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I just skimmed through this entire entry and I still have no idea what new math is. The most I can gather is it's a general set of teaching principles for how to teach math, but that's just a guess, I really have no idea what new math is from reading this. Someone needs to write a 2 or 3 sentence overview of what new math is as it needs to be described to someone from mars who's never heard of it before.
Also, if you want to be really helpful, you should have one simple example problem worked out and solved using new math steps.
This is still a problem in 2010. Can anybody give even an example of what the "new math" was? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.66.47.162 ( talk) 18:57, 26 January 2010 (UTC)
For my History of Math class at Roger Williams University, we are required to improve a Wikipedia article about math. So I would like to add an example of new math, in particular, the example Tom Lehrer uses in his "New Math" song. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ajohnson398 ( talk • contribs) 16:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
Gee, when something falls out of favor, it sure gets difficult to find out many details about it. I was raised on New Math, and in sixth grade we were told we were 'learning New New Math from the guy who invented New Math'. After that we moved and I felt like I was being taught from McGuffey Readers. It was archaic. Too much emphasis on simple basics and none of that fun stuff that got me excited about math in the first place. And nobody would help me with the parts I was missing. I did miserably in math after that. I came over here hoping to find some of those elements that so delighted me before. All I found was criticism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Leeeoooooo ( talk • contribs) 05:04, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
New Mathematics or New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries, during the 1960s. The change involved new curriculum topics and teaching practices introduced in the U.S. shortly after the Sputnik crisis, in order to boost science education and mathematical skill in the population, so that the technological threat of Soviet engineers, reputedly highly skilled mathematicians, could be met. The phrase is often used now to describe any short-lived fad which quickly becomes highly discredited. Topics introduced in the New Math include modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra. In elementary school, in addition to bases other than 10, students were taught basic set theory and made to distinguish "numerals" from "numbers."
Ah yes, the New Math continues to be a persistent conundrum.
Thirteen years of talking about this article and still there has been no effort to explain what the New Math is/was. I guess the New Math is still too hard to understand. I repeat the first post: "I have read this article and still don't know what "New Math" actually is".
You might say, "Well, wiseguy, why don't you fix the article?". Well, I can't, I learned math the hard way starting with the multiplication tables up through Calculus and beyond without using the New Math. So I am unable to do so. I am optimistic that there is someone who might have the intuitive insight to point out what is "obvious" about the New Math. After all, it was taught to children.
I'll be back in thirteen more years to see if this issue might have been resolved, or not. Here's hoping.
Osomite ( talk) 00:46, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
I removed: "The U.S. experience does seem in retrospect to have the hallmarks of a moral panic.", as it is original opinion. If it is verifiably seen now as moral panic, it needs substantiating (that people believe it, not the belief itself!). Grayum 10:50, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
What in fact were the traditional concepts referred to in the following statement?
"New Math emphasized mathematical structure through abstract concepts like set theory and number bases other than 10, rather than strictly being concerned with mathematical concepts traditionally taught to grade schoolers." odea 00:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
Does "rather than strictly being concerned with mathematical concepts traditionally taught to grade schoolers" actually mean anything? It seems to me to be saying "rather than doing what was done before", which is tautological, so that entire phrase could easily be removed. If I understand correctly, what was replaced, or de-emphasised, was performing the calculations required for the four traditional arithmetic operations mechanically.
I'm also a bit baffled by the apparent claim that number bases other than 10 are an "abstract concept", while presumably a number base of 10 is not. Switching between different number bases would be an abstraction, but it would be the very useful abstraction of considering a number something separate from the string of decimal digits representing it - something that still seems to be done in grade school, for example when kids are asked to "count" money that is cunningly represented in different coins or bills.
