A Brief History of Math Education

This article provides history on the American Mathematics Education from 1920 to the end of the 20th century. The education wars of the past century focus on the struggles between concentrated content and pedagogy. Content is framed as the answer to the question of what to teach, whereas pedagogy is the answer to the question of how to teach. This article chronicles the education of mathematics and explains the various reforms throughout the 20th century: Progressivism, New Math, Open Education Movement, and a form of Progressivism termed “Constructivism”. In the 1990′s the National Science Foundation was influential in the implementation of the NCTM Standards across the nation. Parents resisted the NCTM Standards, as these programs typically failed to develop fundamental arithmetic and algebra skills. California was ahead of the rest of the nation in implementing mathematics that were envisioned by the NCTM Standards. As such, the first significant parental rebellion was in Palo Alto, CA. This uprising developed “Mathematically Correct” in the autumn of 1995: this groups nemesis was “Fuzzy Math” and in particular College Preparatory Mathematics (CPM).

http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html