Fix Bad Education (or Enhance Good Education) With These Videos
Some people received excellent education in high school. But some of us were sent to an evangelical Christian school, where we learned that evolution is a lie, Columbus was a tough guy, and Catholics were pretending. For us and anyone else who suspects their education may be using a revisionist update, there is a free YouTube Crash Course channel.
Get out those Trapper Keepers and sharpen your # 2 pencils – it’s a week back to school ! Going far beyond the classroom, we bring you ingenious tricks and ideas on how to get started on a chore, brush up on old skills, or learn something new this fall.
The Crash Course is a series of instructional videos started by rookie writer John Green (author of The Mistake in Our Stars ) and his brother, video blogger Hank Green. 22 courses, each containing up to 48 episodes, cover a wide range of topics in history, science, social studies and art. The presenters are interesting (although older viewers may find them a little tiring) and the content is carefully researched and includes frequent quotes from original sources.
My specialty medical education focused on US history that begins with Native American civilizations and early European conquests. Host John Green speaks quickly and visuals appear around him. This course won’t explore every nook and cranny of American history, but it is great for building a coherent storytelling that will change your understanding of major events.
For example, an episode about the Revolutionary War is titled “Who Won the American Revolution?” It reminds us that America was never a monolith and that while the revolution destroyed some power structures, it strengthened others, such as those based on race and gender. Greene also reminds us that this was not meant to be the case, that even at this historic moment, many were fighting to free slaves, grant voting rights to the poor, and empower women.
Crash Course perfectly answers the question: “What happened in that era?” This final quality makes it a useful addition for today’s high school students who often need to hear the same information presented in several different ways. When she was teaching biology in high school, my Lifehacker colleague Beth Skorecki showed her students a series of articles on biology and chemistry . (For younger students, try Crash Course Kids , which focuses on science topics for fifth grade.)
The crash course is for everyone. “When people ask us how we want these things to be used, we really don’t have a clear answer,” John says in the channel’s opening video. “We’re just trying to create educational content in the hope that it will be useful to people.”