Below is a link to a pdf file titled, `New Trends in Mathematics Teaching', 1972, put out by UNESCO. It was an international effort to modernize mathematics teaching and to make the subject update developments from the beginning of the 20thC. It's political intent was to make the western powers more competitive with the Soviet system and address the apparent lag in technological development, symbolized by Sputnik. You can see from the bibliography that France, Beligum, Netherlands, and West Germany were the leadership pushing these reforms, with the UK and US laggardly following along. The idea was to creat a new and better technocratic class to do the science and technology necessary to maintain western dominance in the military industrial complex, and of course push the capitalist society as the only `free' society.
It is pedegogically-politically interesting to me just how the planners expected all that to work. The resulting failures in the US systems became legend and deservedly so.
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001365/136586eo.pdf
But looking back also brings to mind, for me, just how far away we have fallen from the ideals of public education in a mass society. There actually was a reason to take up such a project and there was a crying need for it, even if the actual accomplishments were null to negative.
Reading this little booklet reminded me of the real problem that the proposed changes confronted, which was the education process for teachers and the low expectations the society itself has for its teachers. Anybody with enough math education to evaluate the above booklet, could easily get a better paying job in just about any technology field outside teaching. That was and still is the underlying problem.
CG