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© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
Remember The New Math? A disaster, wasn't it? Well, maybe not. It actually pointed mathematics education in the right direction. It just went a little bit overboard. We still have the New Math. It has just mellowed quite a bit.
Before the New Math, students were doing arithmetic problems without knowing what they were doing. They were using tools that they did not understand. And, of course they were misusing the tools. They didn't know if they were supposed to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Once they got the right answer, was that inches or feet? The results were poor arithmetic skills.
Then the New Math came along, and students learned the "basics." What were these basics? Some of these basics were the laws of arithmetic (which used to be the laws of algebra), closure, commutative law, associative law, and so on. Other basics were sets, which are more basic even than numbers. And there were different number bases (base 2, base 3, etc.) in addition to our familiar base 10. These are indeed basic concepts. They are concepts that lead to the correct answers with more reliability than the old way. But, although they are basic concepts, they are not always easy. The parents could not help them. And students did not always see where all this was heading, which was toward sound mathematics skills.
The New Math died, in a way. But we didn't go back to the old way. The problem was to mix the theoretical with the practical, and still keep the student interested. I think that this is done better nowadays.