Abstract
AS “A Father” has asked me by name in your columns what book I can recommend as laying a foundation for the geometry of the future, I suppose I ought to answer him, though I cannot do so by a simple reference to a book. I think the main object of early geometrical teaching should be to lay a foundation of familiar facts on which the science will afterwards be built up. This is unquestionably the true scientific method in teaching all subjects; and as yet it has never, or very rarely, been applied in Geometry. For examplevno intelligent teacher of botany will begin by classifying flowers, or teaching theories about their structure; he begins by giving his class flowers to dissect, and then they will know what he is talking about; and teachers of chemistry who follow any other plan find themselves inevitably compelled to cram their pupils. The question is, how is this method to be applied in Geometry? I know from various sources that there is a pretty wide-spread conviction that it ought to be so applied, but there is a difficulty that meets teachers at once: there does not seem to be enough of practical geometry that is sufficiently easy for children; and practical geometry, as presented in text books, is dull and uninteresting, as well as rather hard. Still my conviction remains that to lay a foundation of knowledge of facts is as necessary in Geometry as in other sciences, though the range of facis easily observed is somewhat less, and the Science becomes much sooner a deductive one. And I think it is admitted that because this observational or practical geometry is wanting in our elementary mathematical teaching, geometry is generally found so difficult, so inexplicably difficult, by boys.
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WILSON, J. Elementary Practical Geometry . Nature 4, 387–388 (1871). https://doi.org/10.1038/004387e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/004387e0