Here’s a sample New Standards math task for a fourth-grader: Your older cousin has a list of school supplies he needs to start the school year. He has $20 to spend and needs to buy these supplies: ...

A blend of family attitudes, cultural ideas, and frustration often lead students to believe that math ability is a fixed trait like eye color, teachers say. They believe they are either born with the ...

Update: After this story originally ran, the Florida education department issued several screenshots of “problematic examples” in the textbooks. “These examples do not represent an exhaustive list of ...

Excerpted with permission from Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, by Max Tegmark. Available from Random House/Knopf. Copyright ...