Battleground Schools: My Thoughts

The first thing that resonated with me in this week's reading is the notion that there exists a "math phobic" attitude among North American adults. From my previous work experiences in Canada, I have met several people who shared the same view on math: "If I don't have the talent for it, why bother?", "It's not useful in work, so I shouldn't study it", etc. It can make the work environment somewhat uncomfortable as those who enjoy math have to "tone" down their abilities to work with numbers to avoid offending those who dislike math. Sometimes the workplace can even become disharmonious just because one can come across as "arrogant" and "smart" to others. What's worse is that this attitude can be easily transferred to other people, especially the younger generation.

Secondly, I learned that math only became a focal point of education in the United States during the Cold War years, leading to the New Math movement. Governments saw math as a tool to elevate their nation's economic power and status, and the learning of math was forced upon children to benefit the collective, not the self. To many people who lived through that era, math was treated almost like a religion, but its popularity soon waned as people realized that students cannot be taught these abstract and mainly conservative ideas when they had not even developed an interest in the subject. I think this served as a lesson to policymakers this kind of approach to education would not achieve its desired results (not just in math).

The last section of the reading about the ongoing war over the NCTM Standards also interested me. I also read up on EdReports' recent review and criticism of NCTM's instructional materials, as well as the NCTM's response. In my opinion, arguments over the curricula and methodology can only be conducive to the quality of education obtained by students, and I don't think constructive criticism should end even when there's a widely accepted set of teaching standards.