Why Sal Khan's AI Tutor Failed: He Learned by Making, but Taught by Telling

Why Sal Khan't: On Learning by Making but Teaching by Telling

Sal Khan launched Khanmigo, an AI chatbot tutor, with world-changing ambitions, but even he admits it was 'a non-event' for most students. This piece argues the failure wasn't a lack of effort but a fundamental design flaw: Khan's own learning was active, purposeful, and driven by Dewey's four impulses—inquire, construct, express, and communicate—yet he offered students only the passive consumption of his explanations. The author traces this to a lack of pedagogical knowledge, suggesting that edtech's focus on delivering content misses the real driver of learning: purpose and active construction.