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Title: The Psychology of Arithmetic

Author: Edward L. Thorndike

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
ARITHMETIC

BY

EDWARD L. THORNDIKE

TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1929
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1922,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1922.
Reprinted October, 1924; May, 1926; August, 1927; October, 1929.

·   PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA   ·

[Pg v]

PREFACE

Within recent years there have been three lines of advance in psychology which are of notable significance for teaching. The first is the new point of view concerning the general process of learning. We now understand that learning is essentially the formation of connections or bonds between situations and responses, that the satisfyingness of the result is the chief force that forms them, and that habit rules in the realm of thought as truly and as fully as in the realm of action.

The second is the great increase in knowledge of the amount, rate, and conditions of improvement in those organized groups or hierarchies of habits which we call abilities, such as ability to add or ability to read. Practice and improvement are no longer vague generalities, but concern changes which are definable and measurable by standard tests and scales.

The third is the better understanding of the so-called "higher processes" of analysis, abstraction, the formation of general notions, and reasoning. The older view of a mental chemistry whereby sensations were compounded into percepts, percepts were duplicated by images, percepts and images were amalgamated into abstractions and concepts, and these were manipulated by reasoning, has given way to the understanding of the laws of response to elements or aspects of situations and to many situations or elements thereof in combination. James' view of reasoning as "selection of essentials" and "thinking things together" [Pg vi] in a revised and clarified form has important applications in the teaching of all the school subjects.

This book presents the applications of this newer dynamic psychology to the teaching of arithmetic. Its contents are substantially what have been included in a course of lectures on the psychology of the elementary school subjects given by the author for some years to students of elementary education at Teachers College. Many of these former students, now in supervisory charge of elementary schools, have urged that these lectures be made available to teachers in general. So they are now published in spite of the author's desire to clarify and reinforce certain matters by further researches.

A word of explanation is necessary concerning the exercises and problems cited to illustrate various matters, especially erroneous pedagogy. These are all genuine, having their source in actual textbooks, courses of study, state examinations, and the like. To avoid any possibility of invidious comparisons they are not quotations, but equivalent problems such as represent accurately the spirit and intent of the originals.

I take pleasure in acknowledging the courtesy of Mr. S. A. Courtis, Ginn and Company, D. C. Heath and Company, The Macmillan Company, The Oxford University Press, Rand, McNally and Company, Dr. C. W. Stone, The Teachers College Bureau of Publications, and The World Book Company, in permitting various quotations.

Edward L. Thorndike.

 Teachers College
Columbia University
        April 1, 1920

[Pg vii]

CONTENTS

[Pg x]

[Pg xi]

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL SUBJECTS

The psychology of the elementary school subjects is concerned with the connections whereby a child is able to respond to the sight of printed words by thoughts of their meanings, to the thought of "six and eight" by thinking "fourteen," to certain sorts of stories, poems, songs, and pictures by appreciation thereof, to certain situations by acts of skill, to certain others by acts of courtesy and justice, and so on and on through the series of situations and responses which are provided by the systematic training of the school subjects and the less systematic training of school life during their study. The aims of elementary education, when fully defined, will be found to be the production of changes in human nature represented by an almost countless list of connections or bonds whereby the pupil thinks or feels or acts in certain ways in response to the situations the school has organized and is influenced to think and feel and act similarly to similar situations when life outside of school confronts him with them.

We are not at present able to define the work of the elementary school in detail as the formation of such and such bonds between certain detached situations and certain specified responses. As elsewhere in human learning, we are at present forced to think somewhat vaguely in terms of mental functions, like "ability to read the vernacular," "ability to spell common words," "ability to add, subtract, [Pg xii] multiply, and divide with integers," "knowledge of the history of the United States," "honesty in examinations," and "appreciation of good music," defined by some general results obtained rather than by the elementary bonds which constitute them.

The psychology of the school subjects begins where our common sense knowledge of these functions leaves off and tries to define the knowledge, interest, power, skill, or ideal in question more adequately, to measure improvement in it, to analyze it into its constituent bonds, to decide what bonds need to be formed and in what order as means to the most economical attainment of the desired improvement, to survey the original tendencies and the tendencies already acquired before entrance to school which help or hinder progress in the elementary school subjects, to examine the motives that are or may be used to make the desired connections satisfying, to examine any other special conditions of improvement, and to note any facts concerning individual differences that are of special importance to the conduct of elementary school work.

Put in terms of problems, the task of the psychology of the elementary school subjects is, in each case:—

(1) What is the function? For example, just what is "ability to read"? Just what does "the understanding of decimal notation" mean? Just what are "the moral effects to be sought from the teaching of literature"?

(2) How are degrees of ability or attainment, and degrees of progress or improvement in the function or a part of the function measured? For example, how can we determine how well a pupil should write, or how hard words we expect him to spell, or what good taste we expect him to show? How can we define to ourselves what knowledge of the meaning of a fraction we shall try to secure in grade 4?[Pg xiii]

(3) What can be done toward reducing the function to terms of particular situation-response connections, whose formation can be more surely and easily controlled? For example, how far does ability to spell involve the formation one by one of bonds between the thought of almost every word in the language and the thought of that word's letters in their correct order; and how far does, say, the bond leading from the situation of the sound of ceive in receive and deceive to their correct spelling insure the correct spelling of that part of perceive? Does "ability to add" involve special bonds leading from "27 and 4" to "31," from "27 and 5" to "32," and "27 and 6" to "33"; or will the bonds leading from "7 and 4" to "11," "7 and 5" to "12" and "7 and 6" to "13" (each plus a simple inference) serve as well? What are the situations and responses that represent in actual behavior the quality that we call school patriotism?

(4) In almost every case a certain desired change of knowledge or skill or power can be attained by any one of several sets of bonds. Which of them is the best? What are the advantages of each? For example, learning to add may include the bonds "0 and 0 are 0," "0 and 1 are 1," "0 and 2 are 2," "1 and 0 are 1," "2 and 0 are 2," etc.; or these may be all left unformed, the pupil being taught the habits of entering 0 as the sum of a column that is composed of zeros and otherwise neglecting 0 in addition. Are the rules of usage worth teaching as a means toward correct speech, or is the time better spent in detailed practice in correct speech itself?

(5) A bond to be formed may be formed in any one of many degrees of strength. Which of these is, at any given stage of learning the subject, the most desirable, all things considered? For example, shall the dates of all the early settlements of North America be learned so that the exact year will be [Pg xiv] remembered for ten years, or so that the exact date will be remembered for ten minutes and the date with an error plus or minus of ten years will be remembered for a year or two? Shall the tables of inches, feet, and yards, and pints, quarts, and gallons be learned at their first appearance so as to be remembered for a year, or shall they be learned only well enough to be usable in the work of that week, which in turn fixes them to last for a month or so? Should a pupil in the first year of study of French have such perfect connections between the sounds of French words and their meanings that he can understand simple sentences containing them spoken at an ordinary rate of speaking? Or is slow speech permissible, and even imperative, on the part of the teacher, with gradual increase of rate?

(6) In almost every case, any set of bonds may produce the desired change when presented in any one of several orders. Which is the best order? What are the advantages of each? Certain systems for teaching handwriting perfect the elementary movements one at a time and then teach their combination in words and sentences. Others begin and continue with the complex movement-series that actual words require. What do the latter lose and gain? The bonds constituting knowledge of the metric system are now formed late in the pupil's course. Would it be better if they were formed early as a means of facilitating knowledge of decimal fractions?

(7) What are the original tendencies and pre-school acquisitions upon which the connection-forming of the elementary school may be based or which it has to counteract? For example, if a pupil knows the meaning of a heard word, he may read it understandingly from getting its sound, as by phonic reconstruction. What words does the average beginner so know? What are the individual differences in [Pg xv] this respect? What do the instincts of gregariousness, attention-getting, approval, and helpfulness recommend concerning group-work versus individual-work, and concerning the size of a group that is most desirable? The original tendency of the eyes is certainly not to move along a line from left to right of a page, then back in one sweep and along the next line. What is their original tendency when confronted with the printed page, and what must we do with it in teaching reading?

(8) What armament of satisfiers and annoyers, of positive and negative interests and motives, stands ready for use in the formation of the intrinsically uninteresting connections between black marks and meanings, numerical exercises and their answers, words and their spelling, and the like? School practice has tried, more or less at random, incentives and deterrents from quasi-physical pain to the most sentimental fondling, from sheer cajolery to philosophical argument, from appeals to assumed savage and primitive traits to appeals to the interest in automobiles, flying-machines, and wireless telegraphy. Can not psychology give some rules for guidance, or at least limit experimentation to its more hopeful fields?

(9) The general conditions of efficient learning are described in manuals of educational psychology. How do these apply in the case of each task of the elementary school? For example, the arrangement of school drills in addition and in short division in the form of practice experiments has been found very effective in producing interest in the work and in improvement at it. In what other arithmetical functions may we expect the same?

(10) Beside the general principles concerning the nature and causation of individual differences, there must obviously be, in existence or obtainable as a possible result of proper investigation, [Pg xvi] a great fund of knowledge of special differences relevant to the learning of reading, spelling, geography, arithmetic, and the like. What are the facts as far as known? What are the means of learning more of them? Courtis finds that a child may be specially strong in addition and yet be specially weak in subtraction in comparison with others of his age and grade. It even seems that such subtle and intricate tendencies are inherited. How far is such specialization the rule? Is it, for example, the case that a child may have a special gift for spelling certain sorts of words, for drawing faces rather than flowers, for learning ancient history rather than modern?

Such are our problems: this volume discusses them in the case of arithmetic. The student who wishes to relate the discussion to the general pedagogy of arithmetic may profitably read, in connection with this volume: The Teaching of Elementary Mathematics, by D. E. Smith ['01], The Teaching of Primary Arithmetic, by H. Suzzallo ['11], How to Teach Arithmetic, by J. C. Brown and L. D. Coffman ['14], The Teaching of Arithmetic, by Paul Klapper ['16], and The New Methods in Arithmetic, by the author ['21].

