Book Review: California Dreaming: Reforming Mathematics Education, Volume 50, Number 10

Who would you choose to write a book about the history of the Math Wars, a topic surely familiar by now to almost all readers of the Notices (if not, see [1])? A mathematics educator? Probably not, since most such are biased toward the progressive school of mathematics education. A mathematician? Again, probably not, since most of them are avid exponents of the traditional view of mathematics education. Neither? Worst of all, you might say, for how could a nonmathematician, nonmathematics educator ever understand the Byzantine world of California mathematics education politics? But, in fact, Suzanne Wilson’s background and knowledge do qualify her to write this book. Wilson is a professor of teacher education at Michigan State University and, therefore, suspect as a colleague of mathematics educators. But, in addition to her Ph.D. in educational psychology, she also has a master’s degree in statistics, so that she is not mathematically ignorant. At any rate, she has written a book about the Math Wars in California from which not only did I, a peripheral warrior in the Math Wars, learn a lot but in which I could not detect even the whiff of bias. Wilson is equally critical of zealots on both sides of the Math Wars. Despite having “strongly held” opinions of her own, she aims at and, I believe, hits “the middle ground”. This book is then a tour de force that merits reading by anyone interested in the Math Wars, even including Californians, almost all of whom, I dare say, would learn something about math education in their state from this book. Since 1986 Wilson has spent considerable amounts of time in California working on a variety of mathematics education projects. So, in addition to having the perspective of a non-Californian, she knows whereof she writes. The first six (of ten) chapters cover the history of twentieth-century mathematics education in California and in the U.S. until 1993, when the Math Wars began in earnest. The next two chapters deal with the Math Wars themselves and are followed by a chapter on how the California Mathematics Framework of 1999 Book Review