Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Khan Academy founder Sal Khan recently spoke at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit about their efforts to revolutionize education.

Hastings notes that kids who sit down to learn something online and get carried away could end up binge-learning calculus.

As Caleb Garling explains in Vanity Fair

Netflix has become famous for releasing shows all at once and people watch all the episodes at once. Moderator Jane Stoddard Williams asked Hastings about that phenomenon and how it related to education.

“My first binge was calculus,” Hastings said. “I got to college, I hadn’t had much calculus, and the college I went to had a self-paced program . . . I loved it. I could just go at my own pace, and it was a fantastic experience.”

“It was tremendously engaging in the same way that binge entertainment is—you’re in control,” Hastings continued. “Like reading a whole book in one night, it’s a normal experience to do that. There are things like TV once a week, or having your physics class once a week, which are artificially regulated.”

Joanne Jacobs interviews Reed Hastings about his efforts to disrupt the education establishment in the new issue of Education Next.

—Education Next