The Rise of the American New Math Movement: How National Security Anxiety and Mathematical Modernism Disrupted the School Curriculum

Abstract

In the 1940s, the teaching of mathematics in the secondary schools of the United States began to recover from a long period of disrespect. This augmented prestige was due in part to an increased demand for mathematically trained workers arising from World War II and the Cold War. At the same time, undergraduate mathematics instruction was undergoing revision, bringing it more into line with the “modern” viewpoint of research mathematicians, focused on unifying concepts and “structures.” There was a sentiment among a significant segment of mathematics educators that school mathematics had become too estranged from these exciting new developments. This environment encouraged, in the 1950s, the development of innovative secondary school curriculum programs, featuring higher levels of abstraction and precision of language. The University of Illinois Committee on School Mathematics (UICSM) was an early, and notably radical, exemplar, while the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG) was the largest and best-funded program. By the end of the 1950s optimism that the “New Math” would fundamentally and permanently change the school curriculum for the better was widespread, although far from universal.