A Brief History of Mathematics

Curriculum Reform from 1950s – 2000s

Math Education in America during the 50s and 60s

National Science Foundation: 1950

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense…”

http://www.nsf.gov/about/

UNIVAC: 1951

http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/?year=1951

Attempts at desegregating schools: 1954

The Brown v. Board of Education decision is handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954. Elizabeth Eckford, followed and taunted by an angry crowd after she was denied entrance to Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2007/09/poar01_littlerock0709.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/

Civil Rights Movement: 1955

In 1955, Rosa Parks, refuses to give up her bus seat to a white person; her arrest sparks a bus boycott and sets the American civil rights movement in motion.

The Space Age: 1957

Sir Isaac Newton, in his landmark 1687 scientific work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, wrote, “If a leaden cannon ball is horizontally propelled by a powder charge from a cannon positioned on a hilltop, it will follow a curving flight path until it hits the ground. You can make it turn 10 degrees, 30 degrees and 90 degrees before it touches the ground. You can force it to circle the Earth and even disappear into outer space, going away to infinity.”

On the evening of October 4, 1957, Newton's hypothesis was proven correct. At 1912 Greenwich Mean Time, an R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, on the steppes of Kazahkstan in the former Soviet Union, carrying a 23-inch (58-centimeter) polished steel sphere called Sputnik. About 100 minutes later, the 184-pound (93-kilogram) Sputnik (translated as “satellite” or “traveling companion of the Earth”), trailing four metal antennas, passed through the skies over the launch site confirming that a human-made moon was now orbiting the Earth. The “Space Age” had begun.

Launch of Sputnik 1: Baikonur, USSR

Sputnik 1

The New York Times: November 3, 1957

NASA: 1958

http://www.nasaimages.org/luna

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was founded under the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. The Little White House at 1520 H Street, NW, in Washington, DC served as NASA Headquarters from 1958 until October 1961.

School Mathematics Study Group: 1958

Directed by Edward G. Begle (1914-1978), the School Mathematics Study Group created and implemented a primary and secondary school curriculum between 1958 and 1977 which was widely known as "new math.”

http://www.maa.org/features/113006archives.html

Math Education in America during the 70s

Vietnam War

A military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1959 to 30 April 1975 The United States entered the war to prevent a communist

takeover of South Vietnam

May 4, 1970....National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of students, wounding many, 4 fatally, on the campus of Kent State University during a protest of the war in Cambodia.

Critiques of New Math

1973: Mathematics professor Morris Kline published Why Johnny Can’t Add: The Failure of the New Math. In his book, Kline offered pointed criticism of the elitism and ineffectiveness of the secondary mathematics curriculum, even for those in the academic track. He stated: “Of the elementary school children, not one in a thousand will be mathematicians; and of the academic high school students, not one in a hundred will be a mathematician” (p. 22).

Back to Basics

Those who disagree with the inquiry-based philosophy maintain that students must first develop computational skills before they can understand concepts of mathematics. These skills should be memorized and practiced until they become automatic.

In this view, estimating answers is insufficient and, in fact, is considered to be dependent on strong foundational skills.

Inventions of the 80s & 90s

A Nation at Risk

The state of education prompted Secretary of Education T. H. Bell to form the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE) in 1981 with the purpose of examining the quality of education in the United States. Three years later, the NCEE published its findings in A Nation at Risk: The Full Account. 

The report furthermore made upsetting conclusions that student achievement had regressed since the wake of the Sputnik challenge.  The NCEE feared that deficiencies in reading, writing, and mathematical ability came at an especially challenging time with the rapidly accelerating demand for highly skilled workers, such as computer technicians, systems analysts, and business machine operators (NCEE, 1984). 

NCTM gets more involved

Founded in 1920, the NCTM is a professional organization of teachers, teacher educators, curriculum specialists, and educational researchers. 

In 1980, the NCTM issued An Agenda for Action: Recommendations for School Mathematics to offer recommendations to help shape the direction of mathematics education.  In the report, there was an emphasis on problem solving and connecting basic computational skills with mathematical thinking (CSMC, 2004). 

The team of teachers, supervisors, teacher educators, researchers, and mathematicians in 1989 produced the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, to be referred to henceforth as the NCTM Standards.  This document was to be used as a measuring stick for mathematics programs in school districts across the country. 

