
	The Ministry of Education has authorized the use of many different textbooks over the last half century. While their various merits and shortcomings can be debated, it is more worthwhile to consider a few of them from different eras in math education as being indicative of the thinking within the field at the time. Some of the text books that were used in Ontario are briefly considered in this way.


	Math education in the late 1940s and early 1950s involved primarily computational mathematics. The two texts shown above are demonstrative of the era. While they begin to show signs of progressivism with pictures and coloured templates (unlike their very clinical and dull predecessors) they are primarily organized and structured along particular arithmetic concepts, and have a great deal of straightforward calculation work for students. Below, the textbooks from the later 1950s are more representative of the psychological understandings of student learning. "The purposes of arithmetic cannot be fully attained unless children understand what they learn and how to use it. We face here the problem of developing meaning, both mathematical and social meanings . . . Meanings have not customarily received their share of attention in classroom instruction" (N.C.T.M., 1970, p. 625). These following textbooks are infused with just that developing mentality. Concepts are considered in frameworks that children can easily relate to. As titles of textbooks suggests, they offer "Arithmetic with Meaning" and "Arithmetic We Need".


	The shift towards new math in the 1960s and 1970s changed the math textbook, quite obviously, because of the broader conceptions of mathematics. The field newly involved sets, place value, geometry, statistic, probability, logic and algebra. Notably, the textbooks below have shifted the lingo in their titles from arithmetic to mathematics. As well, texts from the later part of the new math era are supplemented with either black-line masters so the teacher can make worksheets for the students, or entire math workbooks, where the students essentially fill in the blanks. These can be seen as ways for the new mathematics to be taught by even the most reluctant teacher. As well, since elementary math suddenly included so many new topics, the structural organization of these topics were still in dispute, and different textbooks arranged topics in different ways. Consensus in the practical structure of modern mathematics wasn't really achieved until it was dictated by curricular guidelines. In the two books below, Discovering Modern Mathematics treats arithmetic skills as a subset of math entirely, and in Mathematics, arithmetic skills are more incorporated across areas of new math. As well, the trend to authenticate math with experiences for students seems to continue in these texts.


	The 1970s were filled with resources for teachers in mathematics. The combination of the release of the Hall-Dennis Report (The Report of the Royal Commission on Education [1968]) and the need for new strategies to help teachers cope with the expectations of new math led to all sorts of innovate approaches. Below are two such resources, on how to develop effective math centres, and a package of activity cards for teachers to use with students.


	The newer age of mathematics resources showed some signs of its earlier counterparts. With new curriculums, came new textbooks. The 1980s saw a return to the use of math workbooks and black-line masters for teachers. A plethora of textbooks came and went as the pace of mathematics and educational reform accelerated. Currently, textbooks have a greater connection to Provincial curriculum. Just how worthwhile these new textbooks are, like the new Interactions series and the MathQuest 2000 series, has yet to be seen. In light of situations where principals have complained that they had been required to purchase textbooks within very small windows of time, and had little time to investigate the strengths of different textbooks with their department heads, it is possible that the current textbooks will be as short lived as others in the 1980s.