For the Effective Mathematics Education

Why the mathematics education in this country is not so effective, and how we can have a good effect without a radical change of the present curriculum …… these are the main themes of this paper. In the former part of this paper, the auther develops his considerations on reasons of this weakness of effect from two directions: first through the comparison with the worldwide trend of mathmatics education and next from the historical reflection on the nature of mathematics education of this country. From the first consideration, it is concluded that 'today's defect of mathematics education originates in the lack of "society-perspective" in the curriculum designe and the integrated approach to the organization of mathematics education as is proposed in the program of TME. From the second, it is argued that the present deflective situation comes from the irrelevant curriculum which should be called "scholastic". It had applied to the few intelligent elites in the former time but it is now compeled to all pupils without any attention to the great historical discrepancy of ideals between primary and secondary education. To recover the effectiveness, we may need almost revolutional change of curriculum, but the auther insists that we should prefer to make steady efforts which are promising to bring actual effects even under this situation, and the description of these efforts is the pourpose of the later half of this paper. For this pourpose, the discussion begins with the reflection on what is the real residue of mathematics education in schools. In case of common people, it is not denyed that they rapidly forget almost all of mathematics that they have learnt in schools soon after leaving there, especially baddly in phase of knowedges and skills. Most mathematics teachers believe that something acquired through this education could permanently survive through their lives; the auther himself would like to think so and he argues that, in case of common people, the real residue of mathematics education would be the formation of good ways of thinking, attitude and habit in their thinking and behavior, rather than the mere retention of mathematical knowledges and skills. Bearing these view-points in mild, several possible efforts to bring a really good effect of mathematics education are suggested in the final section of this paper