I read the article "The Standards -- Some Second Thoughts" which was in the September - October 1996 edition of Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. This magazine comes form the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). The author is Stephen S. Willoughby, who teaches in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. He is also a past president of NCTM and has taught in all levels - from first grade through graduate school.

In 1894, the first national commission on Mathematics education (Committee of Ten) made some recommendations including the three that follow.

1) We should decompartmentalize mathematics so that arithmetic, geometry, algebra, and so on are not taught as isolated subjects.

2) We should have more emphasis on realistic problem solving.

3) We should have more emphasis on intuition and thinking (Committee of Ten 1894).

100+ years later, our math rooms look more like they did in 1894 then what the committee recommended. The rest of the article then goes on about what went wrong and arguments for and against the standards with the help of two other critics.

The first critic is Chester Finn, assistant secretary of education for research and improvement during the 1980's and founding partner and senior scholar with the Edison Project. Finn had four major statements against the standards: 1) The standards are untested, 2) The standards require radical change and are therefore unworkable, 3) The standards discourage automaticity and formal thought, and 4) The standards have confused goals with methods of achieving those goals. The author had some good points that agreed with and disagreed with Finn. I thought the biggest thing that they both agreed upon was too much radical change without the proper funding. Willoughby states that the teachers in Japan teach 640 hours in a 240-day school year and are paid for a full year. Teachers in the US teach 900 hours in a 180-day school year and are paid for 10 months of work. If we could work on our lesson plans like the Japanese teachers, we could make radical changes.

Zalman Usiskin is the director of the University of Chicago project. He has 3 main criticisms of the standards. First, the standards are out of date because technology has increased quickly. I agree with Willoughby when he disagrees, because the standards should not be based on technology, due to the fact that technology is always going to be changing. Technology should be able to be implemented without having to change the standards. Second, both critics and the author agree that mechanical procedures are given the short shift, and that should not happen. Willoughby says that is not what he sees in the standards, but if others do see it, then they should be rewritten. Finally, Usiskin says the standards are inadequate for middle schools and require too much in grades 9-12.

Willoughby finishes the article with three more criticisms of his own which I feel are similar to Finn's and Usiskin's.

-- Anonymous, December 14, 1998

Answers

Rick, I met Zal Usiskin. He was peddling his University of Chicago Mathematics Project curriculum. He is the author of the Transition Math book that used to be used for advanced math 7. I find it remarkable that he is criticizing the standards since he was so adept at pointing out how well his books conformed to the standards. I bought the whole package when I was the department chair at Marshall. We found the texts so inadequate that we dumped them as soon as we could.

I never felt that Usiskin's curriculum got as much out of the middle levels as he could. It sounds like he has changed his tune some.

-- Anonymous, January 12, 1999

Rick it sounds like an interesting article. As a math teacher I think the NCTM has printed some excellent information. I am in agreement with most of the standards, but also feel that they are not all easily obtainable. I believe that our current curriculum in mathematics needs to be built upon to meet the need of students. Today's students will have many different career choices then the ones we had. However, as you mentioned, too much radical change without proper funding for educators and students is overwhelming.

-- Anonymous, January 20, 1999