# What exactly was the "new math"? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [November 5, 2011, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936 "2011-11-05T05:42:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/21 "2011-11-06T15:01:09Z")
[Previous thread on the subject](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=527131) ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/22 "2011-11-06T15:19:14Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > To be fair, you’d probably have had no trouble going through New Math books as an adult either. You might have shaken your head and wondered why they were bothering with some of the concepts when you just wanted something practical and useful, but you’d have plowed right through. Maybe. I recall asking my parents for help on my math homework once, and they found the problem so poorly presented as to be incomprehensible. None of us could figure out what the question _was_, much less answer it. There’s been some pretty badly made textbooks published. ---
**Author:** ![Voluble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/4af34b/32.png) [@Voluble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voluble)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/23 "2011-11-06T15:20:12Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Oh that liberal boogie monster. I’m always amused when my “conservative” friend expresses some viewpoint that I would consider stereotypically within the “liberal” wheelhouse. Apparently “liberal” just means “whatever I don’t like”. > > Things always change. You may not like how someone tried to respond to that change with a new approach. If you don’t like it, suggest a different approach or create your own. Why? What we were doing before worked fine. Teaching is not rocket science and it doesn’t require a degree. Humans have been teaching each other since they became self-aware. The chances someone will come up with a better way of doing it or a new way of doing it will be essentially zero. It’s like sex. Every generation thinks they discovered it. What a degree is required for is to make sure that everyone is indoctrinated the same so that the proper agenda can be pushed. Competence in the subject matter is an afterthought and that is the problem as much as anything. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/24 "2011-11-06T16:21:17Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I teach one of those new-new-math things, using a curriculum called Investigations. I really like it, and I think it does some stuff very well… > When working with numbers up to 1,000, for example, kids voted on a small object to collect: they chose acorns. I gave them ziploc bags at recess, and they gathered acorns in groups of 10 (don’t worry, it was entirely voluntary; kids who wanted to go crazy on the monkey bars instead were welcome to do so). We took them back inside, sorted them, and verified each bag had 10 in it. Then we counted the bags by tens and examined how many bags of 10 it took to get 100 acorns. We put 10 bags in a pile, and re-counted by piles, bags, and by 10s of acorns. We made charts showing the correspondence between piles, bags, and acorns… You sound like an excellent teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/25 "2011-11-06T16:39:39Z")
…the bane of my existence. I couldn’t even do regular math so ALL numbers were negative to me. I think I have that thing where a person just absolutely can’t do math. I know there’s a word for it…I’ve seen it here on the Dope. Oh, and it took me two years to get through Algebra I. Near the end of the second year the teacher put this question on the test…something like “How do you figure the dimensions of half a hole?” I answered, “There’s no such thing as half a hole.” I was the only one who got it right. He said, for that he was going to pass me. Everybody clapped. ---
**Author:** ![Becky2844](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@Becky2844](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Becky2844)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/26 "2011-11-06T16:53:28Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > I’m a liberal and a progressive, but I’m sorry, I can’t quite wrap my mind around the way that education has been dumbed down. New Math was supposed to make math all perfectly clear to students. But I always wondered if the whole business wasn’t fixing something that wasn’t broke in the first place (as others up-thread have noted, along with everyone else who has ever criticized New Math). > > From that day to this, there has been wave upon wave of New New Math, Even Newer New Math, New New New Math, (New)[sup]n[/sup] Math, etc. And each has been a worse disaster than the one before, IMHO. > > A few years ago, I took the Calculus/DiffEq and Statistics classes at a JC. After finishing Stat, I tutored that and algebra. I looked through the Algebra book and couldn’t help but puking. I stormed into the office of the chairman of the Math/Science Dept and politely asked if he would mind terribly much if I chewed his ass up one wall and down the other for allowing such an awful book to be chosen. (I could talk like that because I had already been in his Finite Math and Calculus III classes and was on good terms with him.) > > He politely told me that the reason they used that book was because every other text the committee reviewed was worse. So we then had a good long talk about how the quality of math instruction has gone down the tubes over the years, and how the textbooks were getting steadily shittier and shittier. One of his complaint was that they were increasingly emphasizing glitz over quality – he pointed to the profusion of glossy three-color graphs diagrams, that math students of a few generations earlier had all done fine without. My complaint focused mainly on the excessive and premature abstract expositions, and on the steady decrease in the depth of the content. > > It’s not just math. All the academic subjects are watered down. That has been a major and widespread complaint for years. Neither I nor anybody else here on SDMB is the first to mention it. I had the same experience in my U. S. History classes – the texts were dumbed down and poorly written besides, and many students complained that they couldn’t follow it. So I guess the next edition will have to be dumbed down even more. The problem was that they were just downright poorly written. > > I went to the nearby University library and got a REAL history text, written by several of the “Really Big Names” in U. S. History books. This book was about three times bigger than the class text. I read