Today, math wars. The University of Houston’s College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created
them. The right way to teach math has been contentious for over
one-hundred years. From the anti-math movement of the early
twentieth century to the overly abstract new math of the sixties
and seventies, educators haven’t been shy about speaking up. At
the heart of the issue: should kindergarten through twelfth
grade students be drilled on fundamentals, or should they be
nurtured into discovering mathematical principles on their own?
A recent incarnation of the debate began in 1989 with a set of
standards issued by the National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics. The standards favored the nurturing model and
catalyzed a growing math reform movement. New, less rigid
curricula were widely adopted. One popular textbook read “… the
authors do not believe it is worth the time and effort to
develop … paper-and-pencil [methods for all] div