The reasoning behind the New Math: from the US to Luxembourg

Since 1958 a series of new reform programmes, known as “New Math reform” tried to fundamentally deconstruct the mathematics education of schools in the United States. This reform aimed to promote the “problem-solving” abilities in students and was a means to modernise not just the school math education but also the idea of why students should learn mathematics. Later, the reform project travelled to Europe through the support of the OECD and some other international or European organisation. This paper briefly reviews the process of the adaptation of this reform project in Luxembourg during the 1960s and 1970s. The aim is to look at how the ideological background about mathematics education, and in general education, mattered in the preceding of this school reform.