Talk:Principles and Standards for School Mathematics

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Since we are supposed to check on "neutrality", I am going to suggest that the article is neutral on some minor points (it selectively quotes one of the standards documents correctly) but not overall. More to the point, it is defamatory, since it completely distorts a number of very plain points clearly spelled out by the NCTM, which is the author (as well as the copyright and trademark holder) of both the PSSM document and the Focal Points that the article falsely claims "nullify" the PSSM. Furthermore, the links to the article were initially distributed to a small list of zealots (by one of their members) who have been undermining the message of NCTM and its standards documents. The present article is one of many in a campaign of defamation, distortion and falsification conducted by the present-day heirs of the Back-to-Basics movement that decimated US math education in the 1970s and early 1980s. Great care must be given here when presenting issues of major controversy and allowing such a biased analysis would be a travesty.

Consider a couple of very simple points. The PSSM is in fact a single document. However, it is not the 1989 document. There have been multiple editions of the NCTM Standards and there is a substantial library of related documents. The original Curriculum Standards were indeed published in 1989. This was followed by Professional Standards and Assessment Standards. A revision of the 1989 document published a decade later is the one that usually is referred to as "Principles and Standards" or the PSSM. The fact that the original author of the Wiki article repeatedly refers to the wrong document, fails to recognize existence of multiple Standards documents and is missing a large number of citations suggests that the author is 1) biased and 2) insufficiently familiar with the topic to pen an encyclopedia article on it.

216.165.176.250 (Talk)

May I point out that the original presentation was almost a complete NCTM propoganda piece, and that nearly all of the opposition is precisely from the people that this author would evidently call POV by defintion. It is not at all hysterical to point out that many of the curricula that are used by a generation of Americans omits any instruction of any time-tested arithemtic methods, yet dares to call itself mathematics instruction when any recognizable arithemtic content has been deleted in favor of a curricula entirely invented for these standards. The Wikipedia is one forum where truth is not determined by the PR budget of the proponents. --Sugarcaddy 23:41, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The text has been edited in an attempt to fix some of the more technical concerns I expressed above. However, the patches have been applied unevenly and hardly rescue the document from general failure. For example, a sentence was added concerning the 1989, 1991 and 1995 Standards documents. However, nothing changed at the top, still claiming that PSSM was published in 1989--in fact, it was the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards and not the Principles and Standards document that appeared in 1989.

Other language, such as the "nullify" comment have been tempered, but, once again, only in spots and patches. In other places in the document the biases remain as glaring as they have been prior to the patches being applied.

To be honest, I do not understand Sugarcaddy's concern about the "NCTM propoganda" (sic). As the author and copyright and trademark holder, NCTM has a right to describe their own work and certainly has the right to state unequivocally its intent in publishing the PSSM. Critics should then create their own section on "Criticism of PSSM" without destroying the original NCTM description. What I found on the page yesterday was a simple case of intellectual vandalism. Whether the motives might have been higher, the outcome was just that--nothing more and nothing less. 31 Oct 2006 23:39 EST

To OCNative I can understand your desire to eliminate the flag I added at the top of the page, warning readers that the article is badly mangled. The fact is that my claim that the article is, as currently construed, factually incorrect is based on rather close familiarity with the document in question and its implementation. The very first warning should come to you from the first line that claims that the document was created in 1989. In fact, a different standards document was created in 1989--the PSSM title was adopted with the 2000 document, which was a major revision (aka 2nd edition). But it is far worse in the details. The original article that was placed in Wiki was fairly neutral. It was substantially modified by a manic user Arthur Hu (arthurhu)and another (or possibly the same) user Sugarcaddy. You should be familiar with the latter, as you've previously reverted his changes in other articles. Hu's and Sugarcaddy's additions were, to a large extent, simply false and inflammatory. Rather than undoing the damage one line at a time, I tried to warn potential users that the article is not accurate. I suppose, there are other ways to make such a warning. Nonetheless, your deletion of the flag is a mistake.