Conflicts in Math Education

Let me preface by saying that I feel like the idea of what math education should be is something I really like to pick people's minds about. My boyfriend is from Ecuador and loves math, but is quite critical of the BC math curriculum, often saying that BC students often learn math topics 3 years later than they would in his school, which was based on an American curriculum. We constantly have this debate of what should students learn through high school math. So I was totally fascinated by this article. 

The first thing that made me stop and think was the idea of that there are some exaggerated false dichotomies in math education decisions. I think that when I debate this topic, I am prone to fall into this false dichotomy zone. I think I actually find myself debating both sides of the argument, depending on who I am debating with, I suppose polarizing ideas are sometimes fun to debate. However, this polarization could also be harmful, as I think that a balance of the ideas would probably be best. 

Second, I was fascinated by the section of "The New Math". Partially because I had no idea that this extreme was a part of math education history. I honestly feel a little bit ashamed by not know about some of these math education history events. Also I partially because this would have been the era where my parents and their siblings had learnt math in school. My parents, in particular, my mom who claims to have poor math skills and had trouble helping me even with some of my elementary math homework, but then also seems to have an intuition for logic, reasoning, and daily math applications. I suppose I am curious about the long term effects of various math education approaches. 

Third, the idea that math anxiety or the concept of math only being for nerds as a barrier to improving math education. This information is not new to me. I think this misconception of math is something that I think is going to very hard to change and I am curious whether or not we are making any progress on dispelling it. Based on my interactions with others, I would suspect that if there is any progress, that it is incredibly slow. 

Afterthought. How could we encourage better math teachers such that we could successfully teach progressively, without falling behind? My automatic idea is to pay them more with the possible consequence of a slightly more privatized education system, so that there is a motivation for highly capable math educators. But at the same time I don't think I have enough knowledge of the surrounding dynamics to make such a claim. 

[December 18 Edit: when rereading this post, I feel silly that I suggested privatizing education more, as I have seen more of the research and case studies. Although I do suppose it is still a solution in some cases, but not really for the majority of education in BC, as most students are in the public system.]