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Math As a Culture War? Trey Kay Discusses the Latest Episode of 'Us & Them'

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At a time when West Virginia’s GOP legislators are maneuvering to resend the state’s obligation to use Common Core Curricular Standards for reading and math,  Beth Vorhees speaks with Trey Kay, host of WVPB’s Us & Them podcast about his latest program about New Math.  

New Math was a method for teaching math introduced into public schools in the late 1950s and 1960s – a curricular answer to the Cold War fears of American intellectual inadequacy. In the age of Sputnik and increasingly sophisticated technological systems and machines, math class came to be viewed as a crucial component of the education of intelligent, virtuous citizens who would be able to compete on a global scale. New Math ultimately became a political football used in culture war battles over education.