Battleground Schools: Mathematics Education

This article described the ‘battle war’ in Mathematics education in North America since 1900. That is the battle between two different approaches in teaching mathematics. Two different approaches could be characterized as ‘progressive’ and conservative’ or ‘traditionalist’. This battle around mathematics education  could be divided into three periods and movements:

(1) the Progressivist movement for mathematics through activity and inquiry (circa 1910 – 1940),  led primarily by John Dewey:  John Dewey proposed that students must engage in doing mathematics as part of a reflective inquiry if they were to increase their intelligence and gain knowledge. He advocated the development of high quality mental process and a scientific attitude toward learning mathematics. He focused on sense making activities of reflective practice rather trying to cover a large number of mathematics topics in curriculum design. Dewey’s ideas won a high degree of acceptance in progressive teacher’s colleges during this period.   

(2) The New Math reform movement of the 1960’s:  a new curriculum was designed to satisfied the demand of public (during the Cold War with Soviet Union). The new curriculum was written, focused on abstract topics such as: set theory, abstract algebra, linear algebra, calculus and removed the teaching geometry from the curriculum.  The new design had caused huge problems to teaching mathematics in class room since teachers had little or no familiarity with the new mathematics topic. By the early 1970’s, the New Math program came to an end. 

(3) The so-called “Math Wars”, based on NCTM Standards reforms, from the 1990’s to the present:    the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) developed its own standard program in the mid 1980’s and later the new California Mathematics Framework. Both programs emphasized the depth understanding in mathematics  In the mid 1990’s, conservative attitudes toward mathematics education were adopted by a number of religious group. The battles over mathematics curricula and teaching methods have begun and continued until now

Mathematics is the foundation of almost modern scientific researches.  In the process of learning mathematics, students will develop crucial skills which are necessary for further developments and researches. All of those are the results of depth understanding mathematics rather than influence math skills. To my observations, students who have achieved high mathematics academic in high school. still find mathematics in university entrance levels very difficult to study, especially about learning abstract concepts in mathematics. Public attitude toward learning and teaching mathematics is an very important factor which would decide the result of the mathematics battle..