tl;dr, with my own interpretation of the article: "although we are not students in today's world, we presume to know and understand the mind of today's student and can tell you from our own learned perspective that Khan just doesn't have what it takes to teach."
I'm certain I read nothing more than snobbery in this article. It reads like "we didn't think of this free online disruptive academy first" or "how dare you do something differently from and outside of Official Academia."
Do you know who the best teachers are? I mean the absolute best, the ones who actually get what the student is struggling with? Other students-- the ones who just got through that particular lesson, the ones that just had the exact same struggle. The students' ability to teach like this declines with experience with the material because it all starts to become second-hand and they forget all the little things they struggled with early on. When an instructor takes note of students teaching students and the hows and whys of that interaction and remembers to cover the same territory in the next class, he becomes the best non-student teacher he can.
My mother is my perfect anecdotal example of this. In her 50s, she's getting a degree. While taking calculus, she also worked in the tutoring lab. After understanding new material, she'd be an absolute godsend for students for about two weeks and then her helpfulness would fall off. (You could also attribute this to all these classes being mostly in sync with at most two weeks of lag - that being the case, she would be less exposed to the reteaching of the material ... and forget those little details.)
I think you took something different from the article than I did. They provide a critique, strongly worded at times, but not totally bashing Khan Academy or the general approach. They specify their concerns, and even offer suggestions on ways it can be improved (specifically, examining existing pedagogy and coordinating with some of the top math and science teachers to generate better content).
One of the authors is a current teacher, working with real students. He gets feedback from them either directly (by questions, comments, curses) or indirectly (homework, tests, quizzes) to gauge his effectiveness as an educator. Khan (until they added problems to the site) didn't have this feedback.
Their criticism boils down to a few main points.
1. He uses an inconsistent presentation of algebra and arithmetic work and notation, which could lead to students becoming confused when he suddenly changes it.
2. He uses a poor selection of examples, without offering more or better examples students may develop a mathematical toolset based on a flawed understanding, which will lead to problems further down the line.
3. The problems available to students are insufficient to provide proper mathematical practice and ensure that some of the common misunderstandings are shown to be wrong.
So an article on the Washington Post site based upon a for-profit founder's nit-picking of Khan's materials is representative of the right way to go about improving what Khan himself says is an effort to supplement other educational methods?
There's a difference between constructive criticism that's effectively administered vs a publicly-rendered smear attempt that tries to hide behind pedantry.
My comment was in reply to delinka's TL;DR. And you seem to be using a similar one. I don't know that it's "representative of the right way" to put criticisms like this in such a public forum, but it's not exactly new either. The first article is (is that the for-profit founder you're referring to?) definitely not constructive criticism. This article is in response to Khan's rebuttal, and at least offers a claim of more substantial research into Khan Academy's offerings before they provide their criticism.
I'm certain I read nothing more than snobbery in this article. It reads like "we didn't think of this free online disruptive academy first" or "how dare you do something differently from and outside of Official Academia."
Do you know who the best teachers are? I mean the absolute best, the ones who actually get what the student is struggling with? Other students-- the ones who just got through that particular lesson, the ones that just had the exact same struggle. The students' ability to teach like this declines with experience with the material because it all starts to become second-hand and they forget all the little things they struggled with early on. When an instructor takes note of students teaching students and the hows and whys of that interaction and remembers to cover the same territory in the next class, he becomes the best non-student teacher he can.
My mother is my perfect anecdotal example of this. In her 50s, she's getting a degree. While taking calculus, she also worked in the tutoring lab. After understanding new material, she'd be an absolute godsend for students for about two weeks and then her helpfulness would fall off. (You could also attribute this to all these classes being mostly in sync with at most two weeks of lag - that being the case, she would be less exposed to the reteaching of the material ... and forget those little details.)