The 1960s saw the rise of hippies, the birth of feminism, and the release of the first video ?and it was also an era of calculus, which was introduced to US high school math curriculum for the first time. Part of the New Math initiative, which started in the late 1950s motivated by Sputnik and Cold War fears of intellectual inadequacy, calculus was one of many revolutionary components of this initiative. In an age of increasingly sophisticated technological systems and machines, math became a central focus of raising intelligent citizens. The American Subject is a political history of the new math, which looks at mid-century American history through the changing mathematics curriculum and as a means of examining a crucial period of political and social ferment as well as an episode in age-old debates over the place of mathematics in liberal education. Phillips' focus is on grounding the perception of success and failure in changing evaluations of the nature of mathematical knowledge, and of the relevance of particular habits of thought for the cultivation of virtuous citizens. Neither the curriculum designers nor the diverse legions of supporters ever focused on whether the new math would improve calculation ability. They talked instead about needing to prepare citizens for modern society, for a world of complex challenges, seemingly rapid technological changes, and unforeseeable futures. The new math was promoted as a method to train children to think in the right way, and it captures in this history a complicated set of shifting political and societal commitments concerning the value of mechanistic intellectual habits, the relative importance of elite forms of knowledge against local and traditional ones, and the role of mathematics as mental discipline. That is, commitments concerning the way learning mathematics counted as learning to think.
Industry Reviews
"The New Math is ambitious, rich, and remarkably well-written. During the middle decades of the twentieth century, many groups struggled to articulate what 'mathematics' is, what 'mathematicians' actually do, and how a new approach to mathematics instruction could craft ideal citizens in America's schools. Mathematics teaching became a symbolic arena to sort out competing notions of proper thinking in the nuclear age. Drawing upon an impressive range of sources, Phillips vividly charts the surprising plasticity of 'mathematics' among professional scholars and the voting public in Cold War America."--David Kaiser, MIT "author of "How the Hippies Saved Physics: Science, Counterculture, and the Quantum Revival""
"At the intersection of the history of science and history of education, The New Math offers a compelling argument for understanding curriculum reform efforts in mathematics within the context of postwar/Cold War America. Making sense of these reform efforts as a response to the American experience after the war--including the efforts to return to normalcy, the rise of mass/consumer culture, the explosion of an unsettling (for adults) new youth culture, the expansion of secondary education, and the ascendancy of academic (particularly scientific and technical) expertise--enables the story of the new math reforms to shed a broader light on the political and cultural changes taking place during this period. This story provides insights into public perceptions of expertise and the perceived role of the academic (or any kind of) expert in American culture. A quality piece of scholarship."--John L. Rudolph, University of Wisconsin-Madison "author of "Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education""
"The New Math is not strictly for history buffs. There are several parallels between the New Math era as described in the book and today's reform efforts, chief of which is the assertion that increased attention to mathematics and science (i.e., the STEM of today) will guarantee the United States' international standing. . . . The lessons of the New Math era are instructive for us today, and that is why this is an important book."-- "Mathematics Teacher"
"The New Math sheds light on a time when changing political commitments were affecting what it meant to be prepared--mathematically--for citizenship in a modern, technology-laden society. . . . The book is based on extensive research and is incredibly well documented. . . . Likely to stand for a long time as the most thorough, authoritative account of this mid-twentieth-century phenomenon."--Jeremy Kilpatick, University of Georgia "Science"
"The New Math is well written, well documented, and well contextualized. . . . This gem of a book uses its ephemeral topic to shed light on the broader entanglement of knowledge, politics, ideology, and citizenship at the height of the Cold War."--Elizabeth Popp Berman, University at Albany, SUNY "Journal of American History"
"Importantly, The New Math explores not just the production of these textbooks but also what happened when they were actually brought into American classrooms and engaged by teachers, students, and parents. As a result, in addition to being a fascinating political history it's also a model of how we can treat the archaeology of the classroom as a way to approach the history of science."--Carla Nappi "New Books in Science, Technology, and Society"
