What kind of math did people learn in 1970?

Answer 1

After we filled the oil lamps and chopped the wood for the fire, we learned algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus.

New Math was a brief, dramatic change in the way mathematics was taught in American grade schools during the 1960s and abandoned/discredited in the 1970s. The name was given to a set of teaching practices introduced in the U.S. shortly after the Sputnik crisis, in order to boost science education and mathematical skill in the population, so that the technological threat of Sovietengineers, reputedly highly skilled mathematicians, could be met.

Topics introduced in New Math included modular arithmetic, algebraic inequalities, bases other than 10, matrices, symbolic logic, Boolean algebra, and abstract algebra. All of these topics (with the exception of algebraic inequalities) have been greatly de-emphasized or eliminated in US elementary schools and high schools.

Answer 2

In college ... much the same kind they learn now. Math is math. The instructional methodologies and emphasis may change, but math, beautiful and constant, is still math.

In elementary school, 1970 was the tail end of the "New Math" debacle, so a lot of focus on set theory (I recall interminable Venn diagrams) and number lines and inequalities (there was actually rather a lot of drawing in math class).