It was in 1899 that Henri Fehr (Geneva) and Charles-Ange Laisant (Paris) founded the international journal L'Enseignement Mathématique. The form that the celebratory symposium took was a historical survey of developments in mathematics education at key periods in the 20th century followed by a short discussion of the manner in which mathematics education might meet the demands of societies today and in the near future.
The symposium demonstrated how over the century the emphasis shifted from discussions of the mathematics to be taught to an élite, to the needs of a wider range of students and of society. It reminded us of the way in which two generations had tried to make enormous changes in the content of school mathematics and methods of teaching it. It gave us an opportunity to see where these earlier efforts had not been wholly successful and challenged us to determine why. With such an understanding we should be better equipped to tackle both the problems that now face us and those which will arise in the future.