Chapter 6: Implementation Of New Mathematics: Curricula in Secondary Schools

The need for reform, the purposes and objectives of our teaching, the curriculum, the teaching materials, and the trained teacher are the key elements in any educational reform, and I shall examine each of these in the light of modern society.

There are two major factors which require us to examine the mathematics we teach in the secondary schools. One is the extraordinary growth of pure mathematics in modern times; the other is the increasing dependence of scientific thought upon mathematical methods.

In the last one hundred years more new mathematics has been discovered than in all the previous history of mankind. Yet until the most recent times only a small amount of this new mathematics has had any pronounced influence upon teaching below the post-graduate level. However, since the undergraduate curriculum is now being modernized, we cannot put off much longer the introduction of some suitable modern mathematics into the secondary school curriculum.