Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to study the transfiguration of the education of function in text books compiled by the Ministry of Education, founding on higher elementary schools from 1904 to 1935. We can classify the teaching content into four periods, as follows. In the first period, from 1904 to 1909, textbooks did not teach functions. In the second period, from 1910 to 1918, there are only three questions about functions but there is a conscious awareness of the existence of functions. In the third period, from 1919 to 1925, compared to the progress in the education of function from the first to the second period, rapid progress is made. The teaching contents in this period are substantially similar to the fourth period teaching contents. The 1919 revision was aware of the improvement movement of mathematics education in secondary school and anticipated the changes needed for the 1926 revision. In the fourth period, from 1926 to 1935, functions are formally dealt with. The teaching contents from the third period are reconstructed and quantity of functions taught is increased. Characteristically, falling movement is dealt with using geometry. The transfiguration in this period reflects the mathematics education improvement movement which had been rapidly improving. The transfiguration in this period reflects indirectly the demands of those who were concerned about education. The demands tried to approximate the higher elementary school to the preceding term of the secondary education. The 1926 revision also included the innovation of the subject/teacher system and the introduction of compulsory industrial subjects. We can find the following as a whole. The graph is a useful way to represent the relationship and variety of the quantity. The transfiguration of education in the higher elementary and secondary schools occurred at about the same time frame, but characteristically, the change in the higher elementary schools went a step ahead of the change in the secondary school.
