Math Points: The Machine Stops

“To such a state of affairs it is convenient to give the name of progress. No one confessed the Machine was out of hand. Year by year it was served with increased efficiency and decreased intelligence. The better a man knew his own duties upon it, the less he understood the duties of his niehgbour, and in all the world there was not one who understood the monster as a whole. Those master brains had perished...”

This quote is from a E. M. Forster story entitled The Machine Stops, written in 1928. When I re-read this story recently, I was struck by the images as being metaphoric for mathematics education in particular and our “globalized” culture in general.

The story is set in a future period in which a computing machine coordinates the work of the world -- and also responds to every human whim. Due to pollution, humans lived underground. The machine controls the environment as well as communication. Humans had developed a dependency on a concept that nobody understood; progress had become the living, the sentience. The culture had adapted to the machine; those who did not follow the machine were seen as non-believers, and were cast out.

Eventually, in this story, the machine deteriorates over time and finally breaks down. Because the machine controlled the environment, the collapse of the machine meant the death of all humans -- except those who were cast out. Even though there were signs that the machine was malfunctioning more frequently, the tragedy could not be avoided -- people had to have total faith in the machine, and nobody could repair it anyway.

Our world in the 1990's has some properties in common with the world in this story. Although we don’t have a machine controlling our lives, we can take the story a little less literally -- and see that our ‘machine’ is corporate power. Our culture worships “jobs” and “economic growth”, and those who are non-believers are cast out. This analysis may be subtle, but I believe it is accurate; however, you are safe from more on this aspect -- after all, this is a “mathematics” newsletter, not a sociological one.

I am hoping that you are thinking “What the heck does this story have to do with mathematics education?” I believe we have two ‘machines’: the dependency on computing devices, and the invasion of commercial enterprises into academia (and mathematics in particular). Please re-read that last sentence carefully, and let me explain briefly what I mean.

When discuss methodologies in the mathematics classroom, sometimes we tend to frame the computing device (calculator or computer) as a “believer” and “non-believer” issue: Either you require (or at least allow) these devices in your classroom, or you don’t belong with the good educators. Especially in mathematics, where there are pressures to make it a ‘laboratory science’, our peer groups expect us to use computing devices as well as instruments for measuring motion and temperature. My point is not to debate the specific merits of using technology for a particular learning objective. My point is to question the culture we are creating in the process. What do our students believe about mathematics? Do they think that mathematics does not exist without the tools we use? Do students think they are learning mathematics when they complete a lab with a measurement device? Do they think that mathematics only exists if it has come from a concrete situation first?

I realize that ‘progress’ goes on, that mathematics will never be the same; the teaching and practice of mathematics has been changed by technology. But what if ... what if we reach a point where the machine breaks down? Are there enough physical resources to build newer and better computing devices for an indefinite period? What if ... what if environmentalists discover that components of calculators create a large toxic waste problem? What are the limits to technological growth?

The other machine we are facing is the invasion of commercial enterprise into education in general and into mathematics education in particular. We have had publishing companies involved with education for a long time; however, until recently, most of these companies were relatively small compared to the mammoth corporations that now supply most of our textbooks. In addition, many companies have marketed other parts of our curriculum -- software, equipment, computers, and so on. In a relationship between academia and corporate giants, who has the power? Who really determines the culture and goals? I think this machine has already had a major impact on our curriculum, and many of our supervisors think this is appropriate.

What if the corporate machine breaks down? As you know, there is a trend for more of the economy to be controlled by fewer corporations; more decisions are based on the priorities of a smaller group of people. What happens if these people make large mistakes and their corporations break down? What happens if people with vastly different priorities make decisions? (Might we even have publishers who don’t have any educational expertise making decisions that determine the curriculum?) Can your teaching survive a hypothetical collapse of Texas Instruments (or Casio or Sharp or …)?

There is an educational awareness of interdependency in our student’s workplace; we use methods that facilitate group functioning in our students. I would suggest that we have not recognized the interdependencies in our workplace. Specifically, I would suggest that we have become dependent upon corporations to provide daily tools for our work, without having recognized that these tools and corporations have changed our work in ways that we did not intend. If you doubt this, imagine the following situation:

A research organization has a grant to survey your students 5 years after they passed that mathematics class. The survey contains only 3 questions:

1. Who was your math teacher?

2. Who made the calculator that you used?

3. Which of these has a larger effect on what math is taught – math teachers or

book publishers?

Whether you agree with my analysis or not, I hope you will think more about the meaning of what we do in our classrooms – concerning what is really important, about who makes decisions, and what we think a good mathematics culture should be.