Skip to content

education

concept · in 61 videos (2007–2026)

Learning and teaching as a general topic: schools, teachers, educational media and access to learning. Their educational channels aim to help learners and teachers, not replace the classroom.

Videos by year: 2007: 3 · 2009: 1 · 2010: 4 · 2011: 3 · 2012: 5 · 2013: 2 · 2014: 1 · 2015: 9 · 2016: 5 · 2017: 4 · 2018: 1 · 2019: 3 · 2020: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2022: 2 · 2023: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2026: 1

Threads

Also named in the threads: Daniel Biss runs for Illinois state representative (2007) · John: share several Syrian refugees' stories from Jordan in the coming weeks (2016) · John visits the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and meets refugee families (2016) · Complexly: the brothers' production company, renamed from EcoGeek (2016) · Hank asks viewers to donate to Complexly's Learnathon (2024)

Questions

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

extreme poverty (6) · progress (5) · malaria (4) · Crash Course (6) · Crash Course coin (2) · child mortality (3) · economic inequality (2) · global health (2) · Daniel Biss (2) · TikTok (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

2009

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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • Hank thinks educational online video has the potential power to change the face of the world. (hedged) — 00:00:58
    • 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

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 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
  • 2015-05-22 · 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
  • 2015-09-25 · 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
    • 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
  • …and 7 statements more in 2015 — all statements of 2015

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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
  • 2016-04-12 · 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
  • …and 2 statements more in 2016 — all statements of 2016

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
    • 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
    • Hank says life is not a job training program: we are not in college, or on Earth, to get jobs. — 00:01:45
    • 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
    • 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
    • Hank is frustrated that math is often taught today in a way that ignores these questions. — 00:00:30
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
  • 2024-09-13 · 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
    • 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