Before getting to the main point of this article, I need to make a confession: I am a product of the "new math." I had the "new math" from kindergarten all the way through high school. The "new math" influenced my understanding of what mathematics is and what doing mathematics means. Most of the time I am not conscious of this influence, but a recent experience made me nostalgic for two, interrelated ideas of the "new math." I believe that these ideas are just as valid today as they were thirty years ago. More important, as the pendulum of school mathematics reform swings toward the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM 1989) and away from any residual legacy of the "new math," we need to retain these two ideas.
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