History of Mathematics Education in East Asia in Premodern Times

Mathematics Education in China Andrea Bréard The first section of this chapter focuses on the period covering the late sixteenth to the early twentieth century in China, from the beginning of the Jesuit influence to the educational reforms, ending the more than 1,000-year-old traditional state examinations and introducing a modern school system based on foreign models. Social and historical contexts in which mathematics were taught underwent drastic changes during the period under consideration, ranging from private lessons for the Emperor to universal education in public schools, without entirely discarding traditional approaches to mathematical learning. Mathematics Education in Japan Annick Horiuchi First of all, this chapter describes the central role played by Yoshida Mitsuyoshi’s Jinkôki (1627) as an elementary textbook, written in vernacular language and widely read throughout the Edo period. It then deals with the specific context of private schools in the main cities and the way mathematicians used to communicate and compete with each other using the so-called bequeathed problems. Lastly, it turns to the transformation of mathematics, due to the rediscovery of Chinese tradition and Seki Takakazu’s and Takebe Katahiro’s contributions, and the contents of higher education from the late seventeenth century onward, especially in the fields of algebra and trigonometry.