RandomP 01:10, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
I am not convinced that the text is entirely mathematically correct. The third verse (which covers the tens place calculation of 342 - 173) starts with
Doesn't Lehrer here make ten tens? Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:31, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
Back when I was teaching myself New Math with a "Cyclo-Teacher" in the '70s and '80s, I didn't know it had a name. Some of us only recognize New Math when we see those little set-theory diagrams. Does anyone have one that could be legitimately uploaded and used? -- Lawikitejana 21:07, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
Something like ? Wikimedia Commons has a lot of them.-- Prosfilaes ( talk) 23:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure Venn diagrams would be the best illustration of New Math. Schools commonly teach Venn diagrams today, even in kindergarten, without much of a problem. But New Math put an extreme emphasis on sets and required students to learn set concepts, vocabulary and notation, which is generally not done any more. Venn diagrams would be an example of something introduced in the New Math that remained in current curricula. A better illustration might be a page from an old textbook teaching other bases, which is not done today at all. Then again the Venn diagram would not be wrong and might be better than nothing. seberle ( talk) 14:32, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Does anyone know more about him? I have a both a calculus book and a differential equations book that he wrote. I liked his books for his heavy historical, biographical, and philosophical approach to mathematics. It is rare to find a "literate" mathematician; although, it appears that he is tainted by antisemitism? Comments anyone?-- Lance talk 09:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
In "The New New Math" section, the phrase "increase mathematical power for all students by creating frameworks which set world-class standards of what all students must know and be able to do" is repeated. I'd like to fix this up but I'm not quite sure how best to. Robert K S 13:00, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Unless there is serious objection, I will work up a separate New New Math article. There is, imo, no continuity between New Math and New New Math, aside from the similar names. Jd2718 23:17, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
The section "across other countries" lacks facts about how New Math influences Asian, African and Latin American countries. Please search for relevant sources and add these facts.-- RekishiEJ ( talk) 17:15, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
I would like to say that I was taught the New Math in Arizona in the 1970s (1971-1976). I can't add this because it is anecdotal and subjective, but perhaps there are sources that show that the pedagogy had a long afterlife in US Elementary schools? Saudade7 03:30, 3 July 2010 (UTC)
Reference 1 does not mention axiomatic set theory at all (words like “axiom”, “zf”, “logic” etc. are not mentioned) -- Chricho ∀ ( talk) 21:50, 14 October 2011 (UTC)
This page is definitely in need of work. One of the reforms in "New Math" -- which is actually even mentioned in the Tom Lehrer song! -- is the introduction of the concepts of "borrowing" and "carrying" to addition and subtraction problems.
This is not so. I learned these methods well before New Math was taught anywhere.
This *stuck* as a pedagogical technique. The way arithmetic was taught before appears genuinely bizarre to anyone who went to school from the 1960s onwards, to the point where I can't even describe it.
So some of the changes from the "new math" period were dropped, but others were permanent.
Needs a balanced treatment by someone who knows the pedagogical history. 24.59.161.166 ( talk) 04:54, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
This section doesn't seem to support itself with citations, and the claims of hat isn't taught seems contrary to what seems to be taught? There's no citation to what is taught today. 174.62.68.53 ( talk) 21:54, 12 March 2014 (UTC)
New Mathematics or New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries, during the 1960s.. I had New Math in eighth grade c. 1963. Since this is mere anecdote, I guess it has no probative value herein, but the blanket statement should still be modified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.249.146.8 ( talk) 21:46, 5 April 2015 (UTC)
This number of hyperlinks seems pointless to the article, and misleading in some points. Is it okay to remove the stupid ones?
90.174.167.118 ( talk) 06:29, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
Shouldn't there be some linkage to Common Core Math, given the similarity in traditionalist opposition to both New Math and CC? I'm not sure how it could be expressed, though. SpareSimian ( talk) 20:53, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
I see that an anonymous editor has added "Common Core" to the "See Also" list. I don't doubt there might be some connection (other than "traditionalist opposition"), but I'm not sure what this person (and possibly others?) had in mind when this was added. Can someone explain a motivation for adding this? -- seberle ( talk) 08:11, 29 March 2021 (UTC)
"The name is commonly given to a set of teaching practices introduced in the U.S. shortly after the Sputnik crisis, in order to boost science education and mathematical skill in the population, so that the technological threat of Soviet engineers, reputedly highly skilled mathematicians, could be met."
