Celebrating the first century of ICMI (1908-2008) Some aspects of the history of ICMI

📝 Abstract

The celebration of the Centennial of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction offered the occasion to look back at the history of ICMI and outline the evolution of mathematics education until it achieved its present status as an academic discipline. The years after WWII up to the late 1960s were crucial in this evolution for both the settlement of some institutional aspects, mainly concerning the relationship with mathematicians, and the establishment of new trends of the activities. In this paper we outline, on the basis of unpublished documents, the role of two important figures in those years: Heinrich Behnke and Hans Freudenthal.

💡 Analysis

The celebration of the Centennial of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction offered the occasion to look back at the history of ICMI and outline the evolution of mathematics education until it achieved its present status as an academic discipline. The years after WWII up to the late 1960s were crucial in this evolution for both the settlement of some institutional aspects, mainly concerning the relationship with mathematicians, and the establishment of new trends of the activities. In this paper we outline, on the basis of unpublished documents, the role of two important figures in those years: Heinrich Behnke and Hans Freudenthal.

📄 Content

65 Celebrating the first century of ICMI (1908-2008) Some aspects of the history of ICMI Ferdinando Arzarello, Livia Giacardi, Department of Mathematics, University of Turin, Italy Fulvia Furinghetti, Department of Mathematics, University of Genoa, Italy Marta Menghini, Department of Mathematics, University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy Abstract In this paper we report on the events in 2008 that commemorated the Centennial of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction. This celebration offered the occasion to look back at the history of ICMI and outline the evolu- tion of mathematics education until it achieved its present status as an academic discipline. The years after WWII up to the late 1960s were crucial in this evolu- tion for both the settlement of some institutional aspects (mainly concerning the relationship with mathematicians) and the establishment of new trends of the activities. In this paper we outline – on the basis of unpublished docu- ments - the role of two important figures in those years: Heinrich Behnke and Hans Freudenthal. First as secretary and later as president, Behnke faced the difficult task of reshaping the newborn ICMI after WWII and clarifying the relationship with mathematicians. His mission was completed by Freudenthal, who, as president of ICMI, definitively broke with the past and promoted im- portant initiatives that fostered the emergence of mathematics education as an academic field. Keywords History, ICMI, first century, mathematicians, mathematics education RL | Celebrating the first century of ICMI (1908-2008) Some aspects of the history of ICMI 66 ICME 11 Proceedings

1. Celebrating the first century of ICMI: a symposium, a book and a website The IV International Congress of Mathematicians, which took place in Rome from 6 to 11 April 1908, was memorable. An exceptional chronicler, the French mathematician Henri Poincaré, wrote: “The number of participants was the highest of any of the preceding Congresses, which is doubtless due to the attraction of the Eternal City, but this is not the only reason. […] France was brilliantly represented […] there were also very distinguished representatives of German science […] No coun- try was absent. […] It goes without saying that Italy had the most and most brilliant representatives […] The sessions were held at the Palazzo Corsini, home of the Accademia dei Lincei […] a beautiful palace in Trastevere […]” (Poincaré, 2008, pp. 19-20, our translation). It was during this congress that an international commission on the teaching of mathematics was founded; its first president was Felix Klein, an eminent math- ematician and promoter of an important reform for the teaching of mathemat- ics in Germany. This commission may be considered the first incarnation of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI).1 To celebrate the centennial of the foundation of the ICMI, an interna- tional symposium entitled “The First Century of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction. Reflecting and shaping the world of mathematics education” was held in Rome from 5 to 8 March 2008. Once again, as it did a hundred years ago, Palazzo Corsini, home of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, provided the splendid venue for the congress, along with Palazzo Mattei di Paganica, home of the Enciclopedia Italiana.2 1 In the first decades of its existence the commission was mainly called Commission Internationale de l’Enseignement Mathématique (CIEM) or Internationale Mathematische Unterrichtskommission (IMUK). In the following we will use the acronym ICMI to refer to all periods. 2 The International Programme Committee (IPC), composed of 16 members, was coordinated by Ferdinando Arzarello, while Marta Menghini represented the Organising Committee within the ICP. The permanent website http://www.unige.ch/math/EnsMath/Rome2008/ provides full documen- tation of the Symposium: the program, the papers presented in the Working Groups, and photos. 67 The Congress was attended by about 180 participants representing 43 countries. The program included ten plenary lectures, eight parallel lectures, five working groups and a panel discussion. An afternoon was reserved for the Italian teachers, with talks by scholars from Italy and abroad. The talks were broadcast via videoconferences to more than fifty schools throughout Italy; the afternoon session reached more than 1000 teachers. The last day featured an excursion that recalled that of a century ago, and took the participants to visit the Villa d’Este and Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli, both rich in historical evocations. The Symposium proceedings have been published by the Enciclopedia Italiana, as a volume of their book series Scienze e Filosofia (Menghini et al., 2008) and the talks of the Italian afternoon appeared in the journal Progetto Alice (n. 25, 2008). Taking as a point of departure the themes connected to ICMI activities over the cou

This content is AI-processed based on ArXiv data.