What is the “Old Math” that our parents and grandparents did, and what does it involve doing that’s different than the “New Math”?

Question

Specifically the addition and subtraction part of it.

In: 19

Answer 1

“New Math” was a thing from the 1950s and mostly gone by the 1960s. Prior to this, math classes didn’t have a unified curriculum although you’d probably start by memorizing addition and multiplication tables.

New Math attempted to introduce underlying mathematical theory earlier in learning arithmetic. If you didn’t learn to add and subtract in multiple different bases, you didn’t learn New Math. The idea was to get kids started as early as possible on understanding that a quantity is not the same as the symbol that represents that quantity. It didn’t work well.