Summary and Comments on Battleground Schools

The view on mathematics education has varied between two politically linked ideas since the 1900’s.  The Progressive viewpoint focuses on a deeper level of understanding of mathematics by both the student and teacher.  It encourages teachers to take a lesser role and allow the students to take up more of the learning process.  The Conservative viewpoint focuses on teachers lecturing and students listening and copying notes rather than stimulating a deeper meaning of the content they are learning.

 The negative view of mathematics by parents, elementary teachers and teachers using the conservative method of teaching math have fueled three reform movements in mathematics: “Progressivist reform, the New Math and the Standards-based Math Wars”. (395)

 The Progressivist Reform in the early 1900’s focused on creating teachers who not only taught students how to achieve answers but also why the methods they used gave these answers.  It focused on involving the students in their learning rather than the common lecture method so as to create students who would become individual thinkers rather than followers.

 The New Math era of the 1960’s followed on the heels of the Cold war when competition with other nations became prevalent.  The New Math created by the SMSG, upon the anxieties of politicians, resulted in a curriculum stemming from university mathematics that many teachers and parents at the time knew nothing about.  The goal of this era was to create scientists and mathematicians without regard to those who may have not been interested.

 The Math Wars beginning in the 1990’s were battles between those we did and did not agree with the standards put in place in the school system by the NCTM.  When the TIMSS published their results comparing educational levels across different countries, opinions over who’s teaching methods worked better surfaced and the battle continues today.

 I was very interested to see that mathematics has been so political for so long.  It is interesting to see where our current curriculum stems from and where these ideas got their start.  I found that the Progressivist Reform is similar to what we as teacher candidates are experiencing now.  Our idea of lecturing and only teaching the how not the why is being challenged as we speak, similarly to the movement that occurred in the early to mid 1900’s.  I find it slightly upsetting that the New Math era really focused on creating students that would become adults that would rival other nations in scientific and mathematic knowledge. It seems that no thought went into the students well being and only what would benefit the politicians and make their country look good.  I really feel that there may be no end to the Math Wars that are continuing on today.  There are too many people with a vast array of opinions that have a say in the math curriculum today for anything to be resolved in a short amount of time.