SK> Was the New Math all bad, IYO?
 SK> I am a product of that curriculum. I thought it was fine. Of course,
 SK> I haven't tried teaching it, and I have never taught elementary aged
 SK> kids.
For myself, the experience was very bad.  However on retrospect, my family 
moved so that only my last two years of hs were at a school where new math 
was taught, improperly--I think.  I went from an A math student at a large 
suburban hs to d's and f's.  I had a very hard time in college due to my lack 
of understanding of concepts in trig.  I realize now that the hs teacher did 
not care about students unless they could keep up with the "best" and that 
this fostered a bad attitude on my part. I still am wary of Math instructors. 

 SK> He has said many times before in that forum, that the reason the New
 SK> Math movement didn't succeed was because the teachers were not well
 SK> enough educated (which seems to make sense to me, but having been a
 SK> child at that time I cannot really add my own experiences to the
 SK> analysis). Of course, this Stat Prof goes even 
 SK> further, and claims that
 SK> when it was attempted to teach the teachers the "new math", they could
 SK> not learn it. (He really loves to make jabs at teachers.)
Hey, my old HS math teacher must have moved!!Fire back at him, when a vast 
majority of students do not learn a concept, then the teaching process is 
suspect.  These guys would not survive an hour in your classroom.  Teachers 
have little control over their teaching situation--Deming would say that the 
people responsible for training (the professors,and the administrators) blew 
it, they did not understand the process.
--- Maximus 2.02
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