Further Thoughts on the Standards: A Reaction to Apple

As always, I enjoy and learn from the thoughtful analyses and well-argued comments about educational practices by my colleague Michael Apple. In reading his often flattering, yet critical, analysis of NCTM's Curriculum and Evaluation Standards/or School Mathematics (1989) and Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics (1991), I must admit he is right on several counts. The lens through which he views the world is not one familiar to most mathematics educators. Relating any message about schooling to the patterns of differential economic, political, and cultural power is not common in our field. Furthermore. the five issues he raises—the financial crisis in education, the nature of inequality in schools, the role of mathematical knowledge as a filter that maintains those inequalities. the possibilities and limitations of a curriculum grounded in problem situations, and the complex realities of teachers' lives—are critical issues facing all educators interested in changing the current system. Clearly. the Standards documents by themselves are not well situated with respect to these broader ideological and political issues. In fact, none of the five issues, although considered, were the driving forces behind the NCTM's reform documents.