The American Work of the International Commission on the Teaching of Mathematics

The Fourth International Congregs of Mathematicians. held at Rome in 1908, adopted a resolution empowering Professors Klein of Göttingen, Sir George Greenhill of London, and Fehr of Geneva to form an international commission for the investigation of the teaching of mathematics in the secondary schools of the different nations, and to report to the next congress, which is to be held in England in 1912. This committee on organization met and took counsel as to the method of selecting the members of the commission, and finally decided that each of the countries represented by at least two dckgates in at least two international congresses should have two or three delegates. They also decided that countries participating in the congresses but not having the required number o f representatives should be entitled to one delegate, and that other countries likely to contribute valuable in formation should be invited to name a delegate who should act without vote. The committee on organization further decided that inasmuch as the term “secondary schools” had various meanings in different countries, the investigation should consider the teaching of mathematics in a broader sense, covering the entire field from the first steps through the cou rses required for any line of advanced work. Briefly, this may be described as the field of mathematics from the kindergarten through the work in the calculus, but inasmuch as it also concerns the preparation of teachers for all this. field, it is necessarily extended to include the nature of the instruction in higher mathematics.