The Math Wars

The Standards were dubbed the “new new math”

Parents and educators in support of the more traditional approach to teaching and learning mathematics organized over the Internet and formed informal groups, such as Mathematically Correct and Honest Open Logical Decisions (HOLD) on Mathematics Education Reform.  Members of these groups believed the NCTM Standards

encouraged a new, less rigorous, “fuzzy math” that was an attempt to make mathematics easier for traditionally disadvantaged students to succeed (Clopton, 2008). 

NCTM’s Response

The NCTM revised the Standards in 2000 Critics of the 1989 Standards praised the new

versionThe most recent addition of the Standards came

about in 2006, when NCTM developed the Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8 Mathematics to supplement the 2000 Standards. 

The impetus for this latest addition was sparked by findings that there was a lack of coherence in elementary mathematics curriculum from school to school. 

ReferencesAllexsaht-Snider, M. & Hart, L. H. (2001) "Mathematics for All": How Do We Get There? Theory into Practice, 40(2), 93-101.

Clopton, P. Reform Mathematics Education: How to "Succeed" Without Really Trying. Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http://mathematicallycorrect.com/reform.htm. Apple, M. W. (1992). Do the Standards Go Far Enough? Power, Policy, and Practice in Mathematics Education. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 23(5), 412- 431.

Fey, J. T. (1978). Change in mathematics education since the late 1950’s: Ideas and realisation: An ICMI Report. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 9(3), 339–353.

Fey, J. T. & Graber, A. O. (2003). From The New Math to the Agenda for Action. In G. M. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics, Volume 1 (pp. 521 – 558). Athens, GA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Herrera, T. A. and Owens, D. T. (2001) The "new new math"?: Two reform movements in mathematics.  Theory into Practice, 40(2), p. 84-92

Keppel, F. (1968). Foreword. Goals for School Mathematics: The Report of the Cambridge Conference on School Mathematics. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Kilpatrick, J. (1997). Five lessons from the new math. Retrieved on December 11, 2008 from http://www2.nas.edu/center/kilpatin.htm

Klein, D. (2003). A brief history of American K–12 mathematics education in the 20th century. In Royer, J. M. (Ed.) Mathematical Cognition: A Volume in Current Perspectives on Cognition, Learning, and Instruction (pp. 127–225). Greenwich, Ct: Information Age Publishing.

Kline, M. (1973). Why Johnny Can’t Add: The Failure of the New Math. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Labaree, D. F. (2004). The Trouble with Ed Schools. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lappan, G. & Wanko, J. J. (2003). The changing roles and priorities of the federal government in mathematics education in the United States. In G. M. Stanic & J. Kilpatrick (Eds.), A History of School Mathematics, Volume 2 (pp. 897 – 930). Athens, GA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.Lazerson, M; McLaughlin, J. B.; McPherson, B.; and Bailey, S. (1985). New curriculum, old issues. An education of value (pp. 23 – 46). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000). Principles and Standards for School Mathematics. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (2000-2004). Principles and Standards for School Mathematics: An Overview. Retrieved December 18, 2008 from http://standards.nctm.org/document/index.htm.National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) (2008a). E-Standards Homepage, Author and Bibliographic Data.  Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http://www.usi.edu/Science/math/sallyk/Standards/index.htm National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2008b).  Why Identify the Curriculum Focal Points? Retrieved December 18, 2008 from http://www.nctm.org/standards/content.aspx?id=262. Ravitch, D. (2000). Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform. New York: Touchstone Books.Research Advisory Committee of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (1984). A Plan for Assessing the Impact of the NCTM's Agenda for Action.  Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 15(1), 3-14.Resource Prepared by the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum (CSMC) (2004). An Agenda for Action:  Recommendations for School Mathematics for the 1980s  Retrieved December 17, 2008 from http://www.mathcurriculumcenter.org/PDFS/CCM/summaries/ agenda4action_summary.pdf.Sharp, E. (1964). A Parent’s Guide to the New Mathematics. New York: Pocket Book. Usiskin, Z. (1985). We need another revolution in secondary school mathematics. In C. Hirsch & M. Zweng (Eds.), The secondary school mathematics curriculum (pp. 1-21). Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Willoughby, S. S. (1968). What is the new mathematics? The Continuing Revolution in Mathematics. Reprinted from the Bulletin of the National Association of Secondary-School Principals, No. 327. Willoughby, S. S. (2000). Perspectives on Mathematics Education. In Burke, M. J. and Curicio, F. R. (Eds.), Learning Mathematics for a New Century, 2000 Yearbook. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.