Old technology triumphant

A mathematics teacher is not much like a nineteenth-century railroad worker–but there are parallels.  Our consultant who tutors High School math and science continues to learn from it; sometimes, his students do also.

Recently our tutoring consultant was gently chiding a student who seemed too dependent on his calculator and too reluctant to use his own intelligence (which is formidable, when engaged).  The tutor eventually admitted that he had lived in that legendary time before calculators, something the students found almost impossible to imagine.  “What did you use to do math?”

In answer, our consultant brought out a five-inch slide rule he keeps in his bag (which tells you more about him than, perhaps, he wants you to know).  He demonstrated a couple of simple problems, then solved some set by the students.  They were amazed that he could (seemingly) do as well with this magical steel scale as the sophisticated product of Texas Instruments in their hands.  Better: he could come up with the answer more quickly than they could punch the buttons.  It was a John Henry moment.

John Henry is a hero of American folklore, star of folksongs, and may or may not have actually existed.  He was a “steel-drivin’ man,” a railroad worker, boring holes in rock for explosives to clear the way for this symbol of American progress.  He did it by hand, swinging a hammer of legendary weight.  In a contest he went up against another symbol of nineteenth-century American progress, a steam-powered jackhammer, and won.  It was a victory of old technology against new, of skill and human strength against the coming wave of machines.  It was a kind of apotheosis, for he did not long survive his victory (we hasten to add that our consultant is still with us, healthy and happy).

Being scientists, we’ll offer a definition of a John Henry moment: a situation in which a skilled worker in a superseded technology performs a task faster or better than someone using a newer technology.  (Dying at the moment of victory is not required.)  Such moments must be common these days, since technology has been moving rapidly, rendering hard-won skills obsolete, indeed all but forgotten in less than a generation.  And yet the skilled people are still around.

We should be clear about what a John Henry moment does not do.  It did not show the superiority of the slide rule over the TI-83.  The latter machine is far more versatile, capable and accurate; in our consultant’s hands it can do amazing things.  (Similarly, a wonderful film photograph produced now does not prove that chemical photography is better than digital.)  Nor did it prove that our consultant is necessarily a better practical mathematician than his students; he has some decades of head start, is all.  And he may or may not have furthered the aim of the tutoring session, which was the education of the students.  They might have been inspired by what can be accomplished without reliance on sophisticated machines, or they might have decided that mathematics can only be practiced by someone with an almost magical skill.

Performing a John Henry is a great temptation to anyone confronting younger people across a technology gap.  It isn’t always a good idea.  But it can be very gratifying.