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Mathematics In Schools: “A Vision of the Future”
On an old pamphlet published by Peel District School Board, Ontario, Canada, in 1990.
You can find interesting things in old cupboards in schools. The pamphlet pictured below was written by the program department in the Peel District School Board, in 1990. Shaking off the dust from the cover, let’s see what is inside, and how the field of mathematics education has changed (or not).
Waves of reform swept through mathematics education in the 1980s, with the publishing of the National Council of Mathematics Educators’ “Agenda for Action” in 1980, which identified problem-solving as a focus, among other things. Some said at the time that problem-solving was “the theme” of the 1980s, and a growing use of Georg Polya’s 4-step heuristic for problem-solving (often misused as a template or turned into a graphic organizer) was another feature of this period of math reform.
Fast forward a few years, and the 20th century was drawing to a close, and the new century was on the horizon, which was also a new millennium. With the changing of the Millennium solidly in the rearview mirror now, it’s easy to forget about Y2K “virus” fears, and how some 2000s futurism would be gradually “put to bed” (think how in science fiction of the 20th century, writers often used arbitrary dates in what they saw as the far future to show their…
