Mathematics
Largely in the US, but increasingly in other nations, K-12 Mathematics textbooks have reflected the controversies of new math and reform mathematics which have sought to replace traditional mathematics in what have been called the math wars. Traditional texts, still favored in Asia and other areas, merely taught the same time-tested mathematics that most adults have learned. By contrast "progressive" approaches seek to address problems in social inequity with approaches that often incorporate principles of constructivism and discovery. Texts such as TERC and CMP discourage or omit standard mathematics methods and concepts such as long division and lowest common denominators. For example an index entry to multiply fractions would lead to "devise your own method to multiply fractions which work on these examples", and the formula for the area of a circle would be an exercise for a student to derive rather than including it in the student text. By the 2000s, while some districts were still adopting the more novel methods, others had abandoned them as unworkable.
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Famous quotes containing the word mathematics:
“In mathematics he was greater
Than Tycho Brahe, or Erra Pater:
For he, by geometric scale,
Could take the size of pots of ale;
Resolve, by sines and tangents straight,
If bread and butter wanted weight;
And wisely tell what hour o’ th’ day
The clock doth strike, by algebra.”
—Samuel Butler (1612–1680)
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)