For 34 years (1869-1903) Rawdon Levett served as chief mathematical master at King Edward’s School, Birmingham. He will be remembered as one of the founders of the A.I.G.T.

It has been customary when Euclid, considered as a text-book, is attacked for his verbosity or his obscurity or his pedantry, to defend him on the ground that his logical excellence is transcendent, and affords an invaluable training to the youthful powers of reasoning. This claim, however, vanishes on a close inspection. His definitions do not alwaysdefine, his axioms are not always indemonstrable, his demonstrations require many axioms of which he is quite unconscious. A valid proof retains its demonstrative force when no figure is drawn, but very many of Euclid’s earlier proofs fail before this test.

No one can possibly welcome more cordially than I do the widening of the school curriculum in mathematics that has taken place during the last twenty years. Even I can remember the days when “Conics” and “Mechanics” were the privilege of a select few, and only a prodigy was initiated into the mysteries of the Differential (much less the Integral) Calculus. All this is changed now, and it is fairly safe (at least that is my experience) to assume that a boy who has won a scholarship has learnt something about the Integral Calculus at school.

It is a familiar principle in elementary mechanics that a uniform motion of the whole system under consideration makes no difference to the phenomena, and may be ignored. For example, in calculating the motions of the planets round the sun, we do not need to pay any attention to the fact that the whole solar system is travelling towards the constellation Lyra. It does not seem to us that there is anything surprising or needing explanation in this principle; in fact, when we try to examine the idea of motion through an empty space without fixed landmarks, we are conscious of something illusory in the conception.

The Dalton Plan, which has been discussed so much recently, is a change of organisation within school which affects a girl’s whole school life and her general development more than her work in individual subjects. I am obliged in describing it to devote a few minutes to speaking of general school life, and when I turn to the teaching of mathematics there seems so little to say, that could not be said as appropriately of teaching in ordinary circumstances that I do not know if it will justify the consideration of this meeting.