engineers \neq mathematicians. there are mathematicians who focus on applied mathematics/engineering problems and I am sure there are rare engineers who do 'mathematics' but by and large the two are very separate disciplines. engineers focus on applying previously known mathematics and science to 'real world' problems. key features of engineering involve building things in well posed, goal oriented contexts with clear motivation. mathematicians do math, sometimes just for math's sake, and sometimes in the context of applied problems. very few engineers go around proving theorems about an infinitely-differentiable hypergraph whose elements are Lebesgue-measurable varieties endowed with the atomic measure (I made that up it is arbitrary jargon) and few mathematicians design and build bridges.
this section should be say something like
"so that the technological threat of Soviet engineers could be met." (preferred). or "so that the technological threat of Soviet engineers, reputedly highly quantitatively skilled, could be met." even this is redundant. any good engineer worth his salt is quantitively skilled...
As it stands now, the section reads to a mathematician like saying "so that the legal threat of Soviet lawyers, reputedly highly skilled poets, could be met." both professions use the english language like both mathematicians and engineers use math, but they just ain't the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lovelobster ( talk • contribs) 03:51, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
This section should be relabled "influence" or "legacy" as it does not illustrate proponents for or potential benefits of new math. There should also be a proper praises/benefits/advantages section to balance against the criticisms/disadvantage section. There is a lot of criticism and negative bias toward this subject and it would be nice to counterbalance with some actual purported advantages for the sake of keeping the article free of bias. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.42.145.183 ( talk) 14:09, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
I am removing the "Etymology" section:
It is good to see progress in the editing of this article. But I don't think it is helpful to dwell excessively on Kline's use of the term "modern mathematics". As others have pointed out, Kline sometimes refers to this movement as "Modern mathematics" instead of "New Math". However, this is not particularly important, except possibly as a passing comment, for these reasons:
There is no problem alluding to the fact that New Math is an attempt to incorporate modern mathematics into the school curriculum, or that Kline sometimes referred to the movement as "modern mathematics" instead of "New Math" (if, in fact, he really did). But we don't need a whole section about this, and it is best to keep the two terms clearly separated in the remainder of the article. seberle ( talk) 12:23, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
You would never know from reading this article that the creators of the New Math curricula had any reason for doing what they did. To understand the reasons, it would be instructive for any interested party to try the "airplane test": Tell the person sitting next to you on the airplane that you're a math teacher. Almost certainly, you'll get one of two responses: the more honest "I hated math in school!" or the more polite "You must be a genius!" Just imagine if the result of 12 or more years of schooling were that the overwhelming majority of people considered themselves unable to read or write, or to understand why anyone might want to read or write. That would be a national catastrophe. It is a catastrope, an ongoing one, with respect to mathematics.
Most of the damage is done in elementary school, precisely in the teaching of arithmetic. It takes the form of drill and practice in algorithms that are to be memorized without understanding. Consider multi-digit multiplication: "Six times seven is 42, write down the two, carry the four..." Carry the four? What does that mean? Why does it work? For the majority of children in an "old math" classroom, this is just an arbitrary sequence of steps. They'd be just as happy (or unhappy, more to the point) if the rule were "write down the four, carry the two." To understand why the algorithm works, you must first understand place value—and many children, and adults, don't.
How do you teach someone to understand place value? It turns out that talking about powers of ten doesn't work very well, especially because the spoken names of numbers already have the powers of ten built in, e.g., "thousand" means "times ten to the third power," but that's not how people think of it; they think in terms of "add three zeros." So it's not absurd to think that it might help to spend a little time practicing arithmetic in base seven, or base twelve, to force kids to think about the algorithm instead of applying it mindlessly. And it does help, if the teacher understands the mathematics and the pedagogic reasons for teaching it in this way.
The downfall of the New Math came not because its ideas were wrong but because teachers had it thrust on them without adequate preparation or buy-in. It was one of a long, ongoing sequence of educational innovations that failed for the same reason: Some academic had a good idea, influential education administrators bought into it, and come September the teachers found themselves with new textbooks.
