By: Michael Pearson, Executive Director of the Mathematical Association of America

As many of us (myself included) move to online tools to carry out our work, I am thankful for the technological infrastructure that allows many of us to continue our work, albeit in dramatically changed circumstances and with expectations in flux. I am pleased that MAA has been able to provide mechanisms for sharing insights into how to make this transition more effective, and we will continue to provide opportunities to access and share resources to improve the quality of teaching and learning – as has been our history.

At the same time, I am concerned about the disproportionate effects this massive educational experiment will have, and the danger of further marginalizing populations who already face challenges to full and equal access to high-quality education. Thus I am also thankful for the many voices who remind us that we cannot maintain the same practices and expectations that we deemed appropriate in the days “bc” (before COVID-19).

One element of the move online that raises particular concerns for me is the issue of assessment and online monitoring of students during exams. In fact, the ubiquitous use of online tools for communication during this crisis is worrisome even without the obviously intrusive techniques that are being deployed in the name of preserving the integrity of our traditional assessment strategies. The amount of data that is gathered and the risk to our privacy that the control of this data represents, through our use of these tools is already staggering. A persuasive case for this risk was made by Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, as discussed in this essay in The New York Review of Books.

Remember, too, that our students, like us, are faced with the challenges and anxieties of meeting their daily needs and obligations under dramatically changed circumstances – certainly socially and economically -- and increasingly under new legal circumstances that are being enacted in response to the crisis. As this essay in The New York Times notes, governments around the world are enacting emergency powers that may be hard to reverse.

In fact, we don’t have to look far from home to see how actions taken during a period of crisis may have serious long-term implications. On September 14, Congress passed the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force act, which remains on the books today. In the succeeding two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations have used the Act to justify military actions that far exceed the original intent of Congress, just as Rep. Barbara Lee, the sole representative who voted against the Act at the time, feared when she spoke against the Act.

I hope that our community can take a thoughtful, long-term view of our role in preparing our students to thrive in the years to come. Certainly, I will be disappointed if we contribute to an expanded acceptance of data collection, monitoring, and manipulation that is already part and parcel of our digital age. We owe it to our students to be candid and open with them about these challenges and invite them to be full participants in navigating through this crisis. I believe our shared future depends on building trust and a commitment to shared values, not through continued expansion of digital measures to manage and monitor behavior.

Years from now, what specific mathematical concepts a student learns this year will be of little consequence. The lessons learned about a shared sense of community, and how we can engage and support each other through difficult times, on the other hand, have enormous potential to contribute to MAA’s vision of a society that values the power and beauty of mathematics and fully realizes its potential to promote human flourishing.