Why I Was Destined To Become An Algebraist

Abstract: In this thread, I discuss how the New Math movement influenced my career. I meander quite a bit, so skip to tweet 9 if you want to cut to the chase.

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The year was 1977 and 12 year old me was just starting 7th grade. My math teacher, Mr. P., seemed nice enough, if a bit dry. This was the time when writing on overhead transparency rolls with wax pencils was all the rage. Surely this meant the end of blackboards forever!

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Mr. P handed out our textbooks. Here is a black and white picture of the front cover. The actual cover was light blue (and without the US Department of Health, Education & Welfare stamp on it).

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The Secondary School Mathematics Curriculum Improvement Study was headed by Howard Fehr, a professor of mathematics education at Columbia Teachers College & one of the most influential math educators of the 60s and 70s. He was one of the founders of the New Math movement.

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Considering his influence, I don't understand why Fehr does not have an English Wikipedia page, although there are German & Portuguese ones. Anyone with an interest in Math Ed Wikipedia want to take up the task of creating an English page?

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Fehr

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People tend to think of New Math as something firmly planted in the post-Sputnik 60's and dead by 1970, but that's not quite true. The SSMCIS itself was still going up until about 1979. Here is some info if you would like to know more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_School_Mathematics_Curriculum_Improvement_Study

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In any case, I didn't know anything about New Math or Howard Fehr in 1977, of course. All I knew was that Mr. P. was going to write on the overhead transparencies every day with the lights slightly dimmed and we were supposed to stay awake.

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Mr. P. followed the textbook carefully, as did most teachers using the Unified Modern Math curriculum. This was largely because many of them did not understand it. Lack of teacher training & involvement was one of the biggest flaws of the New Math movement.

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If Mr. P. didn't understand the curriculum, he was at least good at bluffing. Besides, the math teachers were the football coaching staff, their real calling. This was true at many schools. Coaches were often hired as math teachers because math is all drills, right?

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Alright, let's look at the table of contents. Here is what I learned in 7th grade. Take a moment to read it all before you move on to the next tweet.

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Yes, you read it all correctly. Modular arithmetic. Sets. Binary operations. Groups, rings & fields. I ate it all up. I especially loved clock arithmetic. I thought it was cool that clocks with a prime number of elements are fields. I was 13 by then.

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You might be puzzled about the title of section 1.1, "Jane Anderson's Arithmetic". Submitted without editorial comment.

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If you're curious, you can find the complete texts of at least some of the books in the Unified Modern Mathematics series here:

https://eric.ed.gov/?q=%22unified+modern+mathematics%22

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I took 3 years of UMM. It was cancelled in my school district after that. When I was in 9th grade, the teachers were already talking about how glad they were to be going back to the old curriculum the following year. It was disappointing for me, but probably only me.

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UMM stuck with me. I'm sure it's why I eventually became an algebraist. Yes, I started my career in differential equations, but with an algebraist's perspective. How I drifted from that to what I do now is a tale for another time.

As always, thanks for reading.

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