Part II of MathNotations Interview

You have to read it to believe it. I thought question 18 was most telling.


"18. Here’s an innocent little question, Prof. Steen! The current conflicts in mathematics education are usually referred to as the Math Wars. In your opinion, what were the major contributing factors in spawning this conflict and how would you resolve it?"


"There are many factors involved. I think I can identify a few, but I have no confidence that I could resolve any of them. One is the natural tendency of parents to want their children to go through the same education that they received—even when, as often is the case with mathematics, they admit that it was a painful and unsuccessful ordeal. This makes many parents critical of any change, most especially if it introduces approaches that they do not understand and which therefore leaves them unable to help their children with homework."

[Number one: Parents are stupid.]


"Another source were scientists and mathematicians who pretty much breezed through school mathematics and who were increasingly frustrated with graduates (often their own children) who did not seem to know what these scientists knew (or thought they knew) when they had graduated from high school. Our weak performance on international tests appeared to provide objective confirmation of these concerns, and they came to pubic notice just as the NCTM standards became widely known in the early to mid-1990s. Even though very few students had gone through an education influenced by these standards, the confluence of events led many to believe that the standards contributed to the decline."

[Number two: Lower expectations started long ago. The standards just codified them and gave them a pedagogical foundation.]


"A third source can be traced to the way in which the NCTM Standards upset the caste system in mathematics education. Mathematicians are accustomed to a hierarchy of status and influence with internationally recognized researchers at the top, ordinary college teachers in the middle, below them high school teachers, and at the very bottom teachers in elementary grades. The gradient is determined by level of mathematics education and research. So it came as somewhat of a shock to research mathematicians when the organization representing elementary and secondary school teachers, seemingly without notice or permission, deigned to issue "standards" for mathematics. Mathematicians would say, and did say, "we define mathematics, not you."

[Number three: College professors are stupid.]

[Screw the professors. Screw the kids. Full steam ahead. It doesn't matter if kids aren't prepared for college.]


"I could go on, but won't. But I do want to add that, as with any contentious issue, face-to-face dialog helps bridge differences. With some exceptions, I believe that has happened with protagonists of the math wars. Achieve was one of the first organizations to bring to one table people from all these different perspectives. Subsequently, other groups have made similar efforts, generally with good results. As mathematicians and educators roll up their sleeves to work together on common projects, each learns from the other and the frictions that led to the math wars begin to reduce."


[They do what they want without asking the people who have to teach the product of their actions, and then claim that the solution is to work together. Incredible. I've said before that this is about academic turf and here it is, plain as day.]