Geometry in the first years of school education in the context of selected curricula and methodological guides for teachers in the years 1773 – 2020

Abstract

Currently there is little geometry content in the early years of school. In my doctoral thesis Geometry in teaching children since the times of the Commission of National Education until today. Analysis of the succession
of education concepts, supervised by Prof. Edyta Gruszczyk-Kolczynska, I examined how the teaching of geometry to younger children has changed since the time of KEN.
In the article, I discuss curricula and methodological guide books for teachers in terms of the geometric content they cover in the first years of school education. I focus on three periods: the second half of the 19th century, the 1920s and the 1970s. These periods stand out from the others I studied n that there was a lot of geometric content in the first years of school. However, in the first one of these, the content was mainly included in the subject “drawings”, while in the others the main aim of teaching was to develop pupils’ computational skills. To a large extent, geometry has also served this purpose.