The Coordination of the Teaching of Mathematics

In our complicated world of today, when mathematics is needed more than ever before, it is being taught less. The trend towards giving more and more practical courses in secondary schools has created a definite competition for the hours of the school day. Courses in commercial subjects, shop work, and social studies, among others, have been expanded and intensified, while courses in mathematics have been diluted, postponed, or sometimes left out of the program entirely. Mathematics is not at fault, nor are the teachers at fault. The results, as stated by mathematicians, to be attained by the study of the subject are worthy ones, but it is true that these desirable aims are not always being achieved. And since the fault is not with mathematics, it must either be in the content of the courses offered or else in the methods of teaching them. The goal of all teachers in the field should be so to enhance the contents of their courses and so to improve the methods of teaching them that the aims of the study of mathematics will be more clearly realized and that its value will be more generally appreciated. Through coordination of the teaching of mathematics these goals will be more readily attained.