Battleground Schools

I have had the opportunity to chat with a teacher sponsor for the volleyball team I coach at Richmond High Secondary.  She just started teaching grade 8 math this year and she said its absurd as to how uniformed her students are in math.  This idea of math phobia is problematic especially to elementary school teachers as they are more generalized.  The teacher sponsor said that often times elementary school teachers will just simply ignore and spend very few hours on mathematics because they themselves have "math phobia".  In her case there is a huge discrepancy between the background knowledge of students when the enter highschool.  It's hard to catch the "lacking" students up with the students who had a solid elementary teacher.  I am sure I will come across similar situations in my teaching career and I am unsure of where and how to begin attacking a problem like this?

After reading battleground schools article it is pretty clear that there has been an ongoing debate between progressive and conservative views of mathematics.  These concepts relate heavily to the relational and instrumental concepts we have inquired about previously in class.  Starting from the progressivist reform era we had an instrumental prevalence.  Dewey then came along and introduce a relational view and since then it has been a back and forth war between the two.  The main part that concerns me is the binary view.  There is no middle ground or grey areas.  Its all black and white(progressive and conservative).  Personally, I think the solution is a combination of both.  As a student, you need the practice, repetitions, strict methods etc.  But you also need the inquiry, abstract, and problem solving skills.  They compliment each other. 

This worries me from a teaching perspective. Does our curriculum allow incorporation of both progressive and conservative?  Do our textbooks do so?  Will I always have to go along with the norm at the present time be it progressive/conservative or am I constrained to just the one path? Also these cycles from left to right don't benefit teachers in anyway.  It becomes a problem if a teacher grows up being taught instrumentally but is then asked to teach relationally or vice versa.

I hope there will be enough time and breathing room to engage students from both sides of the coin but I feel as if I will be forced one way or the other.