AbstractsEducation Research & Administration

One of the recent questions in education deals with the efficiency of our secondary schools. The question is of vital importance to all classes of educators, but to no class is it more pertinent than to the High School teacher of Mathematics. Mathematics has held a decided place in the courses of study in the past because of the supposed value it gave in formal discipline. A change in our conception of formal discipline, together with other causes, has brought about the violent agitation of the question of how to present High School mathematics, the arrangement, the amount and the kind for each grade. Although the decade just drawing to a close has been marked by the publication of improved texts, by the introduction of improved methods, by the interest that has been manifested by some of our best thinkers, and by the propagation of organizations for the study and discussion of all High School mathematics, the fact still remains that High School teaching of Mathematics has not reached satisfactory efficiency. Geometry, probably better than any other subject in Mathematics, will help in reasoning, induction, correlation, space intuition, precise thought, accurate expression, observation, neatness and exactness. The teachers of Mathematics, and those who have studied Mathematics and child psychology are convinced that a change is necessary and we find the more progressive teachers devoting a part of their time to trying to formulate a plan that will enable us to present Geometry in an empirical way at first and, as the child grows more mature, the logical reasoning. In order to do this it is necessary to understand the child, the subject matter and modern methods of instruction. The first part of this thesis will be a discussion of the present day tendencies as shown by current texts and literature; the second part will be an outline of work done by pupils in the tenth grade in Geometry in the Mound City, Missouri, High School, which will be the main part of the thesis; while the third part will be a discussion