明治5年「外国教師ニテ教授スル中学教則」の数学

特に代数の教科書について

抄録

Japan adopted a modern system of education, modeled after those of Western countries, in 1872, After the establishment of the fundamental law for education, named “School System” (“Gakusei”, in Japanese), regulations concerning schools and curricula were enacted. The “Curriculum for Secondary Schools, Taught by Foreign Teachers” is one of these. It was the first regulation concerning curricula for secondary schools in Japan, and was enacted in 1872. In this “Curriculum”, examples of textbooks in English, French and German were given for each subject. As to mathematics, the curriculum was just like the one of secondary schools in Western countries. It consisted of arithmetic, geometry (including elementary trigonometry) and algebra. Textbooks of algebra, given in the curriculum as examples, were “New Elementary Algebra” by Charles Davies, “Principe d’algèbre” by H. Sonnet, and “Arithmetik und Algebra” by H. B. Lübsen. Each of these books had some distinctive feature. For instance, an explanation on a graph of a linear equation of two unknowns, though quite brief, was given in Sonnet's book. The curriculum of mathematics was a very hard one for Japanese students of that time, due to their poor knowledge of mathematics and difficulty of learning by foreign language. Therefore, it was not carried out thoroughly at first.