Excerpt from Scientific Method in the Reconstruction of Ninth-Grade Mathematics

Ninth-grade mathematics in American high schools needs to be completely reconstructed. What we teach and how we teach it both must come in for most minute scrutiny and evaluation. More than one-half of the present subject-matter that we now teach our pupils will never be used by the vast majority; neither in subsequent courses in the high school, in occupational or other life-activities beyond the school, or even by that fraction of percent of the population that engages in the various scientific professions. We make large claims for our instruction on the ground that we are training children to think intelligently. It will be very difficult to substantiate these claims. The very organization of our course of study tends to inhibit this, even in the most intelligent of our departments. Eighty percent of the ninth-grade course offers little or no opportunity to meet real problem situations. Our textbooks emphasize habit formation and rote memory, and these textbooks almost exactly determine the course of study. Furthermore, it is relatively common to fail from 20 to 30 percent of our students. The evidence shows that this cannot be justified. It shows furthermore that the difficulty can be attributed, not only to the dead wood in the curriculum, but to the fact that not one of the currently used textbooks is thoroughly organized with respect to the learning of ninth-grade students. The candid judgment, joint and several, of teachers of advanced mathematical and scientific subjects, of employers of labor, and of educational critics and reformers agrees with the conclusion of the scientific investigator who has measured results more objectively: ninthgrade mathematics cannot merely be rearranged or reorganized. It must be rebuilt from the ground up.

This is a sweeping indictment of one of our most strongly intrenched subjects of study. The phraseology is necessarily dogmatic.

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