When I saw the point on the connection between incompetence and conservative teaching, I hit my knees. No wonder! When you literally do not know what kind of feedback to give to a student if the student were to give a "different" answer, you dread the possibility that you cannot spit the answer back at an instant; worse, rather than saying "let me get back to you on that" after writing it down somewhere, you would succumb to your own insecurity, and then try to shut it down with force in an attempt to "save face". Thank you so much for pointing out an answer other than "industrial era factory worker training" for once. It is an elephant that needs to be confronted.
Another "moment" would be just how ironic the end product of education innovation motivated by the Cold War turned out. On one hand, I cannot imagine living with the scare of nuclear weapons; on the other hand, I really do believe that the Cold War was a boon in some ways: the vigorous interest in STEM-related endeavours and the desire to "do them properly"- by the government, by the people, et cetera. Still, I find it so baffling and ironic that the end result was mostly the old-fashioned approach slightly rehashed- but with more abstraction in the interest of "elegance" (I have seen how university-level mathematicians' love for "elegance" often result in exceedingly abstract products that do not hint even remotely at what motivated their development in the first place).
Finally, the rise of neoliberalism in the 80s and "accountability". I do not know too much about the United Kingdom side of things, but as far as the United States goes, I know what kind of backlash against various human rights-related progresses, especially racism, contributed to Reagan getting elected. Furthermore, the Cold War was over. Oh did the Republicans get to work on dismantling the United States; what is worse, Reagan got especially lucky with the oil prices when the "Morning in America" happened too. As you pointed out, "accountability" in particular really was a call for dis-empowerment and infantilization of teachers; of course, this is business as usual for the self-serving neoliberal narrative- speaking of which, one of our readings for EDST 401 precisely concerns the creeping influence of neoliberal economics in public education. I truly appreciate that the NCTM tried to stay a step ahead and take matters into their own hands, trying to give no room for politicians to turn the parents against the teachers.
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