All statements about education

110 statements about education in 61 videos, by upload date.

Back to education.

2007

2007-04-16 · Brotherhood 2.0: April 16: Brotherhood of Traveling Shirts — John: Biss's two top issues are raising education funding in Illinois, which John says is the 49th state in terms of education, and cutting carbon emissions. — 00:02:49
2007-10-11 · October 11th National Coming Out Day — Seth Godin (quoted): Seth Godin, as relayed by Hank, says YouTube video is not only going to be but already is a better medium than books, reaching far more eyeballs on many topics. — 00:00:58
2007-10-15 · Oct 15th: Happy 16th Birthday B20 — Hank qualifies his recent claim that video blogs can transmit ideas better than books: not always; Harry Potter would make a horrible video blog. — 00:02:23

2009

2009-07-15 · This Isn't Hogwarts! A Harry Potter Song — Hank says he wrote the song partly because he truly believes the US school system is degrading quickly and thinks it could learn from Hogwarts. (hedged) — 00:03:02

2010

2010-01-04 · It Hurts In My Toof: The 2010 Rules — John says he once thought math was an arbitrary conspiracy to make him suffer, but it is hugely helpful to adults, even writers; government invests in education because numerate citizens are useful. (playful) — 00:00:29
2010-01-13 · Froghoppin' with Gatsby — John argues such stupidity comes from bad reading, teaching and thinking; a liberal arts education teaches what to think about, and critical reading, like math, helps him learn what is interesting and grapple with an unjust world. — 00:03:17
2010-11-01 · Consider the Lemming — John says commenters often call him a would-be great teacher; flattered, he says it's untrue because there's a huge gulf between the informational and the truly educational. — 00:00:29
2010-11-01 · Consider the Lemming — John says Disney's staged lemming suicide is an interesting, informational fact but not educational; the internet is very good at providing information and has proven less good at education. — 00:01:47
2010-11-01 · Consider the Lemming — John says the problem with teaching is that a teacher must teach not only the interesting stuff but its context, which is often incredibly boring. — 00:02:16
2010-11-01 · Consider the Lemming — John says knowing such facts would not give an informed understanding of the French Revolution; we have gotten good at 'informationalism' but not yet very educational. (hedged) — 00:02:46
2010-12-13 · 8 Things I Love — John argues people who think they hate math don't hate math; they hate the way they have been taught math. — 00:02:41

2011

2011-05-16 · Grab It By The Testicle — Hank offers advice in verse to the year's college and high-school graduates, in the familiar commencement-speech format. — 00:00:01
2011-05-16 · Grab It By The Testicle — Hank tells graduates they don't know jack: the best they can hope is to have been taught to learn, and they are ending one structure, not learning. — 00:00:46
2011-05-16 · Grab It By The Testicle — Hank says everyone keeps learning one way or another, whatever they do: parenting, music, coffee, spreadsheets, hotels, laws, websites. — 00:00:58
2011-05-18 · The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED — John says Hank's poetic commencement address made him think about education and why we're alive. — 00:00:08
2011-05-18 · The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED — John describes the common view of education as a soft-hard continuum: math at the hard end with one right answer, literature at the soft end about being a person among others. — 00:00:13
2011-05-18 · The Education Continuum WARNER CHILCOTTED — John argues we study math and literature for the same twin reasons: to learn a language and to understand our place in the universe. — 00:01:34
2011-10-26 · 7,000,000,000 People — Hank: Good news, per Hank: birth rates are down to 2.5 babies per woman, near replacement; contraception use is up dramatically; disease and poverty rates are lower; education is higher. — 00:02:11