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ARITHMETIC

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
ARITHMETIC

[Pg 1]

CHAPTER I

THE NATURE OF ARITHMETICAL ABILITIES

According to common sense, the task of the elementary school is to teach:—(1) the meanings of numbers, (2) the nature of our system of decimal notation, (3) the meanings of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and (4) the nature and relations of certain common measures; to secure (5) the ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with integers, common and decimal fractions, and denominate numbers, (6) the ability to apply the knowledge and power represented by (1) to (5) in solving problems, and (7) certain specific abilities to solve problems concerning percentage, interest, and other common occurrences in business life.

This statement of the functions to be developed and improved is sound and useful so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough to make the task entirely clear. If teachers had nothing but the statement above as a guide to what changes they were to make in their pupils, they would often leave out important features of arithmetical training, and[Pg 2] put in forms of training that a wise educational plan would not tolerate. It is also the case that different leaders in arithmetical teaching, though they might all subscribe to the general statement of the previous paragraph, certainly do not in practice have identical notions of what arithmetic should be for the elementary school pupil.

The ordinary view of the nature of arithmetical learning is obscure or inadequate in four respects. It does not define what 'knowledge of the meanings of numbers' is; it does not take account of the very large amount of teaching of language which is done and should be done as a part of the teaching of arithmetic; it does not distinguish between the ability to meet certain quantitative problems as life offers them and the ability to meet the problems provided by textbooks and courses of study; it leaves 'the ability to apply arithmetical knowledge and power' as a rather mystical general faculty to be improved by some educational magic. The four necessary amendments may be discussed briefly.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE MEANINGS OF NUMBERS

Knowledge of the meanings of the numbers from one to ten may mean knowledge that 'one' means a single thing of the sort named, that two means one more than one, that three means one more than two, and so on. This we may call the series meaning. To know the meaning of 'six' in this sense is to know that it is one more than five and one less than seven—that it is between five and seven in the number series. Or we may mean by knowledge of the meanings of numbers, knowledge that two fits a collection of two units, that three fits a collection of three units, and so on, each number being a name for a certain sized collection of discrete things, such as apples, pennies, boys, balls, fingers,[Pg 3] and the other customary objects of enumeration in the primary school. This we may call the collection meaning. To know the meaning of six in this sense is to be able to name correctly any collection of six separate, easily distinguishable individual objects. In the third place, knowledge of the numbers from one to ten may mean knowledge that two is twice whatever is called one, that three is three times whatever is one, and so on. This is, of course, the ratio meaning. To know the meaning of six in this sense is to know that if _________ is one, a line half a foot long is six, that if [ __ ] is one, [ ____________ ] is about six, while if [ _ ] is one, [ ______ ] is about six, and the like. In the fourth place, the meaning of a number may be a smaller or larger fraction of its implications—its numerical relations, facts about it. To know six in this sense is to know that it is more than five or four, less than seven or eight, twice three, three times two, the sum of five and one, or of four and two, or of three and three, two less than eight—that with four it makes ten, that it is half of twelve, and the like. This we may call the 'nucleus of facts' or relational meaning of a number.

Ordinary school practice has commonly accepted the second meaning as that which it is the task of the school to teach beginners, but each of the other meanings has been alleged to be the essential one—the series idea by Phillips ['97], the ratio idea by McLellan and Dewey ['95] and Speer ['97], and the relational idea by Grube and his followers.

This diversity of views concerning what the function is that is to be improved in the case of learning the meanings of the numbers one to ten is not a trifling matter of definition, but produces very great differences in school practice. Consider, for example, the predominant value assigned to counting by Phillips in the passage quoted below, and the [Pg 4] samples of the sort of work at which children were kept employed for months by too ardent followers of Speer and Grube.

THE SERIES IDEA OVEREMPHASIZED

THE RATIO IDEA OVEREMPHASIZED

Fig. 1.

[Pg 5]

THE RELATIONAL IDEA OVEREMPHASIZED

[Pg 6]

It should be obvious that all four meanings have claims upon the attention of the elementary school. Four is the thing between three and five in the number series; it is the name for a certain sized collection of discrete objects; it is also the name for a continuous magnitude equal to four units—for four quarts of milk in a gallon pail as truly as for four separate quart-pails of milk; it is also, if we know it well, the thing got by adding one to three or subtracting six from ten or taking two two's or half of eight. To know the meaning of a number means to know somewhat about it in all of these respects. The difficulty has been the narrow vision of the extremists. A child must not be left interminably counting; in fact the one-more-ness of the number series can almost be had as a by-product. A child must not be restricted to exercises with collections objectified [Pg 7] as in Fig. 2 or stated in words as so many apples, oranges, hats, pens, etc., when work with measurement of continuous quantities with varying units—inches, feet, yards, glassfuls, [Pg 8] pints, quarts, seconds, minutes, hours, and the like—is so easy and so significant. On the other hand, the elaboration of artificial problems with fictitious units of measure just to have relative magnitudes as in the exercises on page 5 is a wasteful sacrifice. Similarly, special drills emphasizing the fact that eighteen is eleven and seven, twelve and six, three less than twenty-one, and the like, are simply idolatrous; these facts about eighteen, so far as they are needed, are better learned in the course of actual column-addition and -subtraction.

Fig. 2.

ARITHMETICAL LANGUAGE

The second improvement to be made in the ordinary notion of what the functions to be improved are in the case of arithmetic is to include among these functions the knowledge of certain words. The understanding of such words as both, all, in all, together, less, difference, sum, whole, part, equal, buy, sell, have left, measure, is contained in, and the like, is necessary in arithmetic as truly as is the understanding of numbers themselves. It must be provided for by the school; for pre-school and extra-school training does not furnish it, or furnishes it too late. It can be provided for much better in connection with the teaching of arithmetic than in connection with the teaching of English.

It has not been provided for. An examination of the first fifty pages of eight recent textbooks for beginners in arithmetic reveals very slight attention to this matter at the best and no attention at all in some cases. Three of the books do not even use the word sum, and one uses it only once in the fifty pages. In all the four hundred pages the word difference occurs only twenty times. When the words are used, no great ingenuity or care appears in [Pg 9] the means of making sure that their meanings are understood.

The chief reason why it has not been provided for is precisely that the common notion of what the functions are that arithmetic is to develop has left out of account this function of intelligent response to quantitative terms, other than the names of the numbers and processes.

Knowledge of language over a much wider range is a necessary element in arithmetical ability in so far as the latter includes ability to solve verbally stated problems. As arithmetic is now taught, it does include that ability, and a large part of the time of wise teaching is given to improving the function 'knowing what a problem states and what it asks for.' Since, however, this understanding of verbally stated problems may not be an absolutely necessary element of arithmetic, it is best to defer its consideration until we have seen what the general function of problem-solving is.

PROBLEM-SOLVING

The third respect in which the function, 'ability in arithmetic,' needs clearer definition, is this 'problem-solving.' The aim of the elementary school is to provide for correct and economical response to genuine problems, such as knowing the total due for certain real quantities at certain real prices, knowing the correct change to give or get, keeping household accounts, calculating wages due, computing areas, percentages, and discounts, estimating quantities needed of certain materials to make certain household or shop products, and the like. Life brings these problems usually either with a real situation (as when one buys and counts the cost and his change), or with a situation that one imagines or describes to himself (as when one figures out how much money he must save per week to be able to buy [Pg 10] a forty-dollar bicycle before a certain date). Sometimes, however, the problem is described in words to the person who must solve it by another person (as when a life insurance agent says, 'You pay only 25 cents a week from now till—and you get $250 then'; or when an employer says, 'Your wages would be 9 dollars a week, with luncheon furnished and bonuses of such and such amounts'). Sometimes also the problem is described in printed or written words to the person who must solve it (as in an advertisement or in the letter of a customer asking for an estimate on this or that). The problem may be in part real, in part imagined or described to oneself, and in part described to one orally or in printed or written words (as when the proposed articles for purchase lie before one, the amount of money one has in the bank is imagined, the shopkeeper offers 10 percent discount, and the printed price list is there to be read).

To fit pupils to solve these real, personally imagined, or self-described problems, and 'described-by-another' problems, schools have relied almost exclusively on training with problems of the last sort only. The following page taken almost at random from one of the best recent textbooks could be paralleled by thousands of others; and the oral problems put by teachers have, as a rule, no real situation supporting them.

As a result, teachers and textbook writers have come to think of the functions of solving arithmetical problems as identical with the function of solving the described problems which they give in school in books, examination papers, and the like. If they do not think explicitly that this is so, they still act in training and in testing pupils as if it were so.

It is not. Problems should be solved in school to the end that pupils may solve the problems which life offers. To know what change one should receive after a given real purchase, to keep one's accounts accurately, to adapt a recipe for six so as to make enough of the article for four persons, to estimate the amount of seed required for a plot of a given size from the statement of the amount required per acre, to make with surety the applications that the household, small stores, and ordinary trades require—such is the ability that the elementary school should develop. [Pg 12] Other things being equal, the school should set problems in arithmetic which life then and later will set, should favor the situations which life itself offers and the responses which life itself demands.

Other things are not always equal. The same amount of time and effort will often be more productive toward the final end if directed during school to 'made-up' problems. The keeping of personal financial accounts as a school exercise is usually impracticable, partly because some of the children have no earnings or allowance—no accounts to keep, and partly because the task of supervising work when each child has a different problem is too great for the teacher. The use of real household and shop problems will be easy only when the school program includes the household arts and industrial education, and when these subjects themselves are taught so as to improve the functions used by real life. Very often the most efficient course is to make sure that arithmetical procedures are applied to the real and personally initiated problems which they fit, by having a certain number of such problems arise and be solved; then to make sure that the similarity between these real problems and certain described problems of the textbook or teacher's giving is appreciated; and then to give the needed drill work with described problems. In many cases the school practice is fairly well justified in assuming that solving described problems will prepare the pupil to solve the corresponding real problems actually much better than the same amount of time spent on the real problems themselves.

All this is true, yet the general principle remains that, other things being equal, the school should favor real situations, should present issues as life will present them.

