There is no hiding the fact that our schools are becoming poorer and poorer. We remember the not-so-distant appeal published in Głos Bolesławca by Professor Napiórkowska for money to buy coal, and the beautiful and noble, almost immediate response.
Due to a lack of money, clubs and extracurricular activities are being suspended. But please go into a bookshop: there we find a realm of a genuine publishing Eldorado. Leaving aside all the laminated covers, let us turn to publications typically connected with school—what enormous variety. Starting with valuable alternative textbooks, through sometimes very interesting subject exercises, to all sorts of teaching aids with intriguing titles such as “Cheat Sheet for...”, “Super Cheat Sheet”, and even primitive, or sometimes downright vulgar, “cribs”. It is only a matter of time before someone publishes a proposal entitled “how to pass an exam without taking it”.
What am I getting at? I am trying to put myself in the position of a parent who would like their child to pass the entrance examination in mathematics for secondary school. What should be chosen for the child? As a teacher, I too have serious difficulty advising a pupil. A mathematics calendar for eighth-graders was good, owing to its subject content and methodological guidance—for example, dividing the material into daily “portions”—but recently I have no longer seen it in bookshops. I think the market itself will gradually move towards putting the situation in order.
I wrote about this more extensively in the article “School, Something Is Happening” (Tygodnik Powszechny No. 37 of 13 September). I think Readers have also come across other interesting “school” publications. Perhaps, with the help of fruitful debates, we will manage to pick the best ones out of the thicket of various cribs and “ready-made answers”, while eliminating the weak and worthless ones.
As a mathematician, I would like to warmly recommend, to pupils interested in mathematics and their parents, the collection “Wrocław Mathematical Competitions – Problems with Solutions for Primary Schools”, published by the Zakład Ogólnopolskiej Fundacji Komputerowej, Jelenia Góra, 1993.
The editor is the well-known Wrocław mathematician Jan Anusiak, author of a textbook for Forms III and IV of the mathematics-and-physics profile at secondary school. The collection contains 746 competition problems together with complete solutions, studying which may give pupils no end of enjoyment.
The problems also include tasks for pupils in Forms V and VI, as well as problems from entrance examinations for competitions to Wrocław secondary schools. I invite Esteemed Parents and my Most Honoured Fellow Teachers, as well as Pupils, to exchange views.
Andrzej Ostrowski
mathematics teacher at the Primary School in Ocice