The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 171

The Math Ed Forum
149
Gila Hanna, Eric Muller, and Nathan Sidoli at one of the
Math Ed forum meetings at the Fields Institute, 2002.
In the summer of 1999, the Fields Institute applied for
and was awarded the contract to update the high school
math curriculum. When the Ontario government moved from
five years of secondary education to four, there was quite a
commotion over what was to happen to the final year math
courses. A brief “calculus war” broke out, and the Minister
of Education tapped Fields and Tom Salisbury to provide
advice on what to do. This was a big deal that involved
many people at many levels, and it had a significant effect on
the way forward for mathematics at the secondary level. At
https://brocku.ca/cmt/mdm4u/ readers can view an example
of this work which provided mathematics teachers examples of
students’ individual projects in the new Mathematics of Data
Management (MDM4U) grade 12 mathematics course.