Where other things make the use of verbally described [Pg 13] problems of the ordinary type desirable, these should be chosen so as to give a maximum of preparation for the real applications of arithmetic in life. We should not, for example, carelessly use any problem that comes to mind in applying a certain principle, but should stop to consider just what the situations of life really require and show clearly the application of that principle. For example, contrast these two problems applying cancellation:—

The first problem not only presents a situation that would rarely or never occur, but also takes a way to find the answer that would not, in that situation, be taken since the price set by another would determine the amount.

Much thought and ingenuity should in the future be expended in eliminating problems whose solution does not improve the real function to be improved by applied arithmetic, or improves it at too great cost, and in devising problems which prepare directly for life's demands and still can fit into a curriculum that can be administered by one teacher in charge of thirty or forty pupils, under the limitations of school life.

The following illustrations will to some extent show concretely what the ability to apply the knowledge and power represented by abstract or pure arithmetic—the so-called fundamentals—in solving problems should mean and what it should not mean.

[Pg 14]

Samples of Desirable Applications of Arithmetic in Problems where the Situation is Actually Present to Sense in Whole or in Part

Keeping the scores and deciding which side beat and by how much in appropriate classroom games, spelling matches, and the like.

Computing costs, making and inspecting change, taking inventories, and the like with a real or play store.

Mapping the school garden, dividing it into allotments, planning for the purchase of seeds, and the like.

Measuring one's own achievement and progress in tests of word-knowledge, spelling, addition, subtraction, speed of writing, and the like. Measuring the rate of improvement per hour of practice or per week of school life, and the like.

Estimating costs of food cooked in the school kitchen, articles made in the school shops, and the like.

Computing the cost of telegrams, postage, expressage, for a real message or package, from the published tariffs.

Computing costs from mail order catalogues and the like.

Samples of Desirable Applications of Arithmetic where the Situation is Not Present to Sense

The samples given here all concern the subtraction of fractions. Samples concerning any other arithmetical principle may be found in the appropriate pages of any text which contains problem-material selected with consideration of life's needs.

A

[Pg 15]

B

C

87¹⁄₃
84¹⁄₂
———

[Pg 16]

Samples of Undesirable Applications of Arithmetic[1]

These samples, just given, of the kind of problem-solving that should not be emphasized in school training refer in some cases to books of forty years back, but the following represent the results of a collection made in 1910 from books then in excellent repute. It required only about an hour to collect them; and I am confident that a thousand such problems describing situations that the pupil will never encounter in real life, or putting questions that he will never be asked in real life, could easily be found in any ten textbooks of the decade from 1900 to 1910.

With only thirty or forty dollars a year to spend on a pupil's education, of which perhaps eight dollars are spent[Pg 19] on improving his arithmetical abilities, the immediate guidance of his responses to real situations and personally initiated problems has to be supplemented largely by guidance of his responses to problems described in words, diagrams, pictures, and the like. Of these latter, words will be used most often. As a consequence the understanding of the words used in these descriptions becomes a part of the ability required in arithmetic. Such word knowledge is also required in so far as the problems to be solved in real life are at times described, as in advertisements, business letters, and the like.

This is recognized by everybody in the case of words like remainder, profit, loss, gain, interest, cubic capacity, gross, net, and discount, but holds equally of let, suppose, balance, average, total, borrowed, retained, and many such semi-technical words, and may hold also of hundreds of other words unless the textbook and teacher are careful to use only words and sentence structures which daily life and the class work in English have made well known to the pupils. To apply arithmetic to a problem a pupil must understand what the problem is; problem-solving depends on problem-reading. In actual school practice training in problem-reading will be less and less necessary as we get rid of problems to be solved simply for the sake of solving them, unnecessarily unreal problems, and clumsy descriptions, but it will remain to some extent as an important joint task for the 'arithmetic' and 'reading' of the elementary school.

ARITHMETICAL REASONING

The last respect in which the nature of arithmetical abilities requires definition concerns arithmetical reasoning. An adequate treatment of the reasoning that may be expected of pupils in the elementary school and of the most [Pg 20] efficient ways to encourage and improve it cannot be given until we have studied the formation of habits. For reasoning is essentially the organization and control of habits of thought. Certain matters may, however, be decided here. The first concerns the use of computation and problems merely for discipline,—that is, the emphasis on training in reasoning regardless of whether the problem is otherwise worth reasoning about. It used to be thought that the mind was a set of faculties or abilities or powers which grew strong and competent by being exercised in a certain way, no matter on what they were exercised. Problems that could not occur in life, and were entirely devoid of any worthy interest, save the intellectual interest in solving them, were supposed to be nearly or quite as useful in training the mind to reason as the genuine problems of the home, shop, or trade. Anything that gave the mind a chance to reason would do; and pupils labored to find when the minute hand and hour hand would be together, or how many sheep a shepherd had if half of what he had plus ten was one third of twice what he had!

We now know that the training depends largely on the particular data used, so that efficient discipline in reasoning requires that the pupil reason about matters of real importance. There is no magic essence or faculty of reasoning that works in general and irrespective of the particular facts and relations reasoned about. So we should try to find problems which not only stimulate the pupil to reason, but also direct his reasoning in useful channels and reward it by results that are of real significance. We should replace the purely disciplinary problems by problems that are also valuable as special training for important particular situations of life. Reasoning sought for reasoning's sake alone is too wasteful an expenditure of time and is also likely to be inferior as reasoning.

[Pg 21]

The second matter concerns the relative merits of 'catch' problems, where the pupil has to go against some customary habit of thinking, and what we may call 'routine' problems, where the regular ways of thinking that have served him in the past will, except for some blunder, guide him rightly.

Consider, for example, these four problems:

The 'catch' problem is now in disrepute, the wise teacher feeling by a sort of intuition that to willfully require a pupil to reason to a result sharply contrary to that to which previous habits lead him is risky. The four illustrations just given show, however, that mere 'catchiness' or 'contra-previous-habit-ness' in a problem is not enough to condemn it. The fourth problem is a catch problem, but so useful a one that it has been adopted in many modern books as a routine drill! The first problem, on the contrary, all, save those who demand no higher criterion for a problem than that it make the pupil 'think,' would reject. It demands the reversal of fixed habits to no valid purpose; for in life the question in such case would never (or almost never) be 'How many cents did he lose?' but 'What was the result?' or simply 'What of it?' This problem weakens without excuse the child's confidence in the training he has had. Problems like (2) are given by teachers of excellent reputation, but probably do more harm than good. If a pupil should interrupt his teacher during the recitation in arithmetic by [Pg 22] saying, "I got up at 7 o'clock to multiply 9 by 2¾ and got 24¾ for my answer; was that the right time to get up?" the teacher would not thank fortune for the stimulus to thought but would think the child a fool. Such catch questions may be fairly useful as an object lesson on the value of search for the essential element in a situation if a great variety of them are given one after another with routine problems intermixed and with warning of the general nature of the exercise at the beginning. Even so, it should be remembered that reasoning should be chiefly a force organizing habits, not opposing them; and also that there are enough bad habits to be opposed to give all necessary training. Fabricated puzzle situations wherein a peculiar hidden element of the situation makes the good habits called up by the situation misleading are useful therefore rather as a relief and amusing variation in arithmetical work than as stimuli to thought.

Problems like the third quoted above we might call puzzling rather than 'catch' problems. They have value as drills in analysis of a situation into its elements that will amuse the gifted children, and as tests of certain abilities. They also require that of many confusing habits, the right one be chosen, rather than that ordinary habits be set aside by some hidden element in the situation. Not enough is known about their effect to enable us to decide whether or not the elementary school should include special facility with them as one of the arithmetical functions that it specially trains.

The fourth 'catch' quoted above, which all would admit is a good problem, is good because it opposes a good habit for the sake of another good habit, forces the analysis of an element whose analysis life very much requires, and does it with no obvious waste. It is not safe to leave a child with the one habit of responding to 'add, 19, 30' by 49, for in[Pg 23] life the 'have 19, must get .... to have 30' situation is very frequent and important.

On the whole, the ordinary problems which ordinary life proffers seem to be the sort that should be reasoned out, though the elementary school may include the less noxious forms of pure mental gymnastics for those pupils who like them.

SUMMARY

These discussions of the meanings of numbers, the linguistic demands of arithmetic, the distinction between scholastic and real applications of arithmetic, and the possible restrictions of training in reasoning,—may serve as illustrations of the significance of the question, "What are the functions that the elementary school tries to improve in its teaching of arithmetic?" Other matters might well be considered in this connection, but the main outline of the work of the elementary school is now fairly clear. The arithmetical functions or abilities which it seeks to improve are, we may say:—

(1) Working knowledge of the meanings of numbers as names for certain sized collections, for certain relative magnitudes, the magnitude of unity being known, and for certain centers or nuclei of relations to other numbers.

(2) Working knowledge of the system of decimal notation.

(3) Working knowledge of the meanings of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

(4) Working knowledge of the nature and relations of certain common measures.

(5) Working ability to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with integers, common and decimal fractions, and denominate numbers, all being real positive numbers.

(6) Working knowledge of words, symbols, diagrams, and[Pg 24] the like as required by life's simpler arithmetical demands or by economical preparation therefor.

(7) The ability to apply all the above as required by life's simpler arithmetical demands or by economical preparation therefor, including (7 a) certain specific abilities to solve problems concerning areas of rectangles, volumes of rectangular solids, percents, interest, and certain other common occurrences in household, factory, and business life.

THE SOCIOLOGY OF ARITHMETIC

[Pg 27]

CHAPTER II

THE MEASUREMENT OF ARITHMETICAL ABILITIES

One of the best ways to clear up notions of what the functions are which schools should develop and improve is to get measures of them. If any given knowledge or skill or power or ideal exists, it exists in some amount. A series of amounts of it, varying from less to more, defines the ability itself in a way that no general verbal description can do. Thus, a series of weights, 1 lb., 2 lb., 3 lb., 4 lb., etc., helps to tell us what we mean by weight. By finding a series of words like only, smoke, another, pretty, answer, tailor, circus, telephone, saucy, and beginning, which are spelled correctly by known and decreasing percentages of children of the same age, or of the same school grade, we know better what we mean by 'spelling-difficulty.' Indeed, until we can measure the efficiency and improvement of a function, we are likely to be vague and loose in our ideas of what the function is.

