Abstract
In the aftermath of World War II, Belgian intellectuals participated in the Comité d’Initiative pour la Rénovation de l’Enseignement en Belgique. Their aim was to renew education for 6- to 16-year-olds in all disciplines. Main inspiration was found in the work of Ovide Decroly, a protagonist of Reform Pedagogy. This reform movement led to new curricula in the late 1940s, including for mathematics a course of intuitive geometry in the first years of secondary school aimed at providing students with a practical geometrical knowledge base and preparing them for a deductive approach in subsequent years. The most influential advocate of this new approach to geometry was the mathematician, Paul Libois. For Libois, intuitive geometry was closely connected to his epistemological conception of geometry, considering geometry as a part of physics. His views also bear a clear parallel to his political position as a prominent Marxist communist. Libois’ ideas were influential in Belgium until the end of the 1950s when the modern mathematics movement emerged.
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Notes
- 1.
Unless otherwise stated, all translations were made by the authors.
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De Bock, D., Vanpaemel, G. (2019). Reform Pedagogy and the Introduction of Intuitive Geometry in Secondary School Mathematics. In: Rods, Sets and Arrows. History of Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20599-7_1
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