PS COLUMN ARCHIVE

November 26, 2008

Encounter with the least expected book

There is a book called “A History of Elementary Mathematics, with hints on methods of teaching”. This is a classic book written by a science history specialist named Florian Cajori of California University in 1896 as an instruction manual on the history of mathematics for easy reading. The reason I know of the book written one hundred years ago is because Kin-nosuke Ogura translated and published it under the Japanese title “Cajori Elementary Mathematic History” in 1928. I remember I read it in my high school days and long wanted to read it again but with no chance so far.

The other day, a tall building was built near my office and a large bookstore opened in there. On my way home after the office hour I dropped in there to see how it was like. I passed in front of mathematics section after through science and engineering bookshelf, just when I happened to catch the glimpse of the above-said book. I was very much surprised to have found it among newly published books, as I thought it would be for sale only in used bookstores. According to the colophon, it was published as the fifth reprinted edition in 2004.

I bought the book right away and read it. I found something very surprising in the book because the first thing in chapter four “Modern movement on mathematics education” was “Perry movement”. “Perry” is to be refereed to an English man “John Perry” who was teaching at an engineering college, present engineering faculty of The University of Tokyo, as an assistant professor of civil engineering in early years of Meiji Period. I knew that Perry was working at an engineering college as a special foreign teacher hired by Meiji government but I never thought he was the same man as described in the book.

After he returned to England from Japan, he continued his reform movement of mathematics education on his belief that mathematics had to be educated in the way for more practical use. His idea to make mathematics more useful must probably have been held by him even from those days at the engineering college in Tokyo. The reason I say this is because the said engineering college had succeeded in cultivating significant human resources by doing engineering education to combine theory with practice for the first time in the world. I recall that it was Perry who invented graph paper and taught to write experimental data on the graph.

At any rate I learned for the first time from this book that an English man who spent about four years in Japan started mathematics education reform movement and created a certain school of mathematics education methods in England. There seemed to be many such great specially hired foreign educators in early Meiji Period. Young Japanese students who could learn from such teachers must have been very happy. Let us bear it in our mind that the foundation of science and engineering of current Japan was only built from the benefits of such education.

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