A SAMPLE MEASUREMENT OF AN ARITHMETICAL ABILITY: THE ABILITY TO ADD INTEGERS

Consider first, as a sample, the measurement of ability to add integers.

The following were the examples used in the measurements made by Stone ['08]:[Pg 28]

The scoring was as follows: Credit of 1 for each column added correctly. Stone combined measures of other abilities with this in a total score for amount done correctly in 12 minutes. Stone also scored the correctness of the additions in certain work in multiplication.

Courtis uses a sheet of twenty-four tasks or 'examples,' each consisting of the addition of nine three-place numbers as shown below. Eight minutes is allowed. He scores the amount done by the number of examples, and also scores the number of examples done correctly, but does not suggest any combination of these two into a general-efficiency score.

927
379
756
837
924
110
854
965
344
———

The author long ago proposed that pupils be measured also with series like a to g shown below, in which the difficulty increases step by step.

[Pg 29]

Woody ['16] has constructed his well-known tests on this principle, though he uses only one example at each step of difficulty instead of eight or ten as suggested above. His test, so far as addition of integers goes, is:—

[Pg 30]

SERIES A.     ADDITION SCALE (in part)

By Clifford Woody

[Pg 31]

In his original report, Woody gives no scheme for scoring an individual, wisely assuming that, with so few samples at each degree of difficulty, a pupil's score would be too unreliable for individual diagnosis. The test is reliable for a class; and for a class Woody used the degree of difficulty such that a stated fraction of the class can do the work correctly, if twenty minutes is allowed for the thirty-eight examples of the entire test.

The measurement of even so simple a matter as the efficiency of a pupil's responses to these tests in adding integers is really rather complex. There is first of all the problem of combining speed and accuracy into some single estimate. Stone gives no credit for a column unless it is correctly added. Courtis evades the difficulty by reporting both number done and number correct. The author's scheme, which gives specified weights to speed and accuracy at each step of the series, involves a rather intricate computation.

This difficulty of equating speed and accuracy in adding means precisely that we have inadequate notions of what the ability is that the elementary school should improve. Until, for example, we have decided whether, for a given group of pupils, fifteen Courtis attempts with ten right, is or is not a better achievement than ten Courtis attempts with nine right, we have not decided just what the business of the teacher of addition is, in the case of that group of pupils.

There is also the difficulty of comparing results when short and long columns are used. Correctness with a short column, say of five figures, testifies to knowledge of the process and to the power to do four successive single additions without error. Correctness with a long column, say of ten digits, testifies to knowledge of the process and to the power to do nine successive single additions without error. Now if a pupil's precision was such that on the average he[Pg 32] made one mistake in eight single additions, he would get about half of his five-digit columns right and almost none of his ten-digit columns right. (He would do this, that is, if he added in the customary way. If he were taught to check results by repeated addition, by adding in half-columns and the like, his percentages of accurate answers might be greatly increased in both cases and be made approximately equal.) Length of column in a test of addition under ordinary conditions thus automatically overweights precision in the single additions as compared with knowledge of the process, and ability at carrying.

Further, in the case of a column of whatever size, the result as ordinarily scored does not distinguish between one, two, three, or more (up to the limit) errors in the single additions. Yet, obviously, a pupil who, adding with ten-digit columns, has half of his answer-figures wrong, probably often makes two or more errors within a column, whereas a pupil who has only one column-answer in ten wrong, probably almost never makes more than one error within a column. A short-column test is then advisable as a means of interpreting the results of a long-column test.

Finally, the choice of a short-column or of a long-column test is indicative of the measurer's notion of the kind of efficiency the world properly demands of the school. Twenty years ago the author would have been readier to accept a long-column test than he now is. In the world at large, long-column addition is being more and more done by machine, though it persists still in great frequency in the bookkeeping of weekly and monthly accounts in local groceries, butcher shops, and the like.

The search for a measure of ability to add thus puts the problem of speed versus precision, and of short-column versus long-column additions clearly before us. The latter[Pg 33] problem has hardly been realized at all by the ordinary definitions of ability to add.

It may be said further that the measurement of ability to add gives the scientific student a shock by the lack of precision found everywhere in schools. Of what value is it to a graduate of the elementary school to be able to add with examples like those of the Courtis test, getting only eight out of ten right? Nobody would pay a computer for that ability. The pupil could not keep his own accounts with it. The supposed disciplinary value of habits of precision runs the risk of turning negative in such a case. It appears, at least to the author, imperative that checking should be taught and required until a pupil can add single columns of ten digits with not over one wrong answer in twenty columns. Speed is useful, especially indirectly as an indication of control of the separate higher-decade additions, but the social demand for addition below a certain standard of precision is nil, and its disciplinary value is nil or negative. This will be made a matter of further study later.

MEASUREMENTS OF ABILITIES IN COMPUTATION

Measurements of these abilities may be of two sorts—(1) of the speed and accuracy shown in doing one same sort of task, as illustrated by the Courtis test for addition shown on page 28; and (2) of how hard a task can be done perfectly (or with some specified precision) within a certain assigned time or less, as illustrated by the author's rough test for addition shown on pages 28 and 29, and by the Woody tests, when extended to include alternative forms.

The Courtis tests, originated as an improvement on the Stone tests and since elaborated by the persistent devotion of their author, are a standard instrument of the first sort for measuring the so-called 'fundamental' arithmetical[Pg 34] abilities with integers. They are shown on this and the following page.

Tests of the second sort are the Woody tests, which include operations with integers, common and decimal fractions, and denominate numbers, the Ballou test for common fractions ['16], and the "Ladder" exercises of the Thorndike arithmetics. Some of these are shown on pages 36 to 41.

Courtis Test

Arithmetic.     Test No. 1.     Addition

Series B

Courtis Test

Arithmetic.     Test No. 2.     Subtraction

Series B

Courtis Test

Arithmetic.     Test No. 3.     Multiplication

Series B

Courtis Test

Arithmetic.     Test No. 4.     Division

Series B

[Pg 36]

SERIES B.     MULTIPLICATION SCALE

By Clifford Woody

[Pg 37]

SERIES B. DIVISION SCALE
By Clifford Woody

[Pg 38]

Ballou Test

Addition of Fractions

An Addition Ladder [Thorndike, '17, III, 5]

Begin at the bottom of the ladder. See if you can climb to the top without making a mistake. Be sure to copy the numbers correctly.

A Subtraction Ladder [Thorndike, '17, III, 11]

An Average Ladder [Thorndike, '17, III, 132]

Find the average of the quantities on each line. Begin with Step 1. Climb to the top without making a mistake. Be sure to copy the numbers correctly. Extend the division to two decimal places if necessary.

As such tests are widened to cover the whole task of the elementary school in respect to arithmetic, and accepted by competent authorities as adequate measures of achievement in computing, they will give, as has been said, a working definition of the task. The reader will observe, for example, that work such as the following, though still found in many textbooks and classrooms, does not, in general, appear in the modern tests and scales.

Reduce the following improper fractions to mixed numbers:—

¹⁹⁄₁₃         ⁴³⁄₂₁         ¹⁷⁶⁄₂₅         ¹⁹⁸⁄₁₄

Reduce to integral or mixed numbers:—

⁶¹³⁸¹⁄₃₇         ²¹³⁴⁄₆₇         ⁴¹³⁄₄₁₃         ⁶⁹⁷⁄₂₂₅

Simplify:—

³⁄₄   of   ⁸⁄₉   of   ³⁄₅   of   ¹⁵⁄₂₂

Reduce to lowest terms:—

³⁵⁷⁄₅₂₇         ²⁶⁴⁄₃₁₂         ⁴⁹²⁄₇₇₉         ⁴¹⁸⁄₈₇₄         ⁸⁵⁴⁄₁₇₆₉         ³⁰⁄₇₃₅         ⁴⁴⁄₂₄₂         ⁷⁷⁄₈₄₇         ¹⁸⁄₂₄₃         ⁹⁶⁄₂₂₄

Find differences:—

Square:—

²⁄₃         ⁴⁄₅         ⁵⁄₇         ⁶⁄₉         ¹⁰⁄₁₁         ¹²⁄₁₃         ²⁄₇         ¹⁵⁄₁₆         ¹⁹⁄₂₀         ¹⁷⁄₁₈         ²⁵⁄₃₀         ⁴¹⁄₅₃

Multiply:—

²⁄₁₁ × 33         32 × ³⁄₁₄         39 × ²⁄₁₃         60 × ¹¹⁄₂₈         77 × ⁴⁄₁₁         63 × ²⁄₂₇
54 × ⁸⁄₄₅         65 × ³⁄₁₃         344¹⁶⁄₂₁    432²⁄₇

[Pg 42]

MEASUREMENTS OF ABILITY IN APPLIED ARITHMETIC: THE SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS

Stone ['08] measured achievement with the following problems, fifteen minutes being the time allowed.

"Solve as many of the following problems as you have time for; work them in order as numbered:

[Pg 43]

The criteria he had in mind in selecting the problems were as follows:—

"The main purpose of the reasoning test is the determination of the ability of VI A children to reason in arithmetic. To this end, the problems, as selected and arranged, are meant to embody the following conditions:—

The test is purposely so long that only very rarely did any pupil fully complete it in the fifteen minute limit."

Credits were given of 1, for each of the first five problems, 1.4, 1.2, and 1.6 respectively for problems 6, 7, and 8, and of 2 for each of the others.

Courtis sought to improve the Stone test of problem-solving, replacing it by the two tests reproduced below.

