The Second Report of The Commission on Post-War Plans

Abstract

This report presents suggestions for improving mathematical instruction from the beginning of the elementary school through the last year of junior college. The program throughout these grades is in need of a thoroughgoing reorganization. The arithmetic of the elementary school can be and must be improved. The high school needs to come to grips with its dual responsibility, (1) to provide sound mathematical training for our future leaders of science, mathematics, and other learned fields, and (2) to insure mathematical competence for the ordinary affairs of life to the extent that this can be done for all citizens as a part of a general education appropriate for the major fraction of the high school population. Then, too, the junior college, which has grown up without a well considered design, should now take stock of its valid functions before it enters its second period of rapid expansion. It is reasonable to believe that the greatest advance can be made if teachers of mathematics in the elementary school, in the secondary school, and in the junior college, attack the problem together. At any rate it is sensible because of the essential continuity of mathematical instruction to plan the improvements in any one grade in terms of the total program.