ABSTRACT
In the field of curriculum history, the notions of major crisis and movement in a school subject are of particular interest. This chapter concerns the John Perry movement involves which much more than the activities of one individual, and it is the background, ideology, development and evaluation of this movement. Perry's early workshop experience was an important moulding feature of his career and he 'attached great importance in his later life to the fact that his theoretical and practical instruction thus went on hand in hand'. As Perry himself remarked, the subject of practical mathematics was 'exceedingly different from what used to be the study of the mere mathematician on the same subjects'. Perry's cutting reference to 'mere' mathematicians signifies a conflict between the practical users of mathematics and the higher-status academic mathematicians of Cambridge. Perry's own textbook on calculus was a radical alternative to the severely analytic approach and it involved major simplification and use of intuition.
