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Some Doubts about the Teaching of Mathematics in Secondary Schools*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2016
Extract
“Please Sir, what’s the use of learning this?”
I wonder how many times we have all—that is, if we are at all “approachable”—been asked this or similar questions? To-night I hope to show why the question is ever asked and, in my opinion, how to stop it arising in the minds of the pupils.
But first let me make clear this one fact. Although this is being presented to you in the month of February it was commissioned by your committee in December last, and though in the interim the Spens Report has been published it has not been used in any way in the preparation of this paper.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Mathematical Association 1940
Footnotes
*
A paper read to the Sheffield and District Branch of the Mathematical Association on 7th February, 1939.
References
page no 31 note * Interim Report of the Sub-committee (1935) of The Science Masters’ Association on The Teaching of General Science, p. 10.
page no 34 note * Since writing this I have found an endorsement of the idea in the Preface of Professor P. L. Griffin’s book An Introduction to Mathematical Analysis, a book which covers a very wide range of mathematical topics, in which he says “Specialist students, as experience has shown, acquire an excellent command of mathematical tools by first getting a bird’s-eye view of the field, and then proceeding to perfect their technique”. Surely if this is true of college students, it is even more necessary that we should give such a view to pre-school-certificate pupils.
page no 41 note * The Teaching of General Science (Science Masters’ Association), p. 19.