2012

2012-02-07 · 10 Misconceptions Debunked! — John: In the Crash Course preview John says the real test measures whether you are an informed, engaged, productive citizen of the world; it lasts your whole life and everything is on it. — 00:03:11
2012-04-13 (said on 2012-04-14, implied) · This is How You Load a Dishwasher - A Song — Hank says many things go untaught to twelve-year-olds in American schools, such as the Battle of Hastings or the Magna Carta, and the Titanic is not top of his list of additions. — 00:02:48
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says primary education became mandatory for all American children in 1918. — 00:00:08
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says Germany had compulsory primary education from the late 18th century, that thanks to the Meiji reforms 90% of Japanese kids were in school by 1900, and England followed around 1880. — 00:00:14
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says that everywhere primary education became a requirement only after 1775, so compulsory education covers a short slice of history since the agricultural revolution: a roughly 250-year period. — 00:00:23
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says the era of compulsory education has been a good run for humans, from steam engines, the internet and antibiotics to longer lives and landing on Mars, and that this is not a coincidence. — 00:00:38
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says school is not about students or their parents but exists for his benefit: he pays school taxes without a child in school because he is better off in a well-educated world. — 00:02:33
2012-08-07 · An Open Letter to Students Returning to School — John says public education is not a charity project: he pays for schools so students grow up to make his life better with books, cars, medicines and even crispier microwave pizza. — 00:02:48
2012-10-19 · Revolutionizing Education...With Weirdos — Hank: In his talk Hank argues that educational video is a completely different value proposition for its viewer than entertaining video. — 00:00:29
2012-10-19 · Revolutionizing Education...With Weirdos — Hank thinks educational online video has the potential power to change the face of the world. (hedged) — 00:00:58
2012-10-19 · Revolutionizing Education...With Weirdos — Hank: Nothing excites Hank more right now than revolutionizing how and what we teach; he thinks he and John are part of that innovation and lucky to be there. (hedged) — 00:03:25
2012-12-17 · THE PROJECT FOR AWESOME 2012 IS HERE! Save the Children. — John says poverty is an incredibly complex problem: corrupt governments, malaria and HIV/AIDS, climate change and energy policy hurting food production, malnutrition, poor infrastructure and education, and discrimination all contribute. — 00:00:52

2013

2013-10-18 · Curiosity is the Greatest Human Quality — Hank says education is about learning, teaching and knowing, but its most important piece is inspiring curiosity and understanding how important curiosity is. (hedged) — 00:01:15
2013-12-31 · GOOD NEWS: 14 Reasons 2014 May Be the Best Year Ever — John says more girls attend school worldwide and literacy among women in their 20s rose from 79% in 1990 to 87% today. — 00:03:03

2014

2014-10-17 · MY FACE ON A BUS — Hank hopes the campaign is good for SciShow, because he thinks more SciShow is better for the world: society needs more scientific literacy, and SciShow does that fairly well compared with TV science. (hedged) — 00:02:32

2015

2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank calls twelve years of free education a remarkable gift society gave him, though it did not stop him from complaining about it constantly. — 00:00:01
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank says the American education system has problems and he will discuss two interrelated ones. — 00:00:38
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank defines education as building a toolkit to solve problems and applying it; it involves discrete facts but is much more than that. — 00:00:44
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank says we learn the alphabet not for its arbitrary order but to read and write, which solves the impermanence of spoken words. — 00:01:00
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank says everything taught in school should increase our collective problem-solving toolkit, as US history and long division do; an informed populace that agrees on basics solves problems. — 00:01:16
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank's first problem: he remembers school as shoving facts into short-term memory for tests and forgetting them, which taught him only how to do well on tests. — 00:01:37
2015-01-16 · Is School Broken? (Also...ANNOUNCEMENTS OF IMPORT) — Hank's second problem: our toolkit is what we use to solve problems professionally, a job, so if everyone gets the same toolkit there is a glut, as supply outstrips demand. — 00:01:51
2015-02-10 · Understanding Boko Haram — John says indirect rule left the north with much less Western-style education than the directly ruled south, so the south got most doctors, lawyers and bureaucrats; also, all the oil is in the south. — 00:00:57
2015-02-10 · Understanding Boko Haram — John says that in much of northern Nigeria fewer than half of children attend elementary school, and gives a female (il)literacy figure of over 50% (the two sources disagree on the word). (doubtful: over 50%) — 00:02:46
2015-02-20 · Why Are Fewer People Studying Science and Engineering? — Hank says pushing teenagers into STEM because it is the only way to a good job is a terrible thing to do to a 15-year-old, telling them to start panicking a decade early. (hedged) — 00:02:24
2015-02-20 · Why Are Fewer People Studying Science and Engineering? — Hank says STEM learning should be treated like any big problem, one step at a time, driven by interests and fascinations rather than the end goal. — 00:02:48
2015-02-20 · Why Are Fewer People Studying Science and Engineering? — Hank says the most interesting toolkit includes both science, technology and engineering and the liberal arts, the education he had and is grateful for. — 00:02:58
2015-05-15 · Happy Graduation, Future Dead People — Hank says we educate and improve ourselves to become more effective at making positive changes, creating more solutions than problems. — 00:03:09
2015-05-22 · 15 Rants in Four Minutes — Hank complains that school never taught him to do his taxes, though government pays for schools and wants taxes paid, yet taught long division, quadratic equations and cursive he never uses. (playful) — 00:03:15
2015-06-12 · Why is College So Expensive? — Hank suggests colleges should give students enrichment and education rather than sell an experience; students learning about the world and themselves matters, possibly more than money, and needn't cost $40,000 a year. (hedged) — 00:04:21
2015-09-22 · Is Poverty Necessary? Looking back at the Millennium Development Goals — John: Universal primary education is not reached but progress is impressive: primary enrolment in the developing world is over 90%, and youth literacy rose from 83% to 91% in 25 years. — 00:01:19
2015-09-25 · Pissed Off for a Better World — Hank: Every child should go to school, no one should be hungry or in extreme poverty, and corrupt governments and greed should not stand in the way of the goals. — 00:01:27
2015-09-25 · Pissed Off for a Better World — Hank: After the sign-off Hank says he is honestly amazed at how far we've come, with infant mortality down and education and access to clean water up. — 00:02:45
2015-10-16 · Post-NerdCon Haze — Hank says an infrastructure has been built around novels, in bookstores and in our minds, and most classes focus on the novel because that is the format that has existed. — video description

