[vladimir998]

I’ve always heard that the teaching of math changed in the 1960s (i.e. with the introduction of New Math). Can any Freeper tell me exactly what changed? How was math taught differently in the 1940s or 50s compared to the 1960s???

[jjotto]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA

[BruceDeitrickPrice]

My cynical view is that New Math, like Reform Math and Common Core Math later, was carefully designed NOT to work, precisely as Whole Word is designed not to work.

See the video mentioned: An Inconvenient Truth, which is about Reform Math but shows you how a program can be designed not to do what it’s supposedly designed to do.

Here is an article titled “The assault on math,” making the same points.

http://www.improve-education.org/id60.html

[Do the math]

New math came about because of the National Defense Education Act. It was directly related to the Russians launching Sputnik. Our government was alarmed at the technological progress that the Russians were making, and wanted to create as many mathematicians, scientist, and engineers in our country as possible. It worked.

New math was a more analytical approach to mathematics which focused less on traditional process approach of the past. New math was a great success for me, I loved the new math approach. The new math approach was much more rigorous, and many students and parents could not handle the change. In old math you learned how to find the square root of 1.732, in new math you learned to develop a method to find the square root of 1.732. The problem with new math is that not everyone is cut out to be a mathematician, scientist, and/or an engineer.