The School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG) was an American academic

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

focused on the subject of reform in

mathematics education In contemporary education, mathematics education, known in Europe as the didactics or pedagogy of mathematics – is the practice of teaching, learning and carrying out scholarly research into the transfer of mathematical knowledge. Although rese ...

. Directed by

Edward G. Begle Edward Griffith Begle (November 27, 1914 – March 2, 1978) was a mathematician best known for his role as the director of the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), the primary group credited for developing what came to be known as The New Mat ...

and financed by the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

, the group was created in the wake of the

Sputnik crisis The Sputnik crisis was a period of public fear and anxiety in Western nations about the perceived technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union caused by the Soviets' launch of ''Sputnik 1'', the world's first artificial satelli ...

in 1958 and tasked with creating and implementing

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

curricula In education, a curriculum (; : curricula or curriculums) is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view ...

for

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and

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, which it did until its termination in 1977. The efforts of the SMSG yielded a reform in mathematics education known as

New Math New Mathematics or New Math was a dramatic but temporary change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools, and to a lesser extent in European countries and elsewhere, during the 1950s1970s. Curriculum topics and teaching pract ...

which was promulgated in a series of reports, culminating in a series published by

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

called the ''New Mathematical Library'' (Vol. 1 is

Ivan Niven Ivan Morton Niven (October 25, 1915 May 9, 1999) was a Canadian-American mathematician, specializing in number theory and known for his work on Waring's problem. He worked for many years as a professor at the University of Oregon, and was preside ...

's ''Numbers: Rational and Irrational''). In the early years, SMSG also produced a set of draft textbooks in typewritten paperback format for elementary, middle and high school students. Perhaps the most authoritative collection of materials from the School Mathematics Study Group is now housed in the Archives of American Mathematics in the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

's Center for American History.

External links

Mathematics education Curricula {{Edu-org-stub

See also

Further reading

External links