Latest news with #Schoolhouse.world
Fox News
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Fighting campus groupthink: Khan Academy founder's answer to academic intolerance
American college campuses have become increasingly known as ideological war zones where civil debates get shouted down and partisan pressure forces students and faculty alike to think twice before sharing an unorthodox view. But Khan Academy founder Sal Khan is trying to change all that. Khan developed a new college admissions tool, Dialogues, which is now accepted at a litany of top-tier universities, including Columbia, MIT and the University of Chicago. Dialogues is a program hosted on the tutoring platform in which students record conversations on controversial topics – abortion, immigration, Israel and Palestine, among others. The Dialogues participants then give each other feedback such as "empathetic" and "good listener" and students can then submit a portfolio as part of their college application where their dialogues are graded on a rubric such as "empathetic," "curious," "finding common ground" and "good listener." Students can then choose which feedback they would like to share with colleges and include it in a portfolio to supplement their admissions' application. "If you think about college campuses, I think most people would agree that college campuses tend to lean left… especially over the last decade, you've seen less tolerance for right and even moderate points of view," Khan told Fox News Digital. Khan said he was inspired to create Dialogues after noticing that the pressure to self-censor found on many American college campuses was infecting students who haven't yet stepped foot on a college campus. After a dinner party in his liberal Northern California enclave where the education mogul felt uncomfortable sharing what he felt was a very middle-of-the-road opinion with the left-wing crowd, the idea for Dialogues was born. "I have been at dinner parties where I felt afraid to share what I thought were actually kind of my moderate views, because people might assume that I'm, you know – you know they might make negative assumptions about me and if that's happening to me, can you imagine a young person at a college campus?" Khan said to Fox News Digital. Khan said he hopes Dialogues will help engender a freer environment for expression at American universities, not just for conservative students, but even for liberal students who may have a more moderate view they are afraid to share. A 2025 Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) study found that some 60% of college students felt either very or somewhat uncomfortable publicly disagreeing with a professor on a controversial topic. Nearly 50% of students felt somewhat or very uncomfortable sharing their views with other students in communal campus spaces such as a quad. Conservative students reported self-censoring more often than liberal students, according to the study. The study also found that large majorities of students would support not inviting speakers voicing certain controversial views on campus. Intellectual diversity on campuses also appears to be lacking. A 2018 study of top U.S. News-ranked liberal arts colleges found that registered-Democratic professors outnumbered registered-Republican professors 12.7 to 1. A 2022 MIWI Institute analysis found that at Ivy League universities, left-leaning students outnumbered conservative students 53% to 25% of the student body. Khan aspires to have Dialogues give students the foundations to have difficult conversations with one another, and to increase their understanding of those who have different views than their own. "Yeah, it's not a surprise to anyone that you know, the ability for us as a society to have constructive conversations and constructive disagreement across ideological lines seems to have broken down to a large degree. You see this across the board, but you especially see this with young people," Khan told Fox News Digital. Some parents worry that a program centered around students sharing their views on controversial topics could end up being used as a back-door method of discriminating against conservative students. "The questions they're having dialogues about, whether it be climate change or abortion or gun control, you know there's only one right way to think for these elite institutions," "Mom Wars" writer and podcast co-host Bethany Mandel told Fox News Digital. It wouldn't be the first time elite schools have used nonconventional tools to achieve desired political outcomes. After the Supreme Court outlawed affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, colleges began leaning more heavily on personal essays in applications so they could determine how race affected their lives – a workaround the Court allowed in its judgment. However, Khan points out that students' conversations are not included in the Dialogues portfolios, only the peer feedback that they voluntarily disclose is included. The portfolios can include the topics covered, but not which side the student took. He also said that the Dialogues team monitors feedback to ensure that no bias is taking place in terms of how students are evaluated. Khan says that he already sees positive results from his program. "We had these beautiful conversations where these young people are saying this was the first time that I met an atheist, and it made me want to go deeper into my faith, or it's the first time I met a religious Christian and I have deeper respect for their convictions now," Khan told Fox News Digital. "It made me incredibly hopeful for folks… you don't have to agree with the person, you just have to not think that they're crazy or that they're an idiot or racist."
