[in Japanese]

View full abstract

In Japan, during the World War II, the education of mathematics for secondary schools has been changed drastically. Calculus and other new ideas were introduced to the secondary education for the first time. However, the system of education and textbooks were confused because of the war. The textbooks under the Syllabus in 1942 and those under the Syllabus in 1943 were used at the same time or alternately. After the World War II, in 1946, the poor “stop gap textbooks” were published for elementary and secondary schools by Ministry of Education. The stop gap textbooks of Mathematics for secondary schools were written based on those two Syllabi. There existed two kinds of stop gap textbooks fourth grade of the secondary schools that were approved by Ministry of Education because of the lack of the imprint. In this article, the order of all the contents of the textbooks from 1943 to 1946 were analyzed. By this analysis, these two textbooks were supposed to be used to fill up the lack of the curriculum by using two kinds of textbooks alternately.

View full abstract

The 1942-43 national mathematics syllabi had some remarkable characteristics. For example, they were the first curriculum that included calculus and they put great importance on student activity. In this paper, mathematics lessons based on these syllabi under the difficult conditions during and right after World War II, are considered. I asked about 300 graduates who had their secondary school days in this period to give some information on mathematics textbooks, notebooks, handouts, and so on. Through the study on the materials and the entrance examination problems for tertiary schools at that time sent by my request, some interesting points are found as follows; On one hand, the new idea of the 1942-43 national syllabi, especially calculus, had been taught in relatively early days right after the war. The entrance examination in 1947 was the first one that contains problems on calculus. On the other hand, the new idea of student's activity in the syllabi was not well realized in the classrooms. Although it is difficult to guess the reason, it seems that the various conditions to realize the new ideas were insufficient.

View full abstract