Uma reforma face ao teste das realidades:o caso das "matemáticas modernas" na França dos anos 1970

Abstract

At the end of 1966, the Minister of National Education Christian Fouchet decides to create a study commission on the teaching of mathematics. Installed in an apparent nearconsensus, the committee, chaired by André Lichnerowicz, will be dedicated to the renewal of the teaching of mathematics, notably the development of new mathematical programs "modern" for secondary education (11-17 years). The object of this article, based mainly on the analysis of Commission filings Lichnerowicz, is the examination of how certain realities engendered by the democratization of access to "middle school" (11-15 years) in the decades of 1950-1960, which had not been considered a priori, are taken into account by members of this committee: institutional realities, the existence of short-term studies alongside studies of long duration, leading to the baccalauréat; human realities such as the teachers of the Colleges of General Education (CEG), taken as supposedly unprepared to teach the "true mathematics" by origin "primary" as opposed to their colleagues certificates or aggregates. The weight of these realities was especially meaningful when the development of mathematical programs of the 4th and 3rd grade (13-15 years), which led, in January 1971, triggering a crisis that splits open that initial consensus. The case of modern mathematics reform is thus an observatory particularly relevant for the examination of insitucionais and human constraints that weigh on the development of learning content.