/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7697701
>Changes in society at large also worked against the life adjustment agenda. Through the 1940s, the nation had witnessed tremendous scientific and engineering advances. By the end of the decade, the appearance of radar, cryptography, navigation, atomic energy, and other technological wonderments changed the economy and underscored the importance of mathematics in the modern world. This in turn caused a recognition of the importance of mathematics education in the schools. By the end of the 1940s, the public school system was the subject of a blizzard of criticisms, and the life adjustment movement fizzled out.
>Progressive education was forced into retreat in the 1950s, and even became the butt of jokes and vitriol. During the previous half century, enrollment in advanced high school mathematics courses, and other academic subjects, had steadily decreased, thanks at least in part to progressive education. From 1933 to 1954 not only did the percentage of students taking high school geometry decrease, even the actual numbers of students decreased in spite of soaring enrollments. The following table gives percentages of high school students enrolled in high school math courses.

>The "New Math" period came into being in the early 1950s and lasted through the decade of the 1960s. New Math was not a monolithic movement. According to a director of one of the first New Math conferences, "The inception of the New Math was the collision between skills instruction and understanding ...The disagreements between different entities of the New Math Movement were profound. Meetings between mathematicians and psychologists resulted only in determining that the two had nothing to say to each other."

>>7656714
>Changes in society at large also worked against the life adjustment agenda. Through the 1940s, the nation had witnessed tremendous scientific and engineering advances. By the end of the decade, the appearance of radar, cryptography, navigation, atomic energy, and other technological wonderments changed the economy and underscored the importance of mathematics in the modern world. This in turn caused a recognition of the importance of mathematics education in the schools. By the end of the 1940s, the public school system was the subject of a blizzard of criticisms, and the life adjustment movement fizzled out.
>Progressive education was forced into retreat in the 1950s, and even became the butt of jokes and vitriol. During the previous half century, enrollment in advanced high school mathematics courses, and other academic subjects, had steadily decreased, thanks at least in part to progressive education. From 1933 to 1954 not only did the percentage of students taking high school geometry decrease, even the actual numbers of students decreased in spite of soaring enrollments. The following table gives percentages of high school students enrolled in high school math courses.

>The "New Math" period came into being in the early 1950s and lasted through the decade of the 1960s. New Math was not a monolithic movement. According to a director of one of the first New Math conferences, "The inception of the New Math was the collision between skills instruction and understanding ...The disagreements between different entities of the New Math Movement were profound. Meetings between mathematicians and psychologists resulted only in determining that the two had nothing to say to each other."

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