I mean, Crash Course History certainly has done a good job of attempting it.

I suspect part of the success of Khan academy is that many people are highly motivated to learn STEM type subjects for employment-related reasons, and are always looking for ways to explain concepts so that they 'get' them and can use them, pass exams, get qualifications, get better jobs.

There is rarely that kind of, or that breadth of, motivation for historical studies. It's less easy to break historiography down into bit-size skills and applications to master, and there is less pay-off for learning and digesting a course of history on a topic or period.

I think it is a great idea, though it would be challenging because the historiographical debates within most fields make it difficult to proclaim 'this is the history of x' without either irritating scholars of the other view or focusing on little more than facts. To make it work, and to make it as objective as possible (something that is relatively easier in a hard science), you would need to set up most videos or lessons as a point-counterpoint scenario. You also have the issue of entertainment versus education – history, by virtue of being narrative-centric, treads that line very delicately. That said, I'd love to see it come to fruition, and I'd do whatever I could to help.

/u/LoneGazebo makes the great point that there is no definitive take on historical narratives. But even if there were there's also the problem of scope.

When teaching math or science there might be some simplifications, or glossing over the finer points of a proof but it can usually be taught in digestible chunks. And at each level is a new "skill": now you know multiplication, now you know how to use multiplication to do find the standard deviation, now you can do a regression. Each piece is relatively self contained, and you can learn as much as you want and no more.

But with history there really is no scope for subjects. You can list all the causes of an event, but each cause has its own history, and those causes have their own. So, you can't just end a 5-15 min video saying "Now you have a definitive knowledge of this event." You have to make all those videos blend together into a course to put each piece into a context. Now you're not Khan Academy, you're Corsera. Or a university's open course program. Which is a fine thing to be, but not what you set out for.

And then the OTHER problem. The business problem. What if the videos don't teach what's going to be on the student's test? What if some teacher doesn't like the idea of what you're doing an purposefully chooses questions that you don't cover? Calculus is calculus no matter who teaches it. But if a student watches your video and they don't get a better grade on their next test they're not going to watch another one.

Khan Academy already has a History Section, though it is not as well known as their math section. I haven't messed with it much so I can't comment on the quality and even if I had I'm not a historian so I couldn't comment on the accuracy

I think the alternative for Khan Academy in terms of history could be starting a YouTube channel with bite-sized information, like what Khan Academy is doing, but do it with flaired users. I think sustaining it will be the most difficult part, but getting it started up shouldn't be impossible.

But with channels like Crash Course History the question is what kind of crowd we'd draw. As Talondearg says, there's a lot less pay-off for going through historical videos, so the question lies in what you can really offer that's different from Crash Course and Khan Academy, and that people won't get bored of.

I think a big part is that wanting to know an aspect of history isn't hard in text format (Wikipedia or for more advanced books/articles) whereas math and sciences generally benefit much more from examples/drawings/etc.

In many ways the need just isn't there combined with a broader scope (in that unlike sciences there isn't a natural progression if how you learn history)

what about wikipedia? Occasionally they have quite good articles; another trick is to compare the different language versions for an articles on the same topic, usually that adds some depth as well.

I think it's the sheer scope and comprehension needed for a decent history lesson. You can't just lay out facts and numbers without context and narratives. I can't see bite-size history lessons working unless you already have a very through knowledge of the background history because history doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Math and science seems easier to explain as you don't need proofs to explain most things and once you have a basic foundation, you can work your way upwards. History, literature and the rest of the humanities are more difficult to tackle. Also, where would you start and end? How detailed do you go? What would you deem important important enough to include? And how do you explain something like say the French Revolution in a ten minute video without omitting much yet keeping the interest of the general population?