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I do not consider it would be an act of kindness to the memory of Dr Hutton to suppress … his early history. We know, that the lower any man's origin is, the higher and the more honourable is his subsequent elevation … it is perhaps the first time in the annals of British biography that a person once employed in the situation of a common workman in a colliery, rendered himself so celebrated, that a Lord Chancellor of England considered it as one of the many blessings which he had enjoyed in life, to have had the benefit of his instructions (1).
In the preceding chapters we have seen how, in the absence of any Stateor Church-coordinated system, the provision of mathematics education at a pre-university level often came to depend upon private enterprise. Frequently, in order to attract financial support, this led to an emphasis being placed on utilitarian ends. In this chapter we consider a mathematician who was largely self-taught and whose contribution to education was for many years a ‘private’ one. Later in life he was to head the mathematics department of England's leading military academy where once again emphasis had to be laid on the subject's practical aspects. Hutton, then, was an educator biased towards a utilitarian view of mathematics. Through his books and other writings he was to have a considerable influence on English mathematics, particularly outside the two ancient universities and the established grammar schools.
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- A History of Mathematics Education in England , pp. 59 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1982