New York Post
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Post
College admissions meets ‘Survivor' in creepy new appraisal that rewards groupthink
College admissions offices are asking applicants to jump through a new hoop — a cross between 'Survivor' and 'The Hunger Games' that seems designed to thwart the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative action in education. High schoolers applying to top schools like Columbia and Vanderbilt are being asked to take part in 'dialogues' via Zoom to compete against other students on their levels of compassion, empathy and 'open-mindedness.' Participants rank each other after 'exchanging views' on trending topics like immigration and climate change, and the recorded session is uploaded as part of the admissions package. Advertisement Imagine your collegiate fate being determined by fellow applicants who don't have your best interests at heart but their own, bringing their own biases and agendas to the table. Other high-school seniors you've never met will judge you not on how well you debate them on controversial ideas, but on your demeanor, your decorum and the views you espouse. Would anyone on a call like that be willing to risk a coveted spot in the freshman class by engaging in a spirited, genuine exchange — or by speaking their own mind, if their views go against the grain? Advertisement Fat chance: More likely, kids will go along to get along, saying whatever they think will make them look better to the others on the call and in the eyes of admissions officers. It almost guarantees progressive groupthink, on everything from critical race theory to Gaza, in the applicant pool. By pitting applicants against each other and allowing them to vote others 'off the island' via rankings on empathy, curiosity or kindness, markers of merit and academic ability that were once the gold standard of college admissions will fade even further. Advertisement The 'dialogues' are moderated by a platform launched by Khan Academy founder Sal Khan, who pitches the Zoom calls as a way for admissions officers to gauge which applicants can earn the respect of their peers. In reality, they'll showcase applicants' ability to choose allies and indulge in ideological shaming. And by viewing applicants' skin tones and hearing their voices, admissions officers will glean information they are no longer legally permitted to request. Advertisement Universities will be able to select students based on diversity, equity and inclusion principles — without anyone being the wiser. Colleges want what the Supreme Court has told them they cannot have: an artificially, intentionally engineered racially diverse student body. And they'll do whatever they have to do to get it. After the court said 'no' to affirmative action in the landmark 2023 decision Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard, that Ivy and other colleges said, 'OK, fine' — and started figuring out new ways to tell which applicant is 'diverse' and which isn't. Some implemented identity-based personal essays as part of the admissions process, asking students to discuss a situation in which they had to overcome adversity. 'Adversity,' of course, was just code for 'tell us how white people have discriminated against you because of your racial status.' Other schools have followed suit, with some going as far as requiring photos to accompany the admissions package. Advertisement It seems nothing will convince these schools that admitting students based on race is inherently wrong. Instead, they continue to weaken the value of their own degrees by changing the standards and expectations for obtaining one. The college-admissions industry will start training kids on how to game these group interviews — and these videos will become part of kids' 'permanent records.' Advertisement Who knows how they'll be used to cancel them for wrongthink in years to come. It's been years since colleges aimed to admit students based on their academic merit. Students with means no longer need to hire tutors, learn how to score high marks on admissions tests or even pay someone to write their personal essays to convince schools they're capable of making the grade. Now, all they have to do is practice how to game a Zoom call, how to say the expected, socially approved leftist line and how to make other kids on the call look inferior. Advertisement It's a way to implement a progressive purity test that's more insidious than affirmative action ever was. If it all seems a little barbaric, you're right — it is. Colleges should admit students with academic promise, not those best able to figure out how to manipulate compassion tests. Libby Emmons is the editor-in-chief at the Post Millennial.