that in parallel with the assigned class text. With the added depth of detail, a whole lot of stuff really started to make sense, that wasn’t there in the class text. So like I said, it’s not just math. > > ETA: Nowhere in the above-pitted algebra book could I find any occurrence of the word “axiom” nor any general discussion of what an axiom is, although a few of them were presented without much explanation. Isn’t an axiom something that’s found under a car? (…running away…) ---
**Author:** ![JoelUpchurch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f05b48/32.png) [@JoelUpchurch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoelUpchurch)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/27 "2011-11-06T17:11:25Z")
I was reading this article about the problems that science and technology majors have in college. It seems to me without a solid math background in high school a lot of this majors would be very difficult. [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/edlife/why-science-majors-change-their-mind-its-just-so-darn-hard.html?ref=science&pagewanted=all) ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/28 "2011-11-06T19:22:43Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > …the bane of my existence. I couldn’t even do regular math so ALL numbers were negative to me. I think I have that thing where a person just absolutely can’t do math. I know there’s a word for it…I’ve seen it here on the Dope. Well, author John Allen Paulos wrote a book called _[Innumeracy](http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/maths/paulosja.htm)_, though he was more addressing an attitude of indifference to math, rather than just difficulty with it. ---
**Author:** ![gamerunknown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/6bbea6/32.png) [@gamerunknown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gamerunknown)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2011, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/29 "2011-11-06T22:29:24Z")
I think [Dyscalculia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia) is the name used by diagnosticians. ---
**Author:** ![Powers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Powers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Powers)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/30 "2011-11-07T02:44:39Z")
> [@Voluble](#): > > Why? What we were doing before worked fine. Did it? Surely there was a problem which “New Math” was attempting to solve? Powers &8^] ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/31 "2011-11-07T10:12:25Z")
> [@Becky2844](#): > > Isn’t an axiom something that’s found under a car? (…running away…) What do you call the rendition of Euclid into English? Translation of axioms (Yes, I made that up one day in Calculus class, during the chapter on Analytic Geometry.) ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/32 "2011-11-07T10:19:46Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Well, author John Allen Paulos wrote a book called _[Innumeracy](http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/maths/paulosja.htm)_, though he was more addressing an attitude of indifference to math, rather than just difficulty with it. Yes. And I mentioned “Why Johnny Can’t Add” up-thread. I think these two books should be required reading for anybody studying math beyond, say, beginning algebra, and certainly for anyone contemplating teaching math. And in Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Feynman (duh!) there’s a chapter in which he pokes fun at the whole process of reviewing and choosing math textbooks. He was invited to participate in a review committee. He tells of how the various publishers’ [del]lobbyists[/del] uh, sales reps wined and dined and lobbied them, and the politics, etc., involved. ETA: If you like the stuff Paulos writes, note that he has a monthly column too. I don’t have the cite at my fingertips, but it’s somewhere within the ABC network’s web world. I’ll dig up a cite RSN if I can find it . . . ETA: Here it is: “Who’s Counting?” [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/) ---
**Author:** ![Floater](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/dc4da7/32.png) [@Floater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Floater)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/33 "2011-11-07T13:18:43Z")
And a couple of years after it was introduced in the US it was imported to Sweden as part of the 1969 edition of the national curriculum for the Swedish primary school system. I went to teachers’ training school 1970-1973 and had to learn how to teach it. It was definitely new maths as none of us students had ever come across it before and had to completely forget everything we had ever learned. I had use for set theory, though, when I learned to programme computers. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/34 "2011-11-07T14:20:33Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > ETA: Here it is: “Who’s Counting?” [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/WhosCounting/) Bookmarked, thanks. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/35 "2011-11-07T14:52:57Z")
I always thought new math was a method used by publishers to get otherwise stingy school districts to buy new books. After all people complain when a social studies book still has the USSR but math doesn’t change that much especially at the grade school level. So they invent “new math” and lobby the DOE to force classrooms to teach it. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2011, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/36 "2011-11-07T20:34:49Z")
New Math was simply trying to get kids to think about math in the same way that mathematicians did. It was the same as the problem with reading. Adults who read well don’t waste their time reading one letter at a time. Similarly, to a mathematician, “To each real number a we assume there corresponds another unique real number, denoted by -a, having the property that a + (-a) = 0. This number -a is called the additive inverse of a, or simply the negative of a,” is a clear, simple, almost trivial definition of negation—the only one possible, in fact. The only problem is that children don’t have minds trained to the necessary degree of rigor—Hell, most adults don’t, either. The idea was to skip taking baby steps, and you just can’t do that. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/37 "2011-11-08T19:42:09Z")
