New Mathematics

New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s–1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching practices were changed in the U.S. shortly after the Sputnik crisis. The goal was to boost students' science education and mathematical skill to meet the technological threat of Soviet engineers, reputedly highly skilled mathematicians.

After the Sputnik launch in 1957, the U.S. National Science Foundation funded the development of several new curricula in the sciences, such as the Physical Science Study Committee high school physics curriculum, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study in biology, and CHEM Study in chemistry. Several mathematics curriculum development efforts were also funded as part of the same initiative, such as the Madison Project, School Mathematics Study Group, and University of Illinois Comittee on School Mathematics.

These curricula were quite different from one another, yet shared the idea that children's learning of arithmetic algorithms would last past the exam only if memorization and practice were paired with teaching for understanding. More specifically, elementary school arithmetic beyond single digits makes sense only on the basis of understanding place value. This goal was the reason for teaching arithmetic in bases other than ten in the New Math, despite critics' derision: In that unfamiliar context, students couldn't just mindlessly follow an algorithm, but had to think why the place value of the "hundreds" digit in base seven is 49. Keeping track of non-decimal notation also explains the need to distinguish numbers (values) from the numerals that represent them,[1] a distinction some critics considered fetishistic.

Topics introduced in the New Math include set theory, modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.[2]

All of the New Math projects emphasized some form of discovery learning.[citation needed] Students worked in groups to invent theories about problems posed in the textbooks. Materials for teachers described the classroom as "noisy." Part of the job of the teacher was to move from table to table assessing the theory that each group of students had developed and "torpedoing" wrong theories by providing counterexamples. For that style of teaching to be tolerable for students, they had to experience the teacher as a colleague rather than as an adversary or as someone concerned mainly with grading. New Math workshops for teachers, therefore, spent as much effort on the pedagogy as on the mathematics.[citation needed]

Courtesy: en.wikipedia.org