What is the New Math Curriculum?
New Mathematics or New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries, during the 1960s. The name is commonly given to a set of teaching practices introduced in the U.S. shortly after the Sputnik crisis in order to boost science education and mathematical skill in the population so that the intellectual threat of Soviet engineers, reputedly highly skilled mathematicians, could be met.
New Math emphasized mathematical structure through abstract concepts like set theory and number bases other than 10. Beginning in the early 1960s the new educational doctrine was installed, not only in the USA, but all over the developed world.
Criticisms of the New Math Curriculum
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 the end it was concluded that the experiment was not working, and New Math fell out of favor before the end of the decade, though it continued to be taught for years thereafter in some school districts.--- excerpts taken from Wikipedia
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."
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