That the New Math started from foundational, and therefore abstract, ideas rather than from applications is a valid criticism. Within the community of mathematicians, it did get such criticism. But the politicians and the general public didn't get the message that there were specific intellectual problems with what was, after all, the first generation of a new way of thinking; the message instead was that teaching should forever be done in the way it was done 100 years ago, that any attempt at improvement was inherently absurd. And that same message pervades this article.
Another thing: 100 years ago they didn't have calculators. Today kids have calculators (as cell phone apps) in their pockets. The article mentions, mockingly, trying to teach college students to understand the ideas of the calculus instead of developing skill at integration by parts and so on. But is it completely irrelevant that today we have Wolfram Alpha in our phones? Maybe skill at integration, like skill at arithmetic, isn't as important as it once was.
Yes, it will improve kids' quality of life, a little bit, if they know that six times seven is 42. But in the modern world it would be serious malpractice for any human being to try to multiply two three-digit numbers by hand in a real context (rather than a school context). Kids should do a little of that in school, only for the purpose of helping them to understand place value, and that's why today's math curricula invent unfamiliar multiplication algorithms, typically involving the explicit writing down of partial products and the explicit writing down of zeros to line them up correctly, rather than just magically writing them to the left of other partial products. Parents don't like that, either, because it's not the familiar "carry the four" algorithm. But, unlike the latter, the new algorithms make sense and so they're more learnable.
I recommend starting this article over from scratch, with a less snarky attitude. Briankharvey ( talk) 01:33, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
I agree with the commenter who said that the article is way too one-sided. I began first grade in September of 1961 and was definitely a child of the New Math. Sets, functions, bases - it all made sense to me, and it became second nature early. And I learned my multiplication tables, though that was quite tedious. I am still engaged with math (although I not a mathematician) and that early material still makes sense to me and is still foundational for me. Admittedly I was not the average kid, and maybe I had well-prepared teachers. I went to public school in a school where there was one class per grade - no stratification between classrooms. I can't speak for others, but I benefited greatly from the New Math. This article needs to be more balanced. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.191.145.7 ( talk) 00:45, 1 June 2020 (UTC)
I am a bit outside my domain of expertise, but I have some doubts about the section on Enduring_Legacy, which currently reads as follows:
Citations from secondary sources are needed discussing this enduring legacy and the many claims made in this section. -- seberle ( talk) 22:07, 24 April 2020 (UTC)
To me, that statement comprises my early 70's memories of New Math. I have no recollection of discovery learning methods.
I was frustrated as a 12 year old wondering about the justification for having to learn some of that, especially the "bases other than 10", likewise gradians and radians.
Then I got a math degree.
But, when I studied electrical engineering and then an embedded systems developer, applicability of set theory, modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra, all became abundantly clear; especially in the context of the development of digital systems, then, integrated circuits, then computers and the software that controls them; all being the foundation of military and economic advancements from the 50s on.
I was rather surprised to see that this was not particularly covered in the article, but my perspective may not be relevant or accurate.
IveGoneAway ( talk) 19:09, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
This article makes prominent claims that New Math was inspired by the Sputnik crisis and concern that Soviet engineers were, by reputation, better at math than their US counterparts. These claims appear to be unsupported by any reliable published source. I see no in-line citation to allow independent verification of these claims. No other explanation is offered as to the origin of New Math - just Sputnik and concerns about the mathematical skills of Soviet engineers!
When people dislike something, and dislike it with a passion, many are easily recruited to any simple ideology that discredits that something by linking it to something else that is undeniably objectionable. I can well imagine that parents and teachers who objected to the New Math would be attracted to the notion that it had been invented by silly politicians and misguided educators who were motivated by a desire to recruit school children to the task of helping the US overhaul the Soviets in the space race, or worse still the arms race.
Whether or not the New Math was in any significant way spawned by east-west rivalries or the Sputnik crisis, and whether or not Wikipedia should report it in this way, should be determined solely by the quality of the sources provided to allow us to independently verify what is stated in the article. Even if evidence can be found of a minority view that New Math might be related to Sputnik, Wikipedia avoids giving undue weight to minor points of view. If no reliable published source can be provided, this aspect of the article should be regarded as someone's original research, and erased. Dolphin ( t) 05:21, 9 September 2023 (UTC)