Math Drudge

Semiotic fiddling while a digital Rome burns

“So to summarise, according to the citation count, in order of descent, the authors are listening to themselves, dead philosophers, other specialists in semiotic work in mathematics education research, other mathematics education research researchers and then just occasionally to social scientists but almost never to other education researchers, including mathematics teacher education researchers, school teachers and teacher educators. The engagement with Peirce is being understood primarily through personal engagements with the original material rather than as a result of working through the filters of history, including those evidenced within mathematics education research reports in the immediate area. The reports, and the hierarchy of power relations implicit in them, marginalise links to education, policy implementation or the broader social sciences.” (Tony Brown)

From his article “Signifying “students”, “teachers” and “mathematics”: a reading of a special issue, published online: 28 May 2008, Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2008. (Your access to this article will depend on what your instution—if such you have— has paid Springer. Springer is one of the biggest academic publishers but not one of the biggest electronic sinners.)

Contrast this devastating if accurate critique with the following:

Enter Don Tapscott, who is looking at the challenges the digital revolution poses to the fundamental aspects of the University.

“Universities are finally losing their monopoly on higher learning”, he writes. “There is fundamental challenge to the foundational modus operandi of the University, the model of pedagogy. Specifically, there is a widening gap between the model of learning offered by many big universities and the natural way that young people who have grown up digital best learn.”

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It’s a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.

Contrary to Nicholas Carr’s proposition that Google is making us stupid, Tapscott counters with the following:

My research suggests these critics are wrong. Growing up digital has changed the way their minds work in a manner that will help them handle the challenges of the digital age. They’re used to multi-tasking, and have learned to handle the information overload. They expect a two-way conversation. What’s more, growing up digital has encouraged this generation to be active and demanding enquirers. Rather than waiting for a trusted professor to tell them what’s going on, they find out on their own on everything from Google to Wikipedia.” (Don Tapscott)

This is excerpted from the Edge describing Tapscott’s article The impending demise of the university.

Albert Einstein once wrote:

“On the other hand, I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research. Only those who realize the immense efforts and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer work in theoretical science cannot be achieved are able to grasp the strength of the emotion out of which alone such work, remote as it is from the immediate realities of life, can issue. What a deep conviction of the rationality of the universe and what a yearning to understand, were it but a feeble reflection of the mind revealed in this world, Kepler and Newton must have had to enable them to spend years of solitary labor in disentangling the principles of celestial mechanics! Those whose acquaintance with scientific research is derived chiefly from its practical results easily develop a completely false notion of the mentality of the men who, surrounded by a skeptical world, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered wide through the world and through the centuries. Only one who has devoted his life to similar ends can have a vivid realization of what has inspired these men and given them the strength to remain true to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is cosmic religious feeling that gives a man such strength. A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.” [Albert Einstein, New York Times Magazine, 9 Nov 1930, pg 1-4, reprinted in Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, Crown Publishers, Inc. 1954, pg. 36-40.]