The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics released new guidelines that, for example, call on fourth graders to know multiplication tables and division.

Oddly, it's big news when math teachers call for students to learn math skills. So The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported that the guidelines signaled a return to emphasizing ''basics" in math education.

Stanford University math professor James Milgram, who advised the NCTM on the new guidelines, told Education Week that the new guidelines represent "an end to the math wars." Milgram was referring to the ideological battle between educators who believe that students should memorize multiplication tables and master long-division and educrats who believe teachers should encourage students to discover math for themselves and master estimating numbers.

In 1989, the NCTM was on the fuzzy side. The council argued that kids did not need to memorize math facts because, "The calculator renders obsolete much of the complex pencil-and-paper proficiency traditionally emphasized in mathematics courses."

State agencies compounded the folly. California educators argued that memorization of number facts was "a hindrance rather than a help in developing mathematical understanding."

In keeping with the NCTM's emphasis on children writing about math, developers of a California assessment test told graders to give more credit to students who got the wrong answer to a math question (but wrote a better essay) than students who gave the right answer without the right prose. California elementary schools scarfed up MathLand, a trendy program that pooh-poohed exercises with "predetermined numerical results."

The unofficial slogan for new-new math: There is no right answer. Trendy programs recommended that students work in groups so that they could discover the answers. Instead of memorizing 5+4=9, students would look for creative ways to solve the equation, such as that 5+5=10 but since 4 is 1 less 5, the answer is 9. In the name of creativity, new-new math was both time-consuming and boring. Continued...