My 3rd grade teacher went into a rant about the New Math (this was about 1967) when they changed the curriculum at midterm on her. I remember her screaming “You’ll never learn anything from these books” and throwing them on the floor. We were stunned. Apparently what set her off was that they used pictures to explain sets and subsets. Since they were dealing with concepts, they didn’t care what they were adding. One problem showed them adding gingerbread men to apples. That did it. “How can you do that? What do you get? Appley-men? Ginger apples?” and she was off.These days they would call it the menopause. We were 8, and terrified. Someone ran for the principal and we were shepherded into 2nd grade for the rest of the day. Next morning we had a substitute for a week or so.True story.
My 3rd grade teacher went into a rant about the New Math (this was about 1967) when they changed the curriculum at midterm on her. I remember her screaming “You’ll never learn anything from these books” and throwing them on the floor. We were stunned. Apparently what set her off was that they used pictures to explain sets and subsets. Since they were dealing with concepts, they didn’t care what they were adding. One problem showed them adding gingerbread men to apples. That did it. “How can you do that? What do you get? Appley-men? Ginger apples?” and she was off.These days they would call it the menopause. We were 8, and terrified. Someone ran for the principal and we were shepherded into 2nd grade for the rest of the day. Next morning we had a substitute for a week or so.True story.