Summary and Reflection on "Battleground Schools"

Summary

In the article titled “Battleground Schools”, there were three reform movements in mathematics education during twentieth-century in US.
The first movement was Progressivist Reform which was from 1910 to 1940. People in this time:
· argued that students learned mathematics by following the rules which showed them how to get an answers, but students did not know why the particular procedures worked and how to approach the same question with alternate ways.
· Made some topics, such as pure and applied mathematics, covered in the prescribed curriculum.
· Proposed students to engage in doing mathematics as part of a reflective inquiry even though inquiry was more difficult to control than just teaching students.
· Got “programming the environment” involved.
(Page: 395-396)
As the second movement, the New Math in 1960s:
· Set the theory, abstract algebra, linear algebra, calculus and other topics be taught throughout the K-12 system.
· Met the lack of who teachers had familiarity with the mathematical topics that they were supposed to teach. In addition, the parents had difficulties to help their children with their math homework.
· Came to the end by the early 1970s.
(Page: 397-398)
Math Wars, the third movement, was based on the NCTM Standards in 1990s, the reforms were:
· Publishing some NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics.
· Making content of the standards to support a balanced, progressive approach.
(Page: 399)
The article also mentioned about some negative public views of Mathematics and teachers. “Mathematics is hard, cold,…”. “ Those who like mathematics are eggheads, nerds,…”. “ There is no shame …for those who claim to be incapable of doing and understanding mathematics.” (Page: 393)

Reflection

It is good for us who are going to be math teachers to know the history of mathematics. The article also lets us know how important math is in the secondary school, and it was keeping changing in order to make students qualified to go to a college or university and become highly trained scientists.
Through the negative public views of mathematics and teachers, I can see that not only secondary-school students need a teacher who has the knowledge of mathematics, but they also need the teacher knows how to teach, and the latter might be more important than the former.