Battleground Schools Review

The article categorized math education methods into 2 polarities: progressive and conservative. It then shows the different views each category has in many different areas. It also discussed many different factors that complicated the math education in North America. The article went on to explain three twentieth-century reform movements in math education. First, it introduced “Progressivist Reform” from 1910-1940. It explained John Dewey’s teaching techniques along with progressivist’s views of math teaching to give students “the challenge of doing and experimentation in mathematics, accompanied by the sense-making activities of reflective practice.” Second, it introduced the “New Math” during 1960s. The Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union pushed the reformation for more abstract and highly complicated math at high school. Led by the School mathematics Study Group (SMSG), they created mainly conservative and even “teacher-proof” curricular materials, aiming to educate “future elite scientists and mathematicians.” Third, it discussed the “Math Wars over the NCTM Standards” beginning from 1990s. NCTM standard was under the influence of progressive and constructivist approaches and focused on the back-to-basics curricula. However, the low ranking of American eighth-grade students in the world caused the traditionalists to fights back for more rigorous math in high school. Based on the views of the different groups, I stand on the progressive side. However, on many areas, it sounds to me both conservative and progressive have valid points of view. For example, on “Goal of math learning”, I would think fluency is as important as understanding. I remember I once did a complicated computation during a math exam at G12. When I reached a step which needs the square root of 49, I simply stopped there and thought I must have done something wrong. I simply forgot square root of 49 equals 7. Less of fluency stopped me from doing the calculation further. Looking back from this experience, without fluency, the result would still be frustrating even if you think you understand the materials perfectly well. Furthermore, math abilities are usually evaluated by exams in high school. How can a person say he’s good at math if he cannot finish the math exam in time and constantly make basic mistakes because of fluency problems? On the other hand, if a person reaches a certain level of fluency at math, it also helps him to understand the materials better. Therefore, I feel fluency and understanding are two inseparable sides of math education.