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this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
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I don't know what "whole language learning" is, and I'm way too young to have experience it, but wasn't the curriculum before "new math" like arithmetic and nothing else? In other words, not math at all?
I didn't read much into it but from what I did it seems like they started teaching children actual math like algebra and logic and parents got frustrated because they were too stupid to help with homework anymore. Brings into my mind the whole "math was cool before they involved letters" thing that makes me want to throw a book at someone.
New response from scratch because I manically edited the shit out of my old one. Sorry for linking the wikipedia page there
you were clearly referring to the same thing I was and I didn't take the appropriate time to understand your reply. I apologize.
The backlash I am familiar with is that students would learn how to identify the place value of something ("the
3in220134₅has value3 * 5¹") but not be able to do actual arithmetic (3 * 5 = ?). Basically "why are my kids learning this abstract stuff about numerals or set theory when they can't even remember their times tables?" That is my primary issue with itit is not good pedagogy. Abstraction should come after a student has learned the foundational material. They aren't professional mathematicians, and treating them as such (beginning with abstract definitions, as we do) is bad pedagogy.
I am sure there was some pushback in the form of "this is too hard", but I don't know how much of that kind of pushback occurred. I also would not necessarily blame it on the intelligence of parents. I can imagine a sort of shellshock when your 10 year old comes home with abstract mathematics that you never learned or only learned in high school or at the undergraduate level. And I can similarly understand the outrage when you expect your child to learn foundational skills in school, only for those to be skipped in favor of a high-minded appeal to "real understanding" (in my experience, this is a theme in US education
don't memorize basic arithmetic because you can just consult your calculator; don't memorize facts because you can just look them up).
I do not know what the curriculum was before new math, but I would be very surprised if they exclusively taught arithmetic in all of K-12 before the 1950s. I haven't confirmed this, though.
I do think it is good pedagogy to pepper in motivations for abstract concepts early. Have a student evaluate
1723 * 16via the standard algorithm and separately have them performtl;dr I think it was more "why are my kids learning this shit before they learn to multiply" than "I have no idea how to help my kid with their homework." Anecdotally, the latter is not something I have experienced (when I taught K-12), even when the material was abstract and something the parents couldn't help with.