Chapter 7: New Wine In Old Bottles:

“Is the ‘new math’ really better?” is a question which I have been asked hundreds of times during the past fifteen years and which I have found increasingly more difficult to answer. My experience has been quite diversified and includes teaching the first three grades in a two-room school; teaching 55 students in a one-room rural school; teaching all the mathematics in a high school; acting as supervisory assistant in a school unit; serving as Superintendent of Schools and finally preparing elementary teachers for the teaching of mathematics. It has been my privilege to work rather closely with teachers who had left school before the “new math” was instituted and who had to teach what they themselves had never learned as children. Many felt insecure and frightened by the poorly conceived, hastily-enforced new program introduced almost without warning. Those who attended seminars and workshops of various kinds were able to make some comparisons between the “traditional” and the “new” and probably fared a little better. What concerns me is the fact that some students who are now in their professional year at the College of Education and who have studied “new math” for twelve years are as frightened about teaching it as were those teachers who never learned it in elementary schools in the first place. Some of them, I am sure, wish that the “new math” would simply go away or that I would tell them that it is not as good as the “old math.” All of us know that teachers who love mathematics are more likely to have students who love mathematics. Teachers who dislike the subject will likely have many students with similar feelings. If fears and doubts about the “new math” persist even today in the minds of prospective teachers, then their students will continue to be on the defensive for years to come. In the light of my experiences, therefore, I have changed my answer to the question, “Is the ‘new math’ really better?” and I simply reply, “Nobody knows for sure and never will.”