Spines of New Math paperbacks from the 1960s (courtesy wikimedia.org)

Many of us remember the New Math from personal experience. I do from elementary school in the 1970s in West Hurley, NY.

I loved it. I learned that the decimal system is arbitrary and numbers could be expressed in any base. That was fascinating.

Of course, I was the kid who learned his times tables for fun.

The New Math emphasized understanding the rule-systems that underlie numbers. In elementary school, it constructed the very concept of number with set theory rather than by rote counting.

There wasn’t a focus on students being able to do arithmetic computations. This upset people, and by the 1970s, the New Math was under attack.

The “back to basics” movement re-established an emphasis on computations in the 1980s.

As described by Christopher J. Phillips in his book The New Math: A Political History (The University of Chicago Press, 2015), it’s not a coincidence that this is the same decade in which the country elected Ronald Reagan as president.

Phillips cogently makes the case that the rise and fall of the New Math movement traces our cultural mores and larger political beliefs about who should be making decisions in our society.

Going back two thousand years, Phillips shows how the argument about how mathematics should be taught has been a proxy for a conversation about how people should be taught to think.

For the developers of the New Math, their approach would help American citizens be critical and creative thinkers—what was required to counter the Cold War threat of a dominant Soviet Union.

Indeed, the federal funding that was leveraged in the 1950s to build the New Math movement was appropriated as literally a matter of national defense. This was followed by the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the 1960s, which continued the federal government’s role in fostering national education curricula.

The consensus that the federal government should be deciding what’s taught in our nation’s schools frayed with the cultural changes in the 1960s and collapsed with the horrors of Vietnam in the 1970s.

As we work towards making computer science a first-class citizen in the pantheon of school teaching and learning, what lessons can we draw from the rise and fall of the New Math?

Computer science is a liberal art—not just a vocational skill. It’s true that becoming accomplished as a software developer is a path to a good career, including good pay. And it’s true that there is a social justice dimension to broadening participation in computing—everyone should discover whether they love computing and then have access to these career paths.

But the reason to institutionalize computer science in K-12 is deeper than that. It’s because computing is beautiful and powerful—like all forms of knowing and doing.

We must go beyond the zero-sum game. One of our big challenges is creating time for teaching and learning computing. We don’t want to create winners (computer science) and losers (other areas of study).

It seems clear that infusion approaches—integrating computing into other subjects—will be an important part of the future.

It’s a team effort. One of the big take-aways from Phillips’ book was the reach of the School Mathematics Study Group—the organization that was created to develop and support the New Math. Curriculum writers from all over the country were involved in creating the reference texts; these individuals then served in leadership roles in the adoptions in their home states.

Most importantly, now we live in a time where everyone’s involved in curriculum decisions, particularly parents.

We need everyone together to make this happen.

P.S. I highly recommend Christopher Phillips’ book. His writing is clean and compelling, and the story is engaging and compact. He also published an essay-length version of his thesis in the New York Times on December 3, 2015.

Before anyone can answer that question, a definition is needed. According to Brianna Crowley in her article, 3 Steps for Building a Professional Learning Network, at http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2014/12/31/3-steps-for-building-a-professional-learning.html , “A professional learning network is a vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. These groups reflect our values, passions, and areas of expertise.”

I started thinking about my PLN after Brandon Horn on the AP Computer Science Facebook page asked for suggestions for additional information and support for current and new AP Computer Science Teachers. He said he usually recommends the AP CS Community on the College Board site, the AP CS Summer Institute, the AP Computer Science Facebook group and the local CSTA chapter, if there is one. In a comment, I suggested the CSTA Listserv (I am one of the moderators).

This question, I feel is more important to those of us who are the “onlys” on our campus. What do I mean by the “onlys”? “Onlys” are the only computing teacher on campus. For those of you who are one of those, who do you turn to for advice?

For me it depends on the class I am seeking advice for. I teach 4 different computing classes: Visual Basic, Computer Science Principles, AP Computer Science A and Computer Science AB. For general advice, I will look to the CSTA Listserv. For example, in October, I was told that I needed to decide on new furniture for the lab and only had a few days. I turned to the CSTA Listserv and asked what furniture the members had purchased recently that fit their needs. I received several responses that helped me to quickly make some decisions.

In another situation when one of my students asked a java coding question that I did not readily have an answer, I turned to the AP Computer Science Facebook group and received responses very quickly. When I needed to write a Computer Science Principles Final Exam, I turned to the CSTA Listserv and several teachers responded with help. I appreciated it so much! I have asked questions on Twitter when I want to incorporate an ed tech tool into my computer science classes. Also, I always leave my local CSTA chapter meetings with some great ideas! All of these groups are my PLN.

Who is in your PLN? Please share so we can all grow ours.