Saxon Math Warrior
A BOOK FOR MATH WARRIORS
We cannot continue to waste children’s time while adults debate the issue of who’s got the power versus who’s got the right program in mathematics education. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) helped implement the debacle known as “new math” in the 1960’s and has held entrenched power among politicians and education bureaucrats since they published their own “national standards” document in 1989. The U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation bought into their ideological “new new math” both politically and financially with $84 million as startup money in the 1990’s and without proof that its reform ideas would work. It is still being funded, even though it has failed to produce a pattern of acceptable results for two decades. The negative impact on students’ lives and this country are immeasurable.
In 1981, John Saxon, with $80,000 scraped together from loans, savings, and a second mortgage on his house, had begun building his own power base of dedicated supporters when he self-published his first Algebra 1 textbook. He field-tested it for a year and proved that its simplicity was ingenuous and, most of all, that it produced unbelievable success among math students from all backgrounds. (The study was even monitored and praised by the Oklahoma office of the American Federation of Teachers.) It was, and continues to be, a maverick’s choice for American mathematics classrooms because to go against NCTM’s dominance in math education takes courage and commitment from independent-thinking teachers and administrators.
John Saxon’s Mathematics Program, A Math Warrior’s Almanac, will explain how he came to declare war on the mathematics establishment leadership for their failed programs and an unwillingness to admit their mistakes and correct them. It is based on John’s home videos and his writing that appeared in monthly advertisements in education journals and from media articles. It is also an excerpt from a biography of John Saxon that is to be published soon.
This is a handbook for parents and teachers who are seeing what reform math is doing to their children’s math skills. It will give answers to those critics who say Saxon is “drill-and-kill” rather than "thrill and skill," and that it is for the “lower-performing” students. For some reason, they don’t acknowledge that at least 50% of American students now fall into that category. They also don’t seem to know the difference between practice and drill.
This book will also give homeschooling parents of approximately 1.5 million children, the majority of whom are already using Saxon Mathematics, an accurate understanding of how to implement the program most effectively.
Finally, it will give many teachers a chance to learn the truth about John Saxon’s program. The effort to demean Saxon Mathematics in teacher training programs is legion. Diversity of thought and tolerance for differing views is clearly not present in schools of education when it comes to training teachers with fairness and accuracy in various programs that might include, for example, John’s “direct instruction” methods. When teachers have been lucky enough to get to use Saxon materials, many of them have admitted that they, for the first time, learned mathematics themselves while teaching that marvelous subject.
As the only mathematics textbook author and publisher who stood openly against the reform programs, John Saxon’s work needs to be resurrected if national leaders are to consider all the ways to turn around mathematics education. Parents, teachers, and small business owners haven't been included in the initial writing of the new national standards. The general view is that they don’t fully understand all the “inner workings” that must be considered with such decisions. They are, in effect, a drag on the process.
A Math Warrior’s Almanac will help lighten the load as parents can get up to speed with an overview of the “inner workings” of mathematics education and why we are where we are. Then, they have to be willing to fight as hard for their children as John Saxon did.
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