2016

2016-03-04 · Startling Facts About the Government that Made Me Feel Good — Hank's figures put the uniformed military at 1.4 million, with more than 7 million local government employees outside education and more than 7 million in local education. — video description
2016-03-04 · Startling Facts About the Government that Made Me Feel Good — Hank says people overestimate the uniformed military and underestimate public education, by far the largest category of government employee, with more than 7 million workers. — 00:01:15
2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John: Asked about their most urgent needs, the girls' parents said only that they wanted the children in school, a theme among almost every refugee John met. — 00:00:43
2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John: The day before, in the Zaatari camp, John met the Tiger Group, where young women mentor girls; asked what they wanted most, Aryam and Farah immediately answered 'to learn'. — 00:00:52
2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John: Nahid, a mother of young children who volunteers as a teacher, told John she wants her children to have a good education. — 00:01:03
2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John says camp schools are underfunded, so classes meet only half of each day and a primary classroom sometimes holds over 75 students. — 00:01:28
2016-03-08 · Aida and Majeeda: Thoughts from the Azraq Refugee Camp — John: Children are often pulled from school for chores or paid work, which shortens their schooling and narrows their careers; this is what is meant by a 'lost generation' of Syrian youth. — 00:03:05
2016-04-12 · On the Banning of Looking for Alaska — John: Recalling earlier videos, John says publicly funded learning exists primarily not for parents or even students but for the benefit of the social order. (hedged) — 00:02:23
2016-04-12 · On the Banning of Looking for Alaska — John says everyone is better off with a well-educated population, which is likelier to start businesses, develop cancer treatments and write musicals about treasury secretaries; that is why everyone pays taxes for schools and libraries. — 00:02:32
2016-05-03 · No Fumar — John tells high school students that doing well on tests is great but is not the point of life or of education; tests measure understanding somewhat inefficiently. — 00:01:38
2016-05-03 · No Fumar — John says the point is not to do well on the test but to have a more engaged, fulfilling life during your one brief flicker of consciousness; study hard, but not just for the test. — 00:01:52
2016-06-07 · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp — John met three teenage boys in a photography class taught by refugee volunteers; 15-year-old Ubay had dropped out of school to work but joined because he missed learning. — 00:00:09
2016-06-07 · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp — John says economic pressure makes keeping refugee kids in school very hard, worsened by underfunded, overcrowded schools: two shifts, a few hours a day, often over 100 kids per classroom. — 00:00:32
2016-06-07 · Zaatari: Thoughts from a Refugee Camp — John visited Musa Mohammed's family, whose 18-year-old daughter was about to begin university; they had a two-storey house and a car in Syria and now have only hope in their children's education. — 00:02:15

