It began with the 1960s “new math.” Then in 1989 the leadership codified a set of national standards that turned classrooms into social engineering projects. The specific goal was to have girls and minorities “like” math. Two decades later the math education disaster has reached new levels, yet math leaders refuse to accept their roles in the devastating results of their academic experiments on America’s school children. The worse part is that government leaders let them get away with it.
John Saxon, a retired military officer who became a math teacher, author, and publisher, began challenging the leadership establishment aggressively in 1981 after he published his first textbook. He accused them of pushing their unproven ideology onto teachers and students. He showed how mathematics could indeed remain true to itself—a historically rich discipline—and still cause students from all academic levels (and races and genders) to say, “I love math!” The math establishment immediately spurned him. Not being a certified teacher, he couldn’t possibly know how to teach. Worse, he refused to support their ideological reform program that said process was the “real” product of learning. To them, mathematical results were a by-product.
This complete biography of John Saxon tells of his life before and after he decided to take on the powerful American mathematics establishment. The belittlement he experienced as a child, the success he achieved as a West Point graduate and decorated pilot, the close family ties he built among his four children, the incremental construction of his proven user-friendly math program over a 15-year period, and the zealous loyalty of his employees are described in detail. It shows why, when he died in 1996, Saxon Publishers had sales of $27 million in spite of major efforts by math education leaders and their political allies to destroy him personally and professionally.