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Why Teach Mathematics ?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

Extract

The question about the teaching of Mathematics considered most frequently and with most detail is How? This is the main preoccupation of the Mathematical Association Reports on separate subjects : it is of special interest to note that in the Report on the Teaching of Calculus oft repetition of the phrase “ the teacher will know ” implies that the topic is as rich as human nature. Yet for writers in the Mathematical Gazette, and for most scholarship winners, the question is superfluous, though all appreciate a good teacher. (For these too the answer to Why? is simple—the urge of joy or duty.) On the other hand, it would scarcely be denied that for more than two-thirds of the pupils in our schools the question How? is unanswerable under present conditions : for them we are attempting the impossible.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Mathematical Association 1954

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References

page 98 note * This is stated explicitly for the case of university students of engineering by Sir David Pye in his Presidential Address to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (Proc., Vol. 166A, 1962, p. 269) ; and it is implied in a most noteworthy review of a a treatise on Physical Chemistry in (of all places) Mathematical Reviews for June, 1953, p. 593.

page 107 note * Since this was written a new quarterly, Applied Statistics, has appeared and has had a welcoine beyond expectations—fresh evidence of the extent of the need emphasised here.