada saat itu, salah satu daerah terliterasi di dunia, Anda akan mendapati 15% penduduk bisa membaca. Dan saya menduga jika Anda bertanya pada salah seorang yang bisa membaca, misal, seorang anggota klerus, “Menurut Anda, berapa persen penduduk yang mampu membaca?” Mereka mungkin bakal bilang, “Dengan sistem pendidikan yang bagus, mungkin 20 atau 30 persen.” Tapi jika Anda lihat sekarang, kita tahu bahwa prediksi itu terlampau pesimistis. Bahwa hampir 100% penduduk bisa membaca. Tapi jika saya memberi Anda pertanyaan yang mirip, “Menurut Anda, berapa persen penduduk yang mampu benar-benar menguasai kalkulus, atau memahami kimia organik, atau bisa berkontribusi pada penelitian kanker?” Banyak mungkin akan jawab, “Dengan sistem pendidikan yang baik, mungkin 20, 30 persen.”
But what if that estimate is just based on your own experience in a non-mastery framework, your own experience with yourself or observing your peers, where you're being pushed at this set pace through classes, accumulating all these gaps? Even when you got that 95 percent, what was that five percent you missed? And it keeps accumulating -- you get to an advanced class, all of a sudden you hit a wall and say, "I'm not meant to be a cancer researcher; not meant to be a physicist; not meant to be a mathematician." I suspect that that actually is the case, but if you were allowed to be operating in a mastery framework, if you were allowed to really take agency over your learning, and when you get something wrong, embrace it -- view that failure as a moment of learning -- that number, the percent that could really master calculus or understand organic chemistry, is actually a lot closer to 100 percent.
Tapi bagaimana jika estimasi itu hanya berdasarkan pengalaman Anda di sistem yang tak berbasis penguasaan, pengalaman dirimu sendiri atau pengamatan ke sekitarmu, di mana Anda dipaksa untuk kecepatan tertentu dalam kelas, mengakumulasi gap-gap ini? Bahkan saat Anda dapat nilai 95, apa 5% yang Anda kurang pahami? Dan itu terus terakumulasi— Anda naik kelas, lalu tiba-tiba Anda mentok dan berkata, “Saya tak bisa jadi peneliti kanker; tak bisa jadi fisikawan; tak bisa jadi ahli matematika.” Saya pikir itulah yang sesungguhnya terjadi. Tapi jika Anda bisa belajar di sistem yang berdasarkan penguasaan, jika Anda bisa memegang kendali atas pembelajaranmu, dan saat jawabanmu salah, terimalah—lihat kegagalan itu sebagai kesempatan belajar— angka itu, persentase penduduk yang bisa menguasai kalkulus atau memahami kimia organik, sebenarnya sangat mendekati 100%.
And this isn't even just a "nice to have." I think it's a social imperative. We're exiting what you could call the industrial age and we're going into this information revolution. And it's clear that some things are happening. In the industrial age, society was a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid, you needed human labor. In the middle of the pyramid, you had an information processing, a bureaucracy class, and at the top of the pyramid, you had your owners of capital and your entrepreneurs and your creative class. But we know what's happening already, as we go into this information revolution. The bottom of that pyramid, automation, is going to take over. Even that middle tier, information processing, that's what computers are good at.
Dan ini bukan cuma hal yang “bagus dimiliki”. Menurut saya ini adalah kebutuhan sosial. Kita sedang keluar dari era industri dan kita sedang memasuki revolusi informasi. Dan jelas bahwa beberapa hal sedang terjadi. Di era industri, masyarakat seperti piramida. Pada bagian bawah piramida, kita butuh banyak tenaga manusia. Pada bagian tengah piramida, terdapat pemrosesan informasi, kelas birokrat. Dan pada bagian atas piramida, terdapat pemilik modal dan pengusaha dan kelas kreatif. Tapi kita tahu apa yang telah terjadi dengan masuknya kita ke era informasi. Pada bagian bawah piramida, otomatisasi mengambil alih. Bahkan pada bagian tengah, pemrosesan informasi, itu adalah kelebihan komputer.
So as a society, we have a question: All this new productivity is happening because of this technology, but who participates in it? Is it just going to be that very top of the pyramid, in which case, what does everyone else do? How do they operate? Or do we do something that's more aspirational? Do we actually attempt to invert the pyramid, where you have a large creative class, where almost everyone can participate as an entrepreneur, an artist, as a researcher?
Jadi kita dihadapkan pada pertanyaan: Semua produktivitas baru ini terjadi karena teknologi, siapa yang berpartisipasi? Apakah hanya yang ada di bagian atas piramida? Jika demikian, yang lain melakukan apa? Bagaimana mereka bekerja? Atau, akankah kita melakukan sesuatu yang aspiratif? Akankah kita berusaha membalik piramida, di mana kita mempunyai banyak kelas kreatif, di mana hampir semua orang bisa berpartisipasi sebagai pengusaha, artis, atau peneliti?
And I don't think that this is utopian. I really think that this is all based on the idea that if we let people tap into their potential by mastering concepts, by being able to exercise agency over their learning, that they can get there. And when you think of it as just a citizen of the world, it's pretty exciting. I mean, think about the type of equity we can we have, and the rate at which civilization could even progress. And so, I'm pretty optimistic about it. I think it's going to be a pretty exciting time to be alive.
Menurutku ini tidaklah utopis. Saya sungguh berpikir bahwa ini semua berdasar pada ide jika kita biarkan orang memahami potensi mereka dengan menguasai konsep, dengan bisa melatih penguasaan dalam pembelajaran mereka, mereka bisa mencapainya. Dan jika Anda memikirkannya sebagai warga dunia, ini cukup menarik. Bayangkan jenis ekuitas yang bisa kita punya dan laju yang memungkinkan peradaban bahkan dapat berkembang. Jadi, saya cukup optimis. Menurutku ini akan menjadi waktu yang menarik untuk menjadi hidup.
Thank you.
Terima kasih.
(Applause)
(Tepuk tangan)