My thoughts on "Battleground Schools"

Well Susan, that was an interesting article you wrote.  This is all brand-new to me, so I have no idea how correct you are, but I’ll take your word for it.  I see you’ve cast mathematics as a boat caught in the tides of politics, and I can’t disagree with that interpretation.  However, since you’ve opened the door to politics, I am now inclined to offer my own thoughts in that direction.

As I said, I cannot dispute the influence of politics upon curriculum.  The recent evolution/creation debates in the southern USA have shown that clearly enough.  However, I will choose not to take sides in these math wars.  I contend that the NCTM, New Math, and Progressivist schools may all be equally viable or unviable, and that in the very act of fighting over which style gets implemented, we have created an even greater monster.

Forgive me for injecting my own political philosophies into this curricular debate, but I believe that education is best served by allowing teachers and schools the maximum amount of individual freedom.  This implies no standardized curriculum, and thus no need to argue over which curriculum is best.

To explain: If the premise of Susan’s essay is correct, and there have been only three broad styles of curriculum to come and go in the last hundred years, then we have a system that changes slower than molasses in January.  By forcing all schools in the province to adopt the same curriculum, we have put an end to diversity, experimentation, and evolution in math teaching.

Surely the current curriculum is not ideal.  As it stands now, with all schools bound under a single governing body, any change (if it is permitted at all) will be slowed to a crawl by bureaucracy.  However, if each school were free to pursue its own agenda, we would see an explosion of different forms of teaching, and those methods that prove to be superior would quickly be adopted by other schools.  The “open-sourcing” of curriculum would allow our schools to evolve rapidly in an organic way.

In this scenario, arguments over the best umbrella curriculum would quickly recede as schools pick and choose methods to suit their own unique situation.  Those that don’t work will see their students stolen away by schools with better programs.  The spirit of competition will allow education to escape the stifling grip of top-down curriculum.

But now I am over 300 words.  In summary, there will never be a “one size fits all” solution, and any attempt to find one is just pissing into the wind.