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William Heard Kilpatrick and Progressive Education Movement
Kilpatrick believed that students should only take classes that they were interested in and that mathematical thinking was "harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking needed for ordinary living." He also stated that, "We have, in the past, taught Algebra and Geometry to too many, not too few."(Klein, 2003). -
The Activity Movement takes hold in the 30's
"The Activity Movement of the 1930s promoted the integration of subjects in elementary school, and argued against separate instruction in mathematics and other subjects. The Activity Movement spread rapidly into the nation's elementary schools. High schools were more resistant in part because the teachers were trained in specific subject areas. Some proponents of the Activity Movement did not even acknowledge that reading and learning the multiplication tables were legitimate activities"(2003). -
Life Adjustment Movement of the 40's
In the 1940's it was brought to the attention of military leaders that many of the men could not do basic arithmetic. They would need appropriate high school courses, including math programs, that focused purely on practical problems such as consumer buying, insurance, taxation, and home budgeting, but not on algebra, geometry, or trigonometry. This idea was called the Life Adjustment movement and was based on the premise that schools were "too devoted to an academic curriculum"(2003). -
The "New Math" Period of the 50's and 60's
"The New Math groups introduced curricula that emphasized coherent logical explanations for the mathematical procedures taught in the schools. New Math was clearly a move away from the anti-intellectualism of the previous half-century of progressivist doctrine. For the first time, mathematicians were actively involved in contributing to K-12 school mathematics curricula"(2003). -
Open Education Movement of the 1970's
The open education movement came from a book that was published in the 60's about a school called Summerhill where students were able to choose what they studied. Modeled on Summerhill, "free schools" proliferated, and eventually helped give rise to the Open Education Movement. This was just a remodel from the 20's but the idea of letting children decide each day what they should learn at activity tables, play corners, or reading centers, was once again promoted as profound and revolutionary -
A Nation at risk, the 1980's
A Nation at risk brought to light how our education system was failing and it called for a major overhaul of our entire education system. "With widespread public concern about education, the release of A Nation at Risk resulted in newspaper headlines across the country. A number of states created task forces and commissions to measure their own state programs against the recommendations of A Nation at Risk"(2003). -
The NCTM Standards and the 90's
The Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics was developed during the summer of 1987. Input was sought from classroom teachers across the country. During the following decade it was commonly referred to as the NCTM Standards, or as the Standards. Of the 24 working group members who had direct input into the Standards,none were mathematicians, and only two were concurrent K-12 teachers; the remainder were teacher education professors and instructors from universities."(2003) -
Common Core
In 2009 the Common Core state standards were established by a group of educators from across the country to ensure all students are ready for success after high school. The Common Core State Standards establish clear, consistent guidelines for what every student should know and be able to do in math and English language arts from kindergarten through 12th grade (corestandards.org, n.d.).