> [@Powers](#): > > . . . Surely there was a problem which “New Math” was attempting to solve? . . . > [@John\_W.Kennedy](#): > > . . . The idea was to skip taking baby steps, and you just can’t do that. The idea was to prepare students for higher math, instead of just drilling them in Arithmetic, which had been the previous focus. Some concepts are easier to learn as a child and if they’re left out, will make the transition between Arithmetic and Algebra, etc. harder, resulting in fewer students jumping that gap. The drive to get more students into math & science was part of the Space Race. Although if it’s done badly, or the student’s style of learning doesn’t go from abstract idea to calculation well, it can feel like something was left out. My experience with New Math was from a child’s perspective, so I’m not sure what changes stuck. Did previous elementary teaching systems introduce the following: number lines, greater than/less than, what a percentage IS rather than how to calculate one, and the notation of different base systems (binary is an example)? Several people have mentioned set theory, which has been retained. I’ve seen worksheets from first and second grade showing numbers separated into stacks of ten and single coins, so emphasizing that stuck, too (without as much copy work, thankfully). What other concepts have become a permanent part of elementary math instruction? ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/38 "2011-11-08T22:14:31Z")
The current problem seems to be so much emphasis on the concepts that there is no actual practice of a mechanism. So students feel really comfortable with numbers, but can’t actually compute anything. I had a similar experience with my college Chem II class. The professor was interesting and made the topics fun, but we didn’t have very much required homework. I _should_ have elected problems on my own for drilling, but with busy college schedules driving me to the minimum required and not enough foresight to see my own needs, I actually struggled to pass the tests because I couldn’t actually solve the problems. ---
**Author:** ![qazwart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/5fc32e/32.png) [@qazwart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/qazwart)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/39 "2011-11-08T23:47:16Z")
It wasn’t just Math that was new. It was everything. That’s when the Look See method in learning how to read replaced the older phonics method. I actually did quite well with New Math. I understood the theories and thought it was great. I took to math in different bases and actually “proved” a few theorems of my own. (For example, in the third grade, I _proved_ why casting 9s works and that you can cast 6s in Base 7 and 15s in Base 16). I didn’t do to well in Reading with the Look/See method though. In fact, I never learned to read. I was memorizing the words with the pictures, so people thought I could read. This worked until the third grade when pages became longer and not all pages had pictures on them. I didn’t really learn until about the fifth grade, and I still couldn’t write a sentence until the ninth grade. Learning disabilities. Dyslexia and Dysgraphia. I did well in High School, but ended up flunking out of college several times. You can’t be a History major unless you can write a few coherent sentences in a row. Computers came to my rescue. They allowed me to put down my thoughts, then reorganize them without the pain of rewriting everything over and over again. I could type which was much faster than handwriting, and I could correct my errors which you can’t do on a typewriter. (Very good, David, there’s only 7 errors. Now in the next sentence…) I went back to college in my early thirties and earned my BS in Computer Science. When I was young, I had always wanted to earn a PhD, and be History professor, but reality intruded. You want a degree, you go with your strengths. Plus, by the time I got my degree, I was married with two kids. No time to get an advanced degree. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936/40 "2011-11-09T00:38:21Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > The current problem seems to be so much emphasis on the concepts that there is no actual practice of a mechanism. So students feel really comfortable with numbers, but can’t actually compute anything. . . Even practice will fade, if we’re talking about the mechanics. It’s a use it or lose it thing. Although I’ll confirm that when you’re studying, nothing beats practice to get a process down. Feeling like you understand a concept is only the bare beginning of being able to apply it, especially on a test where time is limited. The time I was most competent at cranking the arithmetic was the year I worked the Christmas rush at this odd little store. There were catalogs, order forms, and tables out front, and a warehouse in the back. In between were a wall, a counter and a bunch of counter workers. Customers would fill in the forms and drop them through a slot in the wall. The warehouse guys would fill the orders and check the costs, then send them through a bigger hole in the wall to the counter workers. The counter workers would call the customer to the counter, check that everything was there, then hand total the amount, add the tax, and retotal before passing the merchandise and form to the two cashiers. This was pre-calculators, of course. Customers then stood in line to pay the cashiers, who would take the money and hand over the merchandise. It was add, calculate percentage, add all shift. I will never in my life be that good at adding and calculating percentages again. When I work with numbers now, if it’s important to get the result right I’ll use a calculator and/or spreadsheet and someone else will double-check it, also using a calculator. If it’s an estimate, there’ll also be a drawing and listed measurements, with units and all assumptions spelled out. Those will go into the files so that others can re-check them later, if needed. At no time will anyone trust the wetware if hardware is available, although because of the experience described above, I’ll often crank out simple things with a pencil, then confirm with the calculator. This is considered to be an odd quirk on my part. \*\*qazwart \*\* > [@](#): > > It wasn’t just Math that was new. It was everything. That’s when the Look See method in learning how to read replaced the older phonics method. By the time my kids were in school, Look See had been replaced by phonics + What Makes Sense? + Just Memorize These. Because for some words, phonics will only take you so far. I approved of that. Sad that your problem was masked for so long. Hope you’ve been able to slip in a little hobby history on the side. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-exactly-was-the-new-math/601936.md?page=3)