Reddit mentions of A History of School Mathematics. Volumes 1 & 2

I didn't suggest lowering the bar. I suggested that we used to have a system that graduated very few individuals. This was a problem for a number of reasons. If you look at writings of the time you will see people concerned that people entering the military couldn't operate machinery because of poor math skills. Those 8th grade tests didn't help them, did they?

I think that rather than a bar metaphor it makes sense to have standards supported by research, and then to come up with the best ways to support a system that helps students achieve those standards. It is hard to argue that there were coherent standards in 1912. An exam unearthed here or there does not constitute standards.

The very first thing people should do when considering education is to give up on the fictional idea of a golden age of education that we have slipped away from. To use a similar argument that you have above, but leading to a different conclusion, there is a Harvard entrance exam from the 1890's that includes a long division problem. That's right, the ability to do long division was considered advanced enough that it appeared on a top university's entrance exam. It's something that middle schoolers can do today. So with this one tiny fact I can conclude that we are now super advanced in our educational system, right? Of course not. So much for simple logic.

Bottom line: the easy answers are not answers. Something that sounds like simple logic is probably simplistic, not simple. If you are honestly interested in education reform, check out some history of education. The NCTM has a decent volume where math is concerned.

While I disagree with quite a bit of what you wrote, I agree strongly that we need to improve methods, if by methods we are talking about things like teacher preparation, curriculum, and methods of instruction. I also agree strongly that it is the job of education to help students develop reasoning skills. The problem is not that teachers are bad. The problem is that teachers don't have the support they need to deliver instruction that is consistent with our best understanding of good education from the last couple of decades of research. As a result, we fall back on frequent standardized assessment and preparation for that assessment. We, as a society, are not willing to give teachers that sort of support; we even talk more about weeding out bad teachers and closing schools rather than trying to figure out how to improve both.

Anyhow, that's my opinion. Even though you didn't really ask for it. :)

[edit: typo]