Battleground Schools

 Learning about the conflict between the Conservative and the Progressive Mathematics Education format were pretty interesting. North American Mathematics had shifted between the Conservative and the Progressive Perspectives. Traditionalist perspectives focus on rote memorization and standarized testings. The Progressive perspectives focus on conceptual understanding and inquiry-based learning. '

I was surprised by the "inquiry-based" learning methods where students face a mathematical problems, form hypotheses, and experiment to see if you can solve the problem. The student must approach a mathematics problem like a science problems. 

However, it was interesting to learn that this movement fails because of the math phobia across society. This "math phobia" exists among Mathematics teacher as well. Many Mathematics teachers themselves are "secretly afraid" of math. Hence, they naturally resort to the conservative Mathematics formula, passing down this "math phobia".

The New Math reform in 1960 also caught my attention. It details the competitions between the US and USSR which triggers the Math reform in the US. This also sparked my interest in learning about the USSR education system. Soviet Math education focuses more on rigorous conceptual proof and pure  theoretical mathematics. Soviet students also defended complex their proofs in front of examiners. 

Comments

  1. Debby KSeptember 20, 2026 at 2:32 PM

    This is a very good summary of the article. I would like to learn about your thoughts on what implications this history may have on the direction of mathematics as we face new challenges, specifically AI (or GenAI). Is there a need for a return of "back-to-basics" as NCTM stated, or are we in need of embracing Dewey's approach of having students engage in math in "messy" ways. Do you have an idea of how we can cultivate math thinkers?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Mathematics Puzzles

Image
 I solve this Mathematics puzzle using Python Jupyter notebook. Using a few lines of code that simulate the opening and closing actions of the lockers I found these lockers that would be closed, while the rest of the lockers would be opened.  Below are my codes for the problem:  I first make a list of 1000 entry in Python to denote each locker space. I denote 0 is open and 1 is closed.  Then, I wrote a double for-loop to simulate the actions of each student from 1 to 1000 opening and closing their respective lockers. The outer for-loop loop through each student from 1 to 1000. The inner for-loop loop model every student closing and opening their respective lockers. Then, we simulate the result and print out the lockers that are closed. The rest of the lockers would be opened. 
Read more

Skemp Reading Reflections

 The first thing which interests me is the differences between the  Instrumental Understanding and  Relational Understanding.  Instrumental Understanding is only knowing how to do a problem while relational understanding is learning why it works. In learning mathematics, even among University courses, many students only have instrumental understanding because there is simply too much concepts to cover and there isn't enough time.  What caught my attention is why instrumental understanding is commonly taught. Skemp mentions that Instrumental Understanding is commonly taught because i t is often easier and faster for students to grasp initially.  It provides immediate rewards for a struggling student's confidence. Moreover, i n specific, isolated scenarios, instrumental understanding can be a faster way to get a reliable answer. Instrumental learning taught you how you do it instead of why you do it.  However, Skemps also says the benefits to  ...
Read more