I thought this was interesting in light of the recent thread on Common Core
Common Core Mathematics: background Liping Ma critiques the "strand" structure of U.S. mathematics curriculum. Common Core seems more of the same, at least in the way I'm seeing implemented in my DD's school.
A Critique of the Structure of U.S. Elementary School Mathematics The big influence of the first California framework, �The Strands Report�, published during the new math movement, was to fundamentally change the structure of U.S. mathematics content from a core-subject structure to a strands structure. During the past few decades, although the names of items changed from �strands� to �areas� to �standards�, the strands structure has remained. The damage this structure has caused to U.S. elementary mathematics education is the instability of content, discontinuity in instruction, and incoherence in concepts.
