Rand Paul, generally considered to be a leading thinker in the Republican party, is now also an education expert.
One example of the innovations he’ll be promoting: Paul said he’s fascinated by Khan Academy. He first became interested in the program while helping his kids with math and discovered Khan Academy online. “I remember a video on the Doppler effect, and saying, ‘My goodness, this is a better explanation,’” Paul recalled. “I took a lot of science and math growing up, and it’s the best explanation I’ve ever seen.” “If you have one person in the country who is, like, the best at explaining calculus, that person maybe should teach every calculus class in the country,” the senator said. “You’d still have local teachers to reinforce and try to explain and help the kids, but you’d have some of these extraordinary teachers teaching millions of people in the classroom.”
In other words, Paul’s innovation is the lecture. It may be recorded, distributed digitally, possibly with better graphics.
But still a lecture, representing the centuries-old concept of learning as the one-way transmission of information from an expert to the student.