ARITHMETIC—Test No. 6.       Speed Test—Reasoning

[Pg 45]

ARITHMETIC—Test No. 8.       Reasoning

[Pg 46]

These proposed measures of ability to apply arithmetic illustrate very nicely the differences of opinion concerning what applied arithmetic and arithmetical reasoning should be. The thinker who emphasizes the fact that in life out of school the situation demanding quantitative treatment is usually real rather than described, will condemn a test all of whose constituents are described problems. Unless we are excessively hopeful concerning the transfer of ideas of method and procedure from one mental function to another we shall protest against the artificiality of No. 3 of the Stone series, and of the entire Courtis Test 8 except No. 4. The Courtis speed-reasoning test (No. 6) is a striking example of the mixture of ability to understand quantitative relations with the ability to understand words. Consider these five, for example, in comparison with the revised versions attached.[3]

The distinction between a problem described as clearly and simply as possible and the same problem put awkwardly or in ill-known words or willfully obscured should be regarded; and as a rule measurements of ability to apply arithmetic should eschew all needless obscurity or purely linguistic difficulty. For example,

is better as a test than

The distinction between the description of a bona fide problem that a human being might be called on to solve out of school and the description of imaginary possibilities or puzzles should also be considered. Nos. 3 and 9 of Stone are bad because to frame the problems one must first know the answers, so that in reality there could never be any point in solving them. It is probably safe to say that nobody in the world ever did or ever will or ever should find the number of apples in a box by the task of No. 4 of the Courtis Test 8.

This attaches no blame to Dr. Stone or to Mr. Courtis. Until very recently we were all so used to the artificial problems of the traditional sort that we did not expect anything better; and so blind to the language demands of described problems that we did not see their very great influence. Courtis himself has been active in reform and has pointed out ('13, p. 4 f.) the defects in his Tests 6 and 8.[Pg 48]

"Tests Nos. 6 and 8, the so-called reasoning tests, have proved the least satisfactory of the series. The judgments of various teachers and superintendents as to the inequalities of the units in any one test, and of the differences between the different editions of the same test, have proved the need of investigating these questions. Tests of adults in many lines of commercial work have yielded in many cases lower scores than those of the average eighth grade children. At the same time the scores of certain individuals of marked ability have been high, and there appears to be a general relation between ability in these tests and accuracy in the abstract work. The most significant facts, however, have been the difficulties experienced by teachers in attempting to remedy the defects in reasoning. It is certain that the tests measure abilities of value but the abilities are probably not what they seem to be. In an attempt to measure the value of different units, for instance, as many problems as possible were constructed based upon a single situation. Twenty-one varieties were secured by varying the relative form of the question and the relative position of the different phrases. One of these proved nineteen times as hard as another as measured by the number of mistakes made by the children; yet the cause of the difference was merely the changes in the phrasing. This and other facts of the same kind seem to show that Tests 6 and 8 measure mainly the ability to read."

The scientific measurement of the abilities and achievements concerned with applied arithmetic or problem-solving is thus a matter for the future. In the case of described problems a beginning has been made in the series which form a part of the National Intelligence Tests ['20], one of which is shown on page 49 f. In the case of problems with real situations, nothing in systematic form is yet available.

Systematic tests and scales, besides defining the abil[Pg 49]ities we are to establish and improve, are of very great service in measuring the status and improvement of individuals and of classes, and the effects of various methods of instruction and of study. They are thus helpful to pupils, teachers, supervisors, and scientific investigators; and are being more and more widely used every year. Information concerning the merits of the different tests, the procedure to follow in giving and scoring them, the age and grade standards to be used in interpreting results, and the like, is available in the manuals of Educational Measurement, such as Courtis, Manual of Instructions for Giving and Scoring the Courtis Standard Tests in the Three R's ['14]; Starch, Educational Measurements ['16]; Chapman and Rush, Scientific Measurement of Classroom Products ['17]; Monroe, DeVoss, and Kelly, Educational Tests and Measurements ['17]; Wilson and Hoke, How to Measure ['20]; and McCall, How to Measure in Education ['21].

National Intelligence Tests.
Scale A. Form 1, Edition 1

TEST 1

Find the answers as quickly as you can.
Write the answers on the dotted lines.
Use the side of the page to figure on.

Begin here

From National Intelligence Tests by National Research Council.
Copyright, 1920, by The World Book Company, Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York.
Used by permission of the publishers.

[Pg 51]

CHAPTER III

THE CONSTITUTION OF ARITHMETICAL ABILITIES

THE ELEMENTARY FUNCTIONS OF ARITHMETICAL LEARNING

It would be a useful work for some one to try to analyze arithmetical learning into the unitary abilities which compose it, showing just what, in detail, the mind has to do in order to be prepared to pass a thorough test on the whole of arithmetic. These unitary abilities would make a very long list. Examination of a well-planned textbook will show that such an ability as multiplication is treated as a composite of the following: knowledge of the multiplications up to 9 × 9; ability to multiply two (or more)-place numbers by 2, 3, and 4 when 'carrying' is not required and no zeros occur in the multiplicand; ability to multiply by 2, 3, ... 9, with carrying; the ability to handle zeros in the multiplicand; the ability to multiply with two-place numbers not ending in zero; the ability to handle zero in the multiplier as last number; the ability to multiply with three (or more)-place numbers not including a zero; the ability to multiply with three- and four-place numbers with zero in second or third, or second and third, as well as in last place; the ability to save time by annexing zeros; and so on and on through a long list of further abilities required to multiply with United States money, decimal fractions, common fractions, mixed numbers, and denominate numbers.[Pg 52]

The units or 'steps' thus recognized by careful teaching would make a long list, but it is probable that a still more careful study of arithmetical ability as a hierarchy of mental habits or connections would greatly increase the list. Consider, for example, ordinary column addition. The majority of teachers probably treat this as a simple application of the knowledge of the additions to 9 + 9, plus understanding of 'carrying.' On the contrary there are at least seven processes or minor functions involved in two-place column addition, each of which is psychologically distinct and requires distinct educational treatment.

These are:—

A. Learning to keep one's place in the column as one adds.

B. Learning to keep in mind the result of each addition until the next number is added to it.

C. Learning to add a seen to a thought-of number.

D. Learning to neglect an empty space in the columns.

E. Learning to neglect 0s in the columns.

F. Learning the application of the combinations to higher decades may for the less gifted pupils involve as much time and labor as learning all the original addition tables. And even for the most gifted child the formation of the connection '8 and 7 = 15' probably never quite insures the presence of the connections '38 and 7 = 45' and '18 + 7 = 25.'

G. Learning to write the figure signifying units rather than the total sum of a column. In particular, learning to write 0 in the cases where the sum of the column is 10, 20, etc. Learning to 'carry' also involves in itself at least two distinct processes, by whatever way it is taught.

We find evidence of such specialization of functions in the results with such tests as Woody's. For example, [Pg 53] 2 + 5 + 1 = .... surely involves abilities in part different from

2
4
3
—

because only 77 percent of children in grade 3 do the former correctly, whereas 95 percent of children in that grade do the latter correctly. In grade 2 the difference is even more marked. In the case of subtraction

4
4
—

involves abilities different from those involved in

9
3
—,

being much less often solved correctly in grades 2 and 4.

6
0
—

is much harder than either of the above.

It may be said that these differences in difficulty are due to different amounts of practice. This is probably not true, but if it were, it would not change the argument; if the two abilities were identical, the practice of one would improve the other equally.

I shall not undertake here this task of listing and describing the elementary functions which constitute arithmetical learning, partly because what they are is not fully known, partly because in many cases a final ability may be constituted in several different ways whose descriptions become necessarily tedious, and partly because an adequate statement of what is known would far outrun the space limits of this chapter. Instead, I shall illustrate the results by some samples.

[Pg 54]

KNOWLEDGE OF THE MEANING OF A FRACTION

As a first sample, consider knowledge of the meaning of a fraction. Is the ability in question simply to understand that a fraction is a statement of the number of parts, each of a certain size, the upper number or numerator telling how many parts are taken and the lower number or denominator telling what fraction of unity each part is? And is the educational treatment required simply to describe and illustrate such a statement and have the pupils apply it to the recognition of fractions and the interpretation of each of them? And is the learning process (1) the formation of the notions of part, size of part, number of part, (2) relating the last two to the numbers in a fraction, and, as a necessary consequence, (3) applying these notions adequately whenever one encounters a fraction in operation?

Precisely this was the notion a few generations ago. The nature of fractions was taught as one principle, in one step, and the habits of dealing with fractions were supposed to be deduced from the general law of a fraction's nature. As a result the subject of fractions had to be long delayed, was studied at great cost of time and effort, and, even so, remained a mystery to all save gifted pupils. These gifted pupils probably of their own accord built up the ability piecemeal out of constituent insights and habits.

At all events, scientific teaching now does build up the total ability as a fusion or organization of lesser abilities. What these are will be seen best by examining the means taken to get them. (1) First comes the association of ½ of a pie, ½ of a cake, ½ of an apple, and such like with their concrete meanings so that a pupil can properly name a clearly designated half of an obvious unit like an orange, pear, or piece of chalk. The same degree of understanding[Pg 55] of ¹⁄₄, ¹⁄₈, ¹⁄₃, ¹⁄₆, and ¹⁄₅ is secured. The pupil is taught that 1 pie = 2 ¹⁄₂s, 3 ¹⁄₃s, 4 ¹⁄₄s, 5 ¹⁄₅s, 6 ¹⁄₆s, and 8 ¹⁄₈s; similarly for 1 cake, 1 apple, and the like.

So far he understands ¹⁄_x of y in the sense of certain simple parts of obviously unitary ys.

(2) Next comes the association with ½ of an inch, ½ of a foot, ½ of a glassful and other cases where y is not so obviously a unitary object whose pieces still show their derivation from it. Similarly for ¹⁄₄, ¹⁄₃, etc.

(3) Next comes the association with ¹⁄₂ of a collection of eight pieces of candy, ¹⁄₃ of a dozen eggs, ¹⁄₅ of a squad of ten soldiers, etc., until ¹⁄₂, ¹⁄₃, ¹⁄₄, ¹⁄₅, ¹⁄₆, and ¹⁄₈ are understood as names of certain parts of a collection of objects.

(4) Next comes the similar association when the nature of the collection is left undefined, the pupil responding to
¹⁄₂ of 6 is ..., ¹⁄₄ of 8 is ..., 2 is ¹⁄₅ of ...,
¹⁄₃ of 6 is ..., ¹⁄₃ of 9 is ..., 2 is ¹⁄₃ of ..., and the like.

Each of these abilities is justified in teaching by its intrinsic merits, irrespective of its later service in helping to constitute the general understanding of the meaning of a fraction. The habits thus formed in grades 3 or 4 are of constant service then and thereafter in and out of school.

