What Mathemathical Knowledge and Ability May Reasonably be Expected of the Student Entering College?
If we contemplate the numerous committee reports of this and other societies upon the teaching of arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, together with the excellent syllabi published by them, it would seem that our question has been so fully and definitely answered, that further discussion is uncalled for, if not almost impertinent. If, on the other hand, we turn to the series of papers presented before the Association of Teachers of Mathematics for the Middle States and Maryland last year and printed in the MATHEMATICS TEACHER for March and June of the present year upon the question, “What Mathematical Subjects Should Be Included in the Curriculum of the Secondary School,” it is very evident that the doctors still disagree. At one extreme we find a speaker, a college graduate, but not, according to his own confession, a mathematician, arguing that so few students are “mathematically minded” that it would be more profitable to limit high school mathematics to arithmetic and allow the few who reach college to elect algebra and geometry — if they have any remaining curiosity regarding mathematics. At the other extreme, a high school principal presents an “outline of mathematical work that should be required of every student in a general high school course,” including not only the traditional work in algebra and plane geometry, but solid geometry, trigonometry and applications of algebra to mechanics, science, economics, statistics, shop mathematics and the slide rule. And again, when we consider the propositions of the committee on articulation of the N. E. A. and those of the commissioner of education of the state of Massachusetts we realize that the question is not finally settled, and that we mathematicians will not be allowed to settle it by ourselves.