re: #182 wrenchwench

Your old Twit account is out of the gulag.

(I have a very low follower count, so it’s easy to notice something like that.)

Oh hey WW we talked about a shared experience. How about another one from memory lane at the same time… Do you recall the mess the “new math” made?

en.wikipedia.org

In 1973, Morris Kline published his critical book Why Johnny Can’t Add: the Failure of the New Math. It explains the desire to be relevant with mathematics representing something more modern than traditional topics. He says 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” (p. 17). Furthermore, noting the trend to abstraction in New Math, Kline says “abstraction is not the first stage but the last stage in a mathematical development” (p. 98).