Reflecting on Sputnik - Kilpatrick 2

Introduction
Lesson One
Lesson Two
Lesson Three
Lesson Four
Lesson Five

J. Myron Atkin
Rodger W. Bybee
George DeBoer
Peter Dow
Marye Anne Fox
John Goodlad
(Jeremy Kilpatrick)
Glenda T. Lappan
Thomas T. Liao
F. James Rutherford

Five Lessons from the New Math Era (continued)
Jeremy Kilpatrick, University of Georgia

Lesson One: All educational reform is local.

When Tip O’Neill, the late Speaker of the House of Representatives, lost his first election to the Cambridge City Council, he learned not to take the voters in his neighborhood for granted. His father took him aside and told him, “All politics is local. Don’t forget it.” For O’Neill, the first rule of the political game became to pay attention to your own backyard and take care of your people.

A hard lesson taught by the new math was that educational reform, too, is local. Bold visions, innovative materials, and opportunities for teachers who want to revamp their practice all have their place in stimulating reform, but they are not sufficient. If education is to change, it has to happen in the classroom. Teachers and students alike need to both understand and accept the proposed changes, or they will not occur. Although some of the new math projects did work closely and extensively with schools that were attempting to implement reform ideas, most greatly underestimated the need to reach teachers, parents, and students with their proposals and to ensure that teachers in particular were comfortable with them. After working with secondary mathematics teachers, who for the most part agreed with the proposed reforms and could cope with them, several projects ran aground when they turned to the elementary school curriculum and encountered a much larger cadre of teachers, few of whom could see what was being asked of them. Many of these teachers did not feel comfortable teaching a different mathematics. The reformers underestimated the magnitude of the task and failed to make sustained, productive contact with the people “in the trenches” who were the only ones that could translate the reform ideas into practical action.

Educational reform is local in another sense, too. During the new math era, a number of well-intentioned efforts were made to transplant reforms from one country to another. In particular, teams of authors from Western countries attempted to provide curriculum materials to countries in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East rather than assisting them to develop their own curricula. Lacking an understanding of both the educational system and the social ethos of the schools in those countries, the authors produced materials that were largely unsuited for the circumstances in which they came to be used. Importing reforms into the U.S. proved equally unsuccessful. Approaches such as open classrooms, work cards, and teacher centers failed to take root in U.S. soil.

The recent video study component of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study has made the point tellingly. No one can look at the tapes of teachers in the U.S., Germany, and Japan teaching eighth-grade mathematics without coming away impressed by how strongly the lessons in each country are conditioned by the social and cultural context in which they are given. Teachers and students in each classroom seem to have agreed-upon expectations as to their roles that guide what they do and how they work together. Changing the ethos of the mathematics classrooms in a country clearly requires concerted effort of a sort rarely attempted during the new math era or since.

Lesson Two: Mathematical thinking is not bookable.