Christopher J. Phillips. The New Math

This book examines the political dimensions of a widely recognized, but largely misunderstood, curricular reform initiative in the U.S. Christopher J. Phillips deftly explores how and why a series of federally sponsored “new math” programs aimed to cultivate a kind of intellectual discipline that would foster good citizenship by “fundamentally reform[ing] the way Americans thought about mathematics” (1–2). In particular, he uncovers why the mathematicians and educators behind these reforms wanted to develop students’ conceptual understanding over rote learning and computational proficiency. Furthermore, by accounting for multiple and shifting political contexts from the 1950s through the 1970s—including the Cold War, Great Society, and rise of neo-conservatism—Phillips vividly delineates the sense of urgency that fueled these initiatives as well as the heightened scrutiny that contributed to their decline. He concludes that by the late 1960s and 1970s, growing disillusionment with federal reforms, coupled with an emerging “back to basics” movement in education, fueled popular criticisms of the “new math.” Broadly speaking, Phillips’s account also offers a valuable vantage point for considering the rise and fall of liberalism in late-twentieth-century American education. In other words, this is not a narrow curricular history.

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