New Math

New Mathematics or New Math was a change in the way mathematics was taught in schools. It happened between the 1950s, and 1970s. In the United States, it happened shortly after the Sputnik crisis. The goal was to boost students' science education and mathematical skill to meet the technological threat of Soviet engineers. These engineers were said to be very skilled mathematicians.
Topics introduced in the New Math include set theory, modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra.
All of the New Math projects emphasized some form of "discovery learning." Students worked in groups to invent theories about problems posed in the textbooks. Materials for teachers described the classroom as "noisy." Part of the job of the teacher was to move from table to table assessing the theory that each group of students had developed and "torpedoing" wrong theories by providing counterexamples. For that style of teaching to be tolerable for students, they had to experience the teacher as a colleague rather than as an adversary or as someone concerned mainly with grading. New Math workshops for teachers, therefore, spent as much effort on the pedagogy as on the mathematics.
Criticism.
Parents and teachers who opposed the New Math in the U.S. complained that the new curriculum was too far outside of students' ordinary experience and was not worth taking time away from more traditional topics, such as arithmetic. The material also put new demands on teachers, many of whom were required to teach material they did not fully understand. Parents were concerned that they did not understand what their children were learning and could not help them with their studies. In an effort to learn the material, many parents attended their children's classes. In the end, it was concluded that the experiment was not working, and New Math fell out of favor before the end of the 1960s, though it continued to be taught for years thereafter in some school districts.
In the Algebra preface of his book, "Precalculus Mathematics in a Nutshell", Professor George F. Simmons wrote that the New Math produced students who had "heard of the commutative law, but did not know the multiplication table".
In 1965, physicist Richard Feynman wrote in the essay, "New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics":
In his book, "Why Johnny Can't Add: The Failure of the New Math", Morris Kline says that certain advocates of the new topics "ignored completely the fact that mathematics is a cumulative development and that it is practically impossible to learn the newer creations, if one does not know the older ones". He also noted the trend to abstraction in New Math. Kline says "abstraction is not the first stage, but the last stage, in a mathematical development".
As a result of this controversy, and despite the ongoing influence of the New Math, the phrase "new math" is often used now to describe any short-lived fad that quickly becomes discredited. In 1999, "Time" placed it on a list of the 100 worst ideas of the 20th century.