2017

2017-05-26 · Some Rough Advice for the "Real World" — Hank tells graduates they didn't go to school to learn how to get a job but to learn, and they did: they know more now. — 00:02:45
2017-07-21 · On Condom Failure — The description says Hank has always thought sex ed and statistics should be one course: nothing better shows how vital statistics is to everyday life. — video description
2017-08-11 · Life is not a Job Training Program — Hank calls it a lie we tell ourselves, or let colleges tell us, that college is job training; you are learning to be better at things, which helps in getting and doing work. (hedged) — 00:01:21
2017-08-11 · Life is not a Job Training Program — Hank says in college or in life you acquire many skills without knowing which will prove useful; you have them precisely because you don't know which you will need. — 00:01:35
2017-08-11 · Life is not a Job Training Program — Hank says life is not a job training program: we are not in college, or on Earth, to get jobs. — 00:01:45
2017-08-11 · Life is not a Job Training Program — Hank hopes we are on Earth to solve problems for ourselves and others, and says education of whatever kind helps with that. (hedged) — 00:01:51
2017-12-12 · 2017 is the Best? — John: By some measures 2017 is the best year in history (not Twitter's): absolute poverty is at its lowest share, schooling and adult literacy at their highest, and cancer death rates are down globally. — 00:00:48

2018

2018-05-15 · Seven Maps to Better Understand the World — John: Our World in Data maps of average years of schooling over six decades show that, despite huge gaps between rich and poor, kids all around the world are getting more educational opportunities. — 00:00:58

2019

2019-02-12 · Are Textbooks Obsolete? — John says these free tools are often less comprehensive than textbooks but more interactive and adaptable to different students, and cost nothing instead of $10 billion a year, much of it paid by underfunded public schools. — 00:00:58
2019-02-19 · Battling Apathy and Searching for Meaning on Question Tuesday — John says school can feel like it is about tests, grades and constant worry, but its point is to understand the universe better, and physics can help with that. — 00:01:27
2019-07-26 · The Best $10,000 I Ever Spent — Hank: Without systems that drive down the cost of needs, Hank says, we spend everything we have on them; health, education and housing can't be run to extract every drop of value, or people are impoverished. — video description

2020

2020-04-03 · 11 Little Tips for Better Video Chat (For Teachers...and Everybody Else) — Hank says the goal of these channels isn't to replace the classroom, which can't be replaced, but to help learners and teachers. — 00:00:27
2020-05-19 · Didn't Make Sense Not to Live for Fun — John reads Pink Floyd's lyric, sung by schoolchildren on The Wall, as kids rejecting a rigid education that force-feeds values and forms them into identical bricks in a wall. — 00:01:27
2020-05-19 · Didn't Make Sense Not to Live for Fun — John says language exists to facilitate expression, not limit it, and the kids reject an education that uses language to enforce uniformity and limit free expression. — 00:01:56
2020-06-09 · i could use a little fuel myself — John: For John the fake diploma symbolizes how great teachers really can change the lives of their students. — 00:01:27
2020-09-04 · Go Play! — The description says Crash Course lacks math courses because teaching math for tests is very different from teaching its beauty and joy; they want both and have found that very hard, though not impossible. — video description
2020-09-04 · Go Play! — Hank is frustrated that math is often taught today in a way that ignores these questions. — 00:00:30
2020-09-04 · Go Play! — Hank finds it wild that we teach the Pythagorean theorem without teaching that mathematicians build universes in their minds that are, in some ways, more perfect than ours. — 00:02:16
2020-09-04 · Go Play! — Hank says math is a game we play in our minds, yet teaching has gone from inviting play to demanding remembered equations used to judge who gets to go to college. — 00:03:15
2020-11-13 · How We Teach: Individualist Stories — Hank says you cannot know everything, yet must understand enough of the world to live in it; access to real information, its quantity, is what we usually think of as education. — 00:00:00
2020-11-13 · How We Teach: Individualist Stories — Hank says the focus on imparting quantity of information forces a lot of simplification, which comes at the cost of other tools needed to live in the world. — 00:00:44
2020-11-13 · How We Teach: Individualist Stories — Hank says the story itself does a ton of work: education gives lenses to understand the world, often stories, and shared lenses (knowledge, values, worldviews) that help us live, work and communicate together. — 00:01:56
2020-12-18 · How to Change What you Want — Hank has found ways to alter his wants: to want to work more on Crash Course he engages with education through podcasts and talks about making college accessible, and the more he engages, the more he wants it. — 00:00:58