(5) With these comes the use of ¹⁄₅ of 10, 15, 20, etc., ¹⁄₆ of 12, 18, 42, etc., as a useful variety of drill on the division tables, valuable in itself, and a means of making the notion of a unit fraction more general by adding ¹⁄₇ and ¹⁄₉ to the scheme.

(6) Next comes the connection of ³⁄₄, ²⁄₅, ³⁄₅, ⁴⁄₅, ²⁄₃, ¹⁄₆, ⁵⁄₆, ³⁄₈, ⁵⁄₈, ⁷⁄₈, ³⁄₁₀, ⁷⁄₁₀, and ⁹⁄₁₀, each with its meaning as a certain part of some conveniently divisible unit, and, (7) and (8), connections between these fractions and their meanings as parts of certain magnitudes (7) and collections (8) of convenient[Pg 56] size, and (9) connections between these fractions and their meanings when the nature of the magnitude or collection is unstated, as in ⁴⁄₅ of 15 = ..., ⁵⁄₈ of 32 = ....

(10) That the relation is general is shown by using it with numbers requiring written division and multiplication, such as ⁷⁄₈ of 1736 = ..., and with United States money.

Elements (6) to (10) again are useful even if the pupil never goes farther in arithmetic. One of the commonest uses of fractions is in calculating the cost of fractions of yards of cloth, and fractions of pounds of meat, cheese, etc.

The next step (11) is to understand to some extent the principle that the value of any of these fractions is unaltered by multiplying or dividing the numerator and denominator by the same number. The drills in expressing fractions in lower and higher terms which accomplish this are paralleled by (12) and (13) simple exercises in adding and subtracting fractions to show that fractions are quantities that can be operated on like any quantities, and by (14) simple work with mixed numbers (addition and subtraction and reductions), and (15) improper fractions. All that is done with improper fractions is (a) to have the pupil use a few of them as he would any fractions and (b) to note their equivalent mixed numbers. In (12), (13), and (14) only fractions of the same denominators are added or subtracted, and in (12) (13), (14), and (15) only fractions with 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, or 10 in the denominator are used. As hitherto, the work of (11) to (15) is useful in and of itself. (16) Definitions are given of the following type:—

Numbers like 2, 3, 4, 7, 11, 20, 36, 140, 921 are called whole numbers.

Numbers like ⁷⁄₈, ¹⁄₅, ²⁄₃, ³⁄₄, ¹¹⁄₈, ⁷⁄₆, ¹⁄₃, ⁴⁄₃, ¹⁄₈, ¹⁄₆ are called fractions.

Numbers like 5¼, 7³⁄₈, 9½, 16⁴⁄₅, 315⁷⁄₈, 1¹⁄₃, 1²⁄₃ are called mixed numbers.[Pg 57]

(17) The terms numerator and denominator are connected with the upper and lower numbers composing a fraction.

Building this somewhat elaborate series of minor abilities seems to be a very roundabout way of getting knowledge of the meaning of a fraction, and is, if we take no account of what is got along with this knowledge. Taking account of the intrinsically useful habits that are built up, one might retort that the pupil gets his knowledge of the meaning of a fraction at zero cost.

KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBTRACTION AND DIVISION TABLES

Consider next the knowledge of the subtraction and division 'Tables.' The usual treatment presupposes that learning them consists of forming independently the bonds:—

In fact, however, these 126 bonds are not formed independently. Except perhaps in the case of the dullest twentieth of pupils, they are somewhat facilitated by the already learned additions and multiplications. And by proper arrangement of the learning they may be enormously facilitated thereby. Indeed, we may replace the independent memorizing of these facts by a set of instructive [Pg 58]exercises wherein the pupil derives the subtractions from the corresponding additions by simple acts of reasoning or selective thinking. As soon as the additions giving sums of 9 or less are learned, let the pupil attack an exercise like the following:—

Write the missing numbers:—

The task for reasoning is only to try, one after another, numbers that seem promising and to select the right one when found. With a little stimulus and direction children can thus derive the subtractions up to those with 9 as the larger number. Let them then be taught to do the same with the printed forms:—

Subtract

and 9 − 7 = ..., 9 − 5 = ..., 7 − 5 = ..., etc.

In the case of the divisions, suppose that the pupil has learned his first table and gained surety in such exercises as:[Pg 59]—

If one ball costs 5 cents,
two balls cost .... cents,
three balls cost .... cents, etc.

He may then be set at once to work at the answers to exercises like the following:—

Write the answers and the missing numbers:—

In the case of the meaning of a fraction, the ability, and so the learning, is much more elaborate than common [Pg 60] practice has assumed; in the case of the subtraction and division tables the learning is much less so. In neither case is the learning either mere memorizing of facts or the mere understanding of a principle in abstracto followed by its application to concrete cases. It is (and this we shall find true of almost all efficient learning in arithmetic) the formation of connections and their use in such an order that each helps the others to the maximum degree, and so that each will do the maximum amount for arithmetical abilities other than the one specially concerned, and for the general competence of the learner.

LEARNING THE PROCESSES OF COMPUTATION

As another instructive topic in the constitution of arithmetical abilities, we may take the case of the reasoning involved in understanding the manipulations of figures in two (or more)-place addition and subtraction, multiplication and division involving a two (or more)-place number, and the manipulations of decimals in all four operations. The psychology of these is of special interest and importance. For there are two opposite explanations possible here, leading to two opposite theories of teaching.

The common explanation is that these methods of manipulation, if understood at all, are understood as deductions from the properties of our system of decimal notation. The other is that they are understood partly as inductions from the experience that they always give the right answer. The first explanation leads to the common preliminary deductive explanations of the textbooks. The other leads to explanations by verification; e.g., of addition by counting, of subtraction by addition, of multiplication by addition, of division by multiplication. Samples of these two sorts of explanation are given below.

[Pg 61]

Crucial experiments are lacking, but there are several lines of well-attested evidence. First of all, there can be no doubt that the great majority of pupils learn these manipulations at the start from the placing of units under units, tens under tens, etc., in adding, to the placing of the decimal point in division with decimals, by imitation and blind[Pg 67] following of specific instructions, and that a very large proportion of the pupils do not to the end, that is to the fifth school-year, understand them as necessary deductions from decimal notation. It also seems probable that this proportion would not be much reduced no matter how ingeniously and carefully the deductions were explained by textbooks and teachers. Evidence of this fact will appear abundantly to any one who will observe schoolroom life. It also appears in the fact that after the properties of the decimal notation have been thus used again and again; e.g., for deducing 'carrying' in addition, 'borrowing' in subtraction, 'carrying' in multiplication, the value of the digits in the partial product, the value of each remainder in short division, the value of the quotient figures in division, the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of United States money, and the placing of the decimal point in multiplication, no competent teacher dares to rely upon the pupil, even though he now has four or more years' experience with decimal notation, to deduce the placing of the decimal point in division with decimals. It may be an illusion, but one seems to sense in the better textbooks a recognition of the futility of the attempt to secure deductive derivations of those manipulations. I refer to the brevity of the explanations and their insertion in such a form that they will influence the pupils' thinking as little as possible. At any rate the fact is sure that most pupils do not learn the manipulations by deductive reasoning, or understand them as necessary consequences of abstract principles.

It is a common opinion that the only alternative is knowing them by rote. This, of course, is one common alternative, but the other explanation suggests that understanding the manipulations by inductive reasoning from their results is another and an important alternative. The manipula[Pg 68]tions of 'long' multiplication, for instance, learned by imitation or mechanical drill, are found to give for 25 × A a result about twice as large as for 13 × A, for 38 or 39 × A a result about three times as large; for 115 × A a result about ten times as large as for 11 × A. With even the very dull pupils the procedure is verified at least to the extent that it gives a result which the scientific expert in the case—the teacher—calls right. With even the very bright pupils, who can appreciate the relation of the procedure to decimal notation, this relation may be used not as the sole deduction of the procedure beforehand, but as one partial means of verifying it afterward. Or there may be the condition of half-appreciation of the relation in which the pupil uses knowledge of the decimal notation to convince himself that the procedure does, but not that it must give the right answer, the answer being 'right' because the teacher, the answer-list, and collateral evidence assure him of it.

I have taken the manipulation of the partial products as an illustration because it is one of the least favored cases for the explanation I am presenting. If we take the first case where a manipulation may be deduced from decimal notation, known merely by rote, or verified inductively, namely, the addition of two-place numbers, it seems sure that the mental processes just described are almost the universal rule.

Surely in our schools at present children add the 3 of 23 to the 3 of 53 and the 2 of 23 to the 5 of 53 at the start, in nine cases out of ten because they see the teacher do so and are told to do so. They are protected from adding 3 + 3 + 2 + 5 not by any deduction of any sort but because they do not know how to add 8 and 5, because they have been taught the habit of adding figures that stand one above the other, or with a + between them; and because they are[Pg 69] shown or told what they are to do. They are protected from adding 3 + 5 and 2 + 3, again, by no deductive reasoning but for the second and third reasons just given. In nine cases out of ten they do not even think of the possibility of adding in any other way than the '3 + 3, 2 + 5' way, much less do they select that way on account of the facts that 53 = 50 + 3 and 23 = 20 + 3, that 50 + 20 = 70, that 3 + 3 = 6, and that (a + b) + (c + d) = (a + c) + (b + d)!

Just as surely all but the very dullest twentieth or so of children come in the end to something more than rote knowledge,—to understand, to know that the procedure in question is right.

Whether they know why 76 is right depends upon what is meant by why. If it means that 76 is the result which competent people agree upon, they do. If it means that 76 is the result which would come from accurate counting they perhaps know why as well as they would have, had they been given full explanations of the relation of the procedure in two-place addition to decimal notation. If why means because 53 = 50 + 3, 23 = 20 + 3, 50 + 20 = 70, and (a + b) + (c + d) = (a + c) + (b + d), they do not. Nor, I am tempted to add, would most of them by any sort of teaching whatever.

I conclude, therefore, that school children may and do reason about and understand the manipulations of numbers in this inductive, verifying way without being able to, or at least without, under present conditions, finding it profitable to derive them deductively. I believe, in fact, that pure arithmetic as it is learned and known is largely an inductive science. At one extreme is a minority to whom it is a series of deductions from principles; at the other extreme is a minority to whom it is a series of blind habits; between the two is the great majority, representing every gradation but centering about the type of the inductive thinker.

