The American Subject: The New Math and the Making of a Citizen

This dissertation is a political history of the "new math," a curriculum that was widely used in American schools between 1955 and 1975. It focuses on the novel textbooks and materials produced by the School Mathematics Study Group (SMSG), a federally-funded organization led by mathematician Edward Begle. Rather than exploring the efficacy or institutional history of the curriculum, I use the new math to trace changing ideas about the relationship between teaching mathematics and cultivating desirable mental habits. Learning mathematics counted as learning to think well; debates about the math curriculum were debates about the intellectual discipline future citizens would need. The title, "The American Subject," is therefore intentionally ambiguous: "subject" refers both to the discipline taught and the person trained. Mathematics was understood to be the discipline that disciplines.;The rise and fall of the math embedded the changing politics of mid-century America. From its promising origins to its ignominious demise a decade and a half later, the new math was never primarily about improving the test scores of students or creating more mathematicians. With the nation facing a series of moral, intellectual, and social challenges, its promoters claimed the new math provided a new way to think, meant to forge the sort of citizen "modern" society required. Evaluation of the math curriculum entailed conceptions both of the nature of mathematical knowledge and of the mental habits most desirable for future citizens. Forged in the crucible of Cold War fears of intellectual inadequacy, deployed in the heyday of the liberal "Great Society," and criticized by ascendent conservatives in the seventies, the new math was political through and through.