2021

2021-01-05 · SUPERIOR FISH BEINGS — John: We also already know that every person deserves access to health care and educational opportunities. — 00:02:55
2021-04-16 · Gene Editing and Intelligence: A Bad — Hank: This is a lesson not only for before genetically engineering new humans but for educating, enabling and appreciating humans now. — 00:03:24

2022

2022-02-11 · Knowing is not Understanding - Pluto and the P4A — Hank says he is passionate about the idea that understanding something is much more valuable than just knowing that it exists. — 00:00:00
2022-02-11 · Knowing is not Understanding - Pluto and the P4A — Hank says textbook teaching treats knowing as being as important as understanding, or more, and that is wrong: understanding is more important than knowing. — 00:00:29
2022-06-10 · My Embarrassing Dermatology Story — Hank names two major barriers to learning: access (cost, availability, acceptance) and the often ignored difficulty of learning itself, since getting complex ideas into heads takes well-trained experts. — 00:01:27
2022-06-10 · My Embarrassing Dermatology Story — Hank says Crash Course is on YouTube because students and teachers already are; instead of selling to school districts and forcing it on teachers, it lets them choose, so it is used only when found useful. — 00:01:56
2022-06-10 · My Embarrassing Dermatology Story — Hank says the goal must be to push barriers to learning as low as possible, since they cannot be eliminated, because the human story is about how well we help each other learn. — 00:02:55

2023

2023-01-27 · An Announcement 3 Years in the Making — Hank says the goal is not to replace college with YouTube videos but to look closely at the barriers and lower the ones they can. — 00:03:24
2023-01-31 · I'm Going Back to College? — John says he never understood that the point of school is not a degree or meeting expectations but to better understand the universe and your place in it. — 00:00:58
2023-01-31 · I'm Going Back to College? — John calls Hank's newly announced Study Hall, a Complexly, ASU and Google partnership linking educational YouTube videos to college credit, brilliant. — 00:02:35
2023-05-02 · GOOD NEWS — John: As John Chew explained, almost all the construction workers were trained in new skills, partly through classes and partly through educational YouTube videos. — 00:02:55
2023-06-20 · Reflections from a Terrible CEO — John says the companies try to connect creators to fans, lower barriers to education and expand access to health care. — 00:03:54

2024

2024-05-31 · The People I Hate Most in the World — Hank says the good Crash Course has done in the world is bonkers and the work, thought and care put into it are off the charts. — 00:00:29
2024-08-26 · Welcome to the Learn-a-Thon — Hank says almost anyone can make a YouTube video about anything, true or not; Complexly answers what a network that vets and fact-checks free content to help teachers and students would look like. — 00:00:00
2024-08-26 · Welcome to the Learn-a-Thon — Hank says access to learning should not depend on location or money, which is why Complexly videos are free, and that good information can make the world better. — 00:00:51
2024-08-26 · Welcome to the Learn-a-Thon — announcement: Hank announces the Learnathon, a fundraiser over the next few weeks for Complexly's mission of accessible education, celebrating its staff with livestreams and behind-the-scenes videos. — 00:00:51
2024-09-13 · My Governor is Weirder than Yours — Ryan Busse: Busse says he runs to make Montana better: public education is the backbone of democracy and in peril, and attacking women and freedom is wrong. — 00:04:47

2025

2025-05-23 · I Can’t Believe How Few People it Takes. — Hank says education is the second largest industry in the US, with costs and value created both in the trillions of dollars per year. — 00:01:50
2025-05-23 · I Can’t Believe How Few People it Takes. — Hank says this free-video model is extremely valuable only because people consider whether they can help, and viewers watching have done that work. — 00:04:23
2025-11-21 · I Wasn't Always Like This!! — Hank says he watches many science communicators on YouTube and learns both their subjects and their techniques. — 00:03:40

2026

2026-02-04 · We Just Sold Our Company for $0 — Hank says Complexly answers this with educational content of high standards that still competes for attention, and is well positioned to do more. — 00:03:05