[Pg 70]

CHAPTER IV

THE CONSTITUTION OF ARITHMETICAL ABILITIES (CONTINUED): THE SELECTION OF THE BONDS TO BE FORMED

When the analysis of the mental functions involved in arithmetical learning is made thorough it turns into the question, 'What are the elementary bonds or connections that constitute these functions?' and when the problem of teaching arithmetic is regarded, as it should be in the light of present psychology, as a problem in the development of a hierarchy of intellectual habits, it becomes in large measure a problem of the choice of the bonds to be formed and of the discovery of the best order in which to form them and the best means of forming each in that order.

THE IMPORTANCE OF HABIT-FORMATION

The importance of habit-formation or connection-making has been grossly underestimated by the majority of teachers and writers of textbooks. For, in the first place, mastery by deductive reasoning of such matters as 'carrying' in addition, 'borrowing' in subtraction, the value of the digits in the partial products in multiplication, the manipulation of the figures in division, the placing of the decimal point after multiplication or division with decimals, or the manipulation of the figures in the multiplication and division of [Pg 71] fractions, is impossible or extremely unlikely in the case of children of the ages and experience in question. They do not as a rule deduce the method of manipulation from their knowledge of decimal notation. Rather they learn about decimal notation by carrying, borrowing, writing the last figure of each partial product under the multiplier which gives that product, etc. They learn the method of manipulating numbers by seeing them employed, and by more or less blindly acquiring them as associative habits.

In the second place, we, who have already formed and long used the right habits and are thereby protected against the casual misleadings of unfortunate mental connections, can hardly realize the force of mere association. When a child writes sixteen as 61, or finds 428 as the sum of

15
19
16
18

or gives 642 as an answer to 27 × 36, or says that 4 divided by ¼ = 1, we are tempted to consider him mentally perverse, forgetting or perhaps never having understood that he goes wrong for exactly the same general reason that we go right; namely, the general law of habit-formation. If we study the cases of 61 for 16, we shall find them occurring in the work of pupils who after having been drilled in writing 26, 36, 46, 62, 63, and so on, in which the order of the six in writing is the same as it is in speech, return to writing the 'teen numbers. If our language said onety-one for eleven and onety-six for sixteen, we should probably never find such errors except as 'lapses' or as the results of misperception or lack of memory. They would then be more frequent before the 20s, 30s, etc., were learned.

If pupils are given much drill on written single column addition involving the higher decades (each time writing [Pg 72] the two-figure sum), they are forming a habit of writing 28 after the sum of 8, 6, 9, and 5 is reached; and it should not surprise us if the pupil still occasionally writes the two-figure sum for the first column though a second column is to be added also. On the contrary, unless some counter force influences him, he is absolutely sure to make this mistake.

The last mistake quoted (4 ÷ ¼ = 1) is interesting because here we have possibly one of the cases where deduction from psychology alone can give constructive aid to teaching. Multiplication and division by fractions have been notorious for their difficulty. The former is now alleviated by using of instead of × until the new habit is fixed. The latter is still approached with elaborate caution and with various means of showing why one must 'invert and multiply' or 'multiply by the reciprocal.'

But in the author's opinion it seems clear that the difficulty in multiplying and dividing by a fraction was not that children felt any logical objections to canceling or inverting. I fancy that the majority of them would cheerfully invert any fraction three times over or cancel numbers at random in a column if they were shown how to do so. But if you are a youngster inexperienced in numerical abstractions and if you have had divide connected with 'make smaller' three thousand times and never once connected with 'make bigger,' you are sure to be somewhat impelled to make the number smaller the three thousand and first time you are asked to divide it. Some of my readers will probably confess that even now they feel a slight irritation or doubt in saying or writing that ¹⁶⁄₁ ÷ ¹⁄₈ = 128.

The habits that have been confirmed by every multiplication and division by integers are, in this particular of 'the ratio of result to number operated upon,' directly opposed to[Pg 73] the formation of the habits required with fractions. And that is, I believe, the main cause of the difficulty. Its treatment then becomes easy, as will be shown later.

These illustrations could be added to almost indefinitely, especially in the case of the responses made to the so-called 'catch' problems. The fact is that the learner rarely can, and almost never does, survey and analyze an arithmetical situation and justify what he is going to do by articulate deductions from principles. He usually feels the situation more or less vaguely and responds to it as he has responded to it or some situation like it in the past. Arithmetic is to him not a logical doctrine which he applies to various special instances, but a set of rather specialized habits of behavior toward certain sorts of quantities and relations. And in so far as he does come to know the doctrine it is chiefly by doing the will of the master. This is true even with the clearest expositions, the wisest use of objective aids, and full encouragement of originality on the pupil's part.

Lest the last few paragraphs be misunderstood, I hasten to add that the psychologists of to-day do not wish to make the learning of arithmetic a mere matter of acquiring thousands of disconnected habits, nor to decrease by one jot the pupil's genuine comprehension of its general truths. They wish him to reason not less than he has in the past, but more. They find, however, that you do not secure reasoning in a pupil by demanding it, and that his learning of a general truth without the proper development of organized habits back of it is likely to be, not a rational learning of that general truth, but only a mechanical memorizing of a verbal statement of it. They have come to know that reasoning is not a magic force working in independence of ordinary habits of thought, but an or[Pg 74]ganization and coöperation of those very habits on a higher level.

The older pedagogy of arithmetic stated a general law or truth or principle, ordered the pupil to learn it, and gave him tasks to do which he could not do profitably unless he understood the principle. It left him to build up himself the particular habits needed to give him understanding and mastery of the principle. The newer pedagogy is careful to help him build up these connections or bonds ahead of and along with the general truth or principle, so that he can understand it better. The older pedagogy commanded the pupil to reason and let him suffer the penalty of small profit from the work if he did not. The newer provides instructive experiences with numbers which will stimulate the pupil to reason so far as he has the capacity, but will still be profitable to him in concrete knowledge and skill, even if he lacks the ability to develop the experiences into a general understanding of the principles of numbers. The newer pedagogy secures more reasoning in reality by not pretending to secure so much.

The newer pedagogy of arithmetic, then, scrutinizes every element of knowledge, every connection made in the mind of the learner, so as to choose those which provide the most instructive experiences, those which will grow together into an orderly, rational system of thinking about numbers and quantitative facts. It is not enough for a problem to be a test of understanding of a principle; it must also be helpful in and of itself. It is not enough for an example to be a case of some rule; it must help review and consolidate habits already acquired or lead up to and facilitate habits to be acquired. Every detail of the pupil's work must do the maximum service in arithmetical learning.

[Pg 75]

DESIRABLE BONDS NOW OFTEN NEGLECTED

As hitherto, I shall not try to list completely the elementary bonds that the course of study in arithmetic should provide for. The best means of preparing the student of this topic for sound criticism and helpful invention is to let him examine representative cases of bonds now often neglected which should be formed and representative cases of useless, or even harmful, bonds now often formed at considerable waste of time and effort.

(1) Numbers as measures of continuous quantities.—The numbers one, two, three, 1, 2, 3, etc., should be connected soon after the beginning of arithmetic each with the appropriate amount of some continuous quantity like length or volume or weight, as well as with the appropriate sized collection of apples, counters, blocks, and the like. Lines should be labeled 1 foot, 2 feet, 3 feet, etc.; one inch, two inches, three inches, etc.; weights should be lifted and called one pound, two pounds, etc.; things should be measured in glassfuls, handfuls, pints, and quarts. Otherwise the pupil is likely to limit the meaning of, say, four to four sensibly discrete things and to have difficulty in multiplication and division. Measuring, or counting by insensibly marked off repetitions of a unit, binds each number name to its meaning as —— times whatever 1 is, more surely than mere counting of the units in a collection can, and should reënforce the latter.

(2) Additions in the higher decades.—In the case of all save the very gifted children, the additions with higher decades—that is, the bonds, 16 + 7 = 23, 26 + 7 = 33, 36 + 7 = 43, 14 + 8 = 22, 24 + 8 = 32, and the like—need to be specifically practiced until the tendency becomes generalized. 'Counting' by 2s beginning with 1, and with 2,[Pg 76] counting by 3s beginning with 1, with 2, and with 3, counting by 4s beginning with 1, with 2, with 3, and with 4, and so on, make easy beginnings in the formation of the decade connections. Practice with isolated bonds should soon be added to get freer use of the bonds. The work of column addition should be checked for accuracy so that a pupil will continually get beneficial practice rather than 'practice in error.'

(3) The uneven divisions.—The quotients with remainders for the divisions of every number to 19 by 2, every number to 29 by 3, every number to 39 by 4, and so on should be taught as well as the even divisions. A table like the following will be found a convenient means of making these connections:—

These bonds must be formed before short division can be efficient, are useful as a partial help toward selection of the proper quotient figures in long division, and are the chief instruments for one of the important problem series in applied arithmetic,—"How many xs can I buy for y cents at z cents per x and how much will I have left?" That these bonds are at present sadly neglected is shown by Kirby ['13], who found that pupils in the last half of grade 3 and the[Pg 77] first half of grade 4 could do only about four such examples per minute (in a ten-minute test), and even at that rate made far from perfect records, though they had been taught the regular division tables. Sixty minutes of practice resulted in a gain of nearly 75 percent in number done per minute, with an increase in accuracy as well.

(4) The equation form.—The equation form with an unknown quantity to be determined, or a missing number to be found, should be connected with its meaning and with the problem attitude long before a pupil begins algebra, and in the minds of pupils who never will study algebra.

Children who have just barely learned to add and subtract learn easily to do such work as the following:—

Write the missing numbers:—

The equation form is the simplest uniform way yet devised to state a quantitative issue. It is capable of indefinite extension if certain easily understood conventions about parentheses and fraction signs are learned. It should be employed widely in accounting and the treatment of commercial problems, and would be except for outworn conventions. It is a leading contribution of algebra to business and industrial life. Arithmetic can make it nearly as well. It saves more time in the case of drills on reducing fractions to higher and lower terms alone than is required to learn its meaning and use. To rewrite a quantitative problem[Pg 78] as an equation and then make the easy selection of the necessary technique to solve the equation is one of the most universally useful intellectual devices known to man. The words 'equals,' 'equal,' 'is,' 'are,' 'makes,' 'make,' 'gives,' 'give,' and their rarer equivalents should therefore early give way on many occasions to the '=' which so far surpasses them in ultimate convenience and simplicity.

