Let's agree on a new term

I finished going through the various links on the sites that discussed my original post, and I have found one worth reproducing here from the UPI (thanks to Jim Miller). Lynne Cheney suggests the use of the term "NCTM math." I like that. It has a couple of advantages:

• it clearly identifies the topic at hand - the NCTM Standards and those instructional techniques devised in connection with (although some might argue not always in agreement with) the Standards,
• it avoids this entire sidetracking argument that constructivism is a theory of learning as opposed to an instructional technique, and
• "NCTM math" can now be considered (at least this is how I look at it) to include constructivism as a theory of learning specifically applied to math (which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing), the specific instructional techniques used to implement the Standards, as well as the (sometimes dubious) overall educational philosophy nebulously connected to the Standards (such as giving first-graders calculators) which may or may not have any basis in constructivism.