Method Versus Content

Abstract

After the realization of the 1958 curriculum in the mid 1950s a period of peace and quiet seemed to have begun in mathematics education. After all, this curriculum was unique since it was supported by both the establishment in the mathematics education and by the faction of the members of the Wiskunde Werkgroep who were known as persistent reformers. A curriculum so broadly based simply had to lead to deep satisfaction and solidarity. The opposite was true: years of great turmoil in the world of mathematics education had come, fed by the wish for a drastic change of course, based on various causes, both inside and outside of the Netherlands. It was as if the whole world of mathematics education had been struck by a fever blown over from the United States: the ‘New Math’ fever, most tersely characterized by the notion ‘modernization’. In those years Freudenthal plays the role that lingers in tradition as that of ‘the lonesome opponent of New Math’.