A Comparison On The Mathematical Equations And Algebra Education In Junior Schools Between China And Japan

During a few decades after World War II, Japan leads the world not only in itseconomy, but also in its Mathematics curriculum. China, in its second educationalreform, might as well draw the strong points of theirs to offset our own weaknesses.Because the reform of maths materials is the core of our educational reform, this paperis a comparative study of Chinese and Japanese mathematics textbooks which uses"Equation and Algebra" courses as an example in middle school. We use the textbookswhich named "new mathematics" pressed by Tokyo Shoseki Co.,Ltd., and"mathematics" pressed by Shanghai Educational Press to compare the content from anall-around point of view. The study use Chinese "Curriculum Standards" and Japanese"Guide essentials" as a model and get some points.In this paper, the methods of literature reviewing, statistics are widely used. Inthe paper, the aim, the contents, the structure .etc are compared with qualitative methodbased on comparative education compared. And we use a quantative method to measuredifficulty of the problems. We get such points: First, the two countries require differenttreatments from the aim of the course. Second, from the content, Chinese textbooks hasa larger field than Japanese, but Japanese textbooks use more vivid examples from thereal world. Third, compared from the structure of the textbooks, Japanese editionprepares the way linearly, but ours is closer to the spiral. Forth, the way to introducenew concepts and theories in our textbooks is more various than in Japanese. Fifth, theuse of the mathematic history in Chinese is superior to in Japanese. Sixth, we use amodel-which is made by Bao Jiansheng -to evaluate the composite difficulty ofmathematical problems and get the conclusion: the mathematical problems in ourtextbook are more difficult and less than in Japanese.Then we get the main view: our maths textbooks are difficult than Japanese's.Besides culturalfactor which may cause the difference, we discuss main reasons from theaim of the curriculum, the need of the societyandsoon.The conclusions from the comparison have a certain reference value for improvingthe primary mathematics curriculum. First, selectionsofsubjectmattershouldbepracticalandreasonable for sutdents. Second, renewal of ideas of teachers are important to the reformprocess.