Introduction

It has given me profound pleasure to be able to welcome such a very large and such a very distinguished audience to this opening session of the Second International Congress on Mathematical Education. Although records of discussion about mathematical education go back at least 2500 years, to the days of Plato's Academy, it seems that the twentieth century brought a new tempo and urgency to such discussions, while we have during the past decade seen a great and growing ferment of activity in the field all over the world. Prominent in discussion of the subject throughout this twentieth century has been our International Commission, founded in 1899 by H. Fehr and C. A. Laisant, while this past decade of intensified and increasing recognition of the importance of mathematical education and of the new approaches and opportunities within it, coincides with the first decade of existence, as a fully-fledged Commission within the International Mathematical Union, of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction, ICMI.

Up to 1960, the energetic study of mathematical teaching methods and curricula within individual countries was supplemented and strengthened by the holding of meetings arranged by our Commission, by its review journal L'Enseignement Mathématique, and by international discussion every four years in the educational section of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Those useful discussions were, nevertheless, rather limited in scope and in the number of interested persons involved.