Time of India
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
Polished performers wanted: Elite colleges and the scripted art of polite disagreement
How the 'disagreement question' is reshaping US college applications. (AI Image) In the grand circus of elite college admissions, it appears that the ringmasters have discovered a new act. After years of coaxing applicants to wear their racial or socioeconomic identities like glittering badges of struggle, universities are now demanding a fresh proof of virtue: the ability to gracefully disagree . Yes, 'disagreement' has become the buzzword of the season — not the real, sweaty, soul-testing kind, but the polished, rehearsed variety fit for an application essay or a Zoom call. According to a recent New York Times report, elite institutions like Columbia, MIT, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern and others have begun asking students to recount 'a moment of engaging with an opposing opinion.' The goal, ostensibly, is to reward civility and intellectual flexibility. But here's the catch — and it's a familiar one. Much like the now-defunct diversity essays that students learned to game with borrowed trauma and repackaged ancestry, this new 'disagreement question' has already become another stage for well-scripted performances. Zooming in on simulated civility The fakery doesn't stop at essays. NYT reports that a new digital tool — co-founded by Khan Academy's Sal Khan — is being welcomed by top schools as a portfolio option. Students log into Zoom debates on topics like immigration or the Israel-Palestine conflict, not to be evaluated for the strength of their argument, but to be rated by peers on 'empathy,' 'curiosity' and 'kindness.' by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like 5 Books Warren Buffett Wants You To Read in 2025 Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List Undo If that sounds like a Netflix reality show disguised as civic engagement, you're not wrong. Virtue theatre 2.0 Let's not pretend that these exercises foster genuine discourse. What they reward is emotional choreography : Nod, smile, express mild discomfort, concede ground without conviction. It's a civility Olympics judged by unseen deans with rubrics and quotas. Elite colleges have gone from diversity checkboxes to civility checkboxes without ever examining the machinery itself. As long as essays remain open-ended moral auditions, the most polished performers — usually from the most privileged backgrounds — will dominate. And so the illusion continues: That admission to the Ivy League is about values, not veneers. The risk-averse university What's emerging here is not just student fakery. It's a deeper, institutional anxiety — an aversion to discomfort itself. By over-sanitising admissions prompts, elite colleges are shielding themselves from ideological tension long before the students even arrive. Rather than strengthening on-campus discourse, these prompts outsource it to a pre-screening ritual that privileges performance over authenticity. Applicants with the resources to workshop their responses — with tutors, counsellors, and guides — are better equipped to navigate the unwritten rules of 'acceptable disagreement.' Those without? They risk being too real and penalised. This trend doesn't just reward privilege. It also reflects how elite institutions are trying to engineer safety into spaces that should thrive on discomfort — especially when the point is to prepare students to think critically. The real fix colleges won't touch If institutions genuinely cared about fostering meaningful discourse, they wouldn't outsource it to 17-year-olds on application deadlines. They'd build it into the undergraduate experience — through serious investment in disciplines that demand intellectual rigor, curiosity, and ideological discomfort. They'd train faculty not to police disagreement, but to manage it with nuance. But that requires structural change. It's easier to tweak the application form and call it transformation. The next moral checkbox? The tragedy of the disagreement prompt isn't that it exists — it's that it will be optimised, gamed, and commodified like everything else. From 'tell us about your hardship' to 'tell us how politely you fought,' the admissions process continues to reward those who've mastered the language of institutional approval. What's next? Patriotism essays? Environmental guilt confessions? A declaration of digital detox? Until the metrics change, students will continue to simulate virtue. And colleges will continue to pretend they can measure character in 650 words — or one smiley Zoom call at a time. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Carnegie Mellon University announces partnership with Sal Khan's Schoolhouse.world
As part of his visit to Carnegie Mellon University to give the keynote address at commencement on Sunday, Sal Khan, founder of the renowned nonprofit educational platform Khan Academy, and CMU announced a new partnership between the school and one of Khan's other ventures. CMU and a digital platform that offers free educational services worldwide with a focus on high school-level curricula, are partnering, which will allow CMU students to have both expanded access to the platform and gain experience as tutors. 'Carnegie Mellon University is deeply committed to fostering access and opportunity, and we also applaud Sal Khan's record of creating innovative and high-quality educational experiences that are broadly available to learners around the world, including Khan Academy and CMU President Farnam Jahanian said in a statement. 'Our new collaboration seeks to unite our institutions around our shared commitment and further democratize learning, benefiting Carnegie Mellon students, high school students around the world and society at large.' Click here to read more from our partners at the Pittsburgh Business Times. Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW
