Mathematics is an old multipurpose activity. Throughout the centuries has been used with profoundly different objectives. He was instrumental in making predictions, the priests of the Mesopotamian peoples. Was considered as a means of approaching life more deeply, and as a way of approaching the divine, from the Pythagoreans. It was used as an important discipline of thought in the Middle Ages. It was the most versatile and suitable tool for exploring the universe, from the Renaissance. This has been a great guide of philosophical thought, among the thinkers and philosophers of rationalism. He has been instrumental in the creation of artistic beauty, a field of playful exercise, among mathematicians of all time …
Moreover, the mathematics itself is an intensely dynamic and changing science. Quickly and even turbulent in their own content. Yet deep in his own conception, albeit slower. This suggests that, indeed, mathematical activity can not be a simple approach to reality.
The other member of the binomial-mathematics education, is also not so simple. Education has to necessarily refer to the depths of the person, a person still conform to the changing society in which this person has to integrate to the culture in this society develops, the specific ways personal and material at the time one can or wants to have, for the purposes of this education priority is you want to assign, which can be extremely varied, …
The complexity of the mathematics and education suggests that the theoretical mathematics education, and no less than agents of it, must remain constantly alert and open to profound changes in many ways the fast dynamics of the global situation mutant comes calling .
Education, like any complex system, has a strong resistance to change. This is not necessarily bad. A reasonable persistence to changes is characteristic of healthy living organisms. The trouble happens when this is not combined with an ability to adapt to the mutability of environmental circumstances.
In mathematics education at the international level would hardly changes for consideration from the beginning of the century until the 60′s. At the beginning of the century had been a renewal movement in mathematics education, initially through the interest awakened by the prestigious figure of the great German mathematician Felix Klein, with its renovation projects of high school and its famous lectures on Elementary Mathematics from an higher point of view (1908). In our country a great influence from 1927, in the interest of Rey Pastor, who published in the Library Mathematics and its translation into Castilian.
In the 60 emerged a strong movement for innovation. We can say with reason that the push for renewal of that motion, despite any defect that has resulted in the international educational scene, has all the great virtue of drawing attention to the need for constant alertness on the evolution the educational system in mathematics at all levels. Changes in the 60′s have caused tidal against tides along the intermediate stage. Today, we can say with justification that we are still in a stage of profound change.