(5) Addition and subtraction facts in the case of fractions.—In the case of adding and subtracting fractions, certain specific bonds—between the situation of halves and thirds to be added and the responses of thinking of the numbers as equal to so many sixths, between the situation thirds and fourths to be added and thinking of them as so many twelfths, between fourths and eighths to be added and thinking of them as eighths, and the like—should be formed separately. The general rule of thinking of fractions as their equivalents with some convenient denominator should come as an organization and extension of such special habits, not as an edict from the textbook or teacher.

(6) Fractional equivalents.—Efficiency requires that in the end the much used reductions should be firmly connected with the situations where they are needed. They may as well, therefore, be so connected from the beginning, with the gain of making the general process far easier for the dull pupils to master. We shall see later that, for all save the very gifted pupils, the economical way to get an understanding of arithmetical principles is not, usually, to learn a rule and then apply it, but to perform instructive operations and, in the course of performing them, to get insight into the principles.

(7) Protective habits in multiplying and dividing with fractions.—In multiplying and dividing with fractions special bonds should be formed to counteract the now harmful[Pg 79] influence of the 'multiply = get a larger number' and 'divide = get a smaller number' bonds which all work with integers has been reënforcing.

For example, at the beginning of the systematic work with multiplication by a fraction, let the following be printed clearly at the top of every relevant page of the textbook and displayed on the blackboard:—

When you multiply a number by anything more than 1 the result is larger than the number.

When you multiply a number by 1 the result is the same as the number.

When you multiply a number by anything less than 1 the result is smaller than the number.

Let the pupils establish the new habit by many such exercises as:—

In the case of division by a fraction the old harmful habit should be counteracted and refined by similar rules and exercises as follows:—

When you divide a number by anything more than 1 the result is smaller than the number.

When you divide a number by 1 the result is the same as the number.

When you divide a number by anything less than 1 the result is larger than the number.[Pg 80]

State the missing numbers:—

(8) '% of' means 'hundredths times.'—In the case of percentage a series of bonds like the following should be formed:—

Four five-minute drills on such connections between 'x percent of' and 'its decimal equivalent times' are worth an hour's study of verbal definitions of the meaning of percent as per hundred or the like. The only use of the[Pg 81] study of such definitions is to facilitate the later formation of the bonds, and, with all save the brighter pupils, the bonds are more needed for an understanding of the definitions than the definitions are needed for the formation of the bonds.

(9) Habits of verifying results.—Bonds should early be formed between certain manipulations of numbers and certain means of checking, or verifying the correctness of, the manipulation in question. The additions to 9 + 9 and the subtractions to 18 − 9 should be verified by objective addition and subtraction and counting until the pupil has sure command; the multiplications to 9 × 9 should be verified by objective multiplication and counting of the result (in piles of tens and a pile of ones) eight or ten times,[4] and by addition eight or ten times;[4] the divisions to 81 ÷ 9 should be verified by multiplication and occasionally objectively until the pupil has sure command; column addition should be checked by adding the columns separately and adding the sums so obtained, and by making two shorter tasks of the given task and adding the two sums; 'short' multiplication should be verified eight or ten times by addition; 'long' multiplication should be checked by reversing multiplier and multiplicand and in other ways; 'short' and 'long' division should be verified by multiplication.

These habits of testing an obtained result are of threefold value. They enable the pupil to find his own errors, and to maintain a standard of accuracy by himself. They give him a sense of the relations of the processes and the reasons why the right ways of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing are right, such as only the very bright [Pg 82] pupils can get from verbal explanations. They put his acquisition of a certain power, say multiplication, to a real and intelligible use, in checking the results of his practice of a new power, and so instill a respect for arithmetical power and skill in general. The time spent in such verification produces these results at little cost; for the practice in adding to verify multiplications, in multiplying to verify divisions, and the like is nearly as good for general drill and review of the addition and multiplication themselves as practice devised for that special purpose.

Early work in adding, subtracting, and reducing fractions should be verified by objective aids in the shape of lines and areas divided in suitable fractional parts. Early work with decimal fractions should be verified by the use of the equivalent common fractions for .25, .75, .125, .375, and the like. Multiplication and division with fractions, both common and decimal, should in the early stages be verified by objective aids. The placing of the decimal point in multiplication and division with decimal fractions should be verified by such exercises as:—

The establishment of habits of verifying results and their use is very greatly needed. The percentage of wrong answers in arithmetical work in schools is now so high that the pupils are often being practiced in error. In many cases they can feel no genuine and effective confidence in the processes, since their own use of the processes brings wrong answers as often as right. In solving problems they often cannot decide whether they have done the right thing or the wrong, since even if they have done the right thing, they may[Pg 83] have done it inaccurately. A wrong answer to a problem is therefore too often ambiguous and uninstructive to them.[5]

These illustrations of the last few pages are samples of the procedures recommended by a consideration of all the bonds that one might form and of the contribution that each would make toward the abilities that the study of arithmetic should develop and improve. It is by doing more or less at haphazard what psychology teaches us to do deliberately and systematically in this respect that many of the past advances in the teaching of arithmetic have been made.

WASTEFUL AND HARMFUL BONDS

A scrutiny of the bonds now formed in the teaching of arithmetic with questions concerning the exact service of each, results in a list of bonds of small value or even no value, so far as a psychologist can determine. I present here samples of such psychologically unjustifiable bonds with some of the reasons for their deficiencies.

(1) Arbitrary units.—In drills intended to improve the ability to see and use the meanings of numbers as names for ratios or relative magnitudes, it is unwise to employ entirely arbitrary units. The procedure in II (on page 84) is better than that in I. Inches, half-inches, feet, and centimeters are better as units of length than arbitrary As. Square inches, square centimeters, and square feet are better for areas. Ounces and pounds should be lifted rather than arbitrary weights. Pints, quarts, glassfuls, cupfuls, handfuls, and cubic inches are better for volume.

All the real merit in the drills on relative magnitude advocated by Speer, McLellan and Dewey, and others can be secured without spending time in relating magnitudes [Pg 84] for the sake of relative magnitude alone. The use of units of measure in drills which will never be used in bona fide measuring is like the use of fractions like sevenths, elevenths, and thirteenths. A very little of it is perhaps desirable to test the appreciation of certain general principles, but for regular training it should give place to the use of units of practical significance.

Fig. 3.

I. If A is 1 which line is 2? Which line is 4? Which line is 3? A and C together equal what line? A and B together equal what line? How much longer is B than A? How much longer is B than C? How much longer is D than A?

Fig. 4.

II. A is 1 inch long. Which line is 2 inches long? Which line is 4 inches long? Which line is 3 inches long? A and C together make ... inches? A and B together make ... inches? B is ... ... longer than A? B is ... ... longer than C? D is ... ... longer than A?

[Pg 85]

(2) Multiples of 11.—The multiplications of 2 to 12 by 11 and 12 as single connections should be left for the pupil to acquire by himself as he needs them. These connections interfere with the process of learning two-place multiplication. The manipulations of numbers there required can be learned much more easily if 11 and 12 are used as multipliers in just the same way that 78 or 96 would be. Later the 12 × 2, 12 × 3, etc., may be taught. There is less reason for knowing the multiples of 11 than for knowing the multiples of 15, 16, or 25.

(3) Abstract and concrete numbers.—The elaborate emphasis of the supposed fact that we cannot multiply 726 by 8 dollars and the still more elaborate explanations of why nevertheless we find the cost of 726 articles at $8 each by multiplying 726 by 8 and calling the answer dollars are wasteful. The same holds of the corresponding pedantry about division. These imaginary difficulties should not be raised at all. The pupil should not think of multiplying or dividing men or dollars, but simply of the necessary equation and of the sort of thing that the missing number represents. "8 × 726 = .... Answer is dollars," or "8, 726, multiply. Answer is dollars," is all that he needs to think, and is in the best form for his thought. Concerning the distinction between abstract and concrete numbers, both logic and common sense as well as psychology support the contention of McDougle ['14, p. 206f.], who writes:—

"The most elementary counting, even that stage when the counts were not carried in the mind, but merely in notches on a stick or by DeMorgan's stones in a pot, requires some thought; and the most advanced counting implies memory of things. The terms, therefore, abstract and concrete number, have long since ceased to be used by thinking people.

"Recently the writer visited an arithmetic class in a[Pg 86] State Normal School and saw a group of practically adult students confused about this very question concerning abstract and concrete numbers, according to their previous training in the conventionalities of the textbook. Their teacher diverted the work of the hour and she and the class spent almost the whole period in reëstablishing the requirements 'that the product must always be the same kind of unit as the multiplicand,' and 'addends must all be alike to be added.' This is not an exceptional case. Throughout the whole range of teaching arithmetic in the public schools pupils are obfuscated by the philosophical encumbrances which have been imposed upon the simplest processes of numerical work. The time is surely ripe, now that we are readjusting our ideas of the subject of arithmetic, to revise some of these wasteful and disheartening practices. Algebra historically grew out of arithmetic, yet it has not been laden with this distinction. No pupil in algebra lets x equal the horses; he lets x equal the number of horses, and proceeds to drop the idea of horses out of his consideration. He multiplies, divides, and extracts the root of the number, sometimes handling fractions in the process, and finally interprets the result according to the conditions of his problem. Of course, in the early number work there have been the sense-objects from which number has been perceived, but the mind retreats naturally from objectivity to the pure conception of number, and then to the number symbol. The following is taken from the appendix to Horn's thesis, where a seventh grade girl gets the population of the United States in 1820:—

[Pg 87]

In this problem three different kinds of addends are combined, if we accept the usual distinction. Some may say that this is a mistake,—that the pupil transformed the 'whites,' 'free negroes,' and 'slaves' into a