http://www.csun.edu/~vcmth00m/AHistory.html (just some random link, but it seems to cover things I've read elsewhere):

> The prescriptions for the future of mathematics education were articulated early in the 20th century by one of the nation's most influential education leaders, William Heard Kilpatrick....

> Reflecting mainstream views of progressive education, Kilpatrick rejected the notion that the study of mathematics contributed to mental discipline. His view was that subjects should be taught to students based on their direct practical value, or if students independently wanted to learn those subjects. This point of view toward education comported well with the pedagogical methods endorsed by progressive education. Limiting education primarily to utilitarian skills sharply limited academic content, and this helped to justify the slow pace of student centered, discovery learning, the centerpiece of progressivism. Kilpatrick proposed that the study of algebra and geometry in high school be discontinued "except as an intellectual luxury." According to Kilpatrick, mathematics is "harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking necessary for ordinary living." In an address before the student body at the University of Florida, Kilpatrick lectured, "We have in the past taught algebra and geometry to too many, not too few."9...

> In the 1940s it became something of a public scandal that army recruits knew so little math that the army itself had to provide training in the arithmetic needed for basic bookkeeping and gunnery.24 Admiral Nimitz complained of mathematical deficiencies of would-be officer candidates and navy volunteers. The basic skills of these military personnel should have been learned in the public schools but were not.25 As always, education doctrines did not sit well with much of the public. Nevertheless, by the mid-1940s, a new educational program called the Life Adjustment Movement emerged from the education community. The basic premise was that secondary schools were "too devoted to an academic curriculum." Education leaders presumed that 60% or more of all public school students lacked the intellectual capability for college work or even for skilled occupations, and those students would need a school program to prepare them for every day living. They would need appropriate high school courses, including math programs, that focused purely on practical problems such as consumer buying, insurance, taxation, and home budgeting, but not on algebra, geometry, or trigonometry. The students in these courses would become unskilled or semiskilled laborers, or their wives, and they would not need an academic education. Instead they would be instructed in "home, shop, store, citizenship, and health." ...

> By 1949 the Life Adjustment Movement had substantial support among educators, and was touted by numerous federal and state education agencies. Some educators even suggested that in order to avoid stigmatizing the students in these programs, non-academic studies should be available to all students. Life Adjustment could meet the needs of all American students.26

> Progressive education was forced into retreat in the 1950s, and even became the butt of jokes and vitriol.29 During the previous half century, enrollment in advanced high school mathematics courses, and other academic subjects, had steadily decreased, thanks at least in part to progressive education. From 1933 to 1954 not only did the percentage of students taking high school geometry decrease, even the actual numbers of students decreased in spite of soaring enrollments. The following table gives percentages of high school students enrolled in high school math courses.30

But that wasn't the end of it:

> The NCTM Standards reinforced the general themes of progressive education, dating back to the 1920s, by advocating student centered, discovery learning. The utilitarian justification of mathematics was so strong that both basic skills and general mathematical principles were to be learned almost invariably through "real world" problems. Mathematics for its own sake was not encouraged. The variant of progressivism favored by the NCTM during this time was called "constructivism" and the NCTM Standards were promoted under this banner.54

> ...Criticisms of educational constructivism, as in this article, were not well received by the education community. In an address before the California State Board of Education in April 1997, Hirsch described the treatment of this paper. "After a so-called peer review, Educational Researcher turned down the article, and agreed to print only a section of its critique of situated learning. This decision would have been unremarkable except that the three authors of the article happened to be among the most distinguished cognitive scientists in the world, John Anderson and two other colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, Lynn Reder, and Herb Simon. The latter happens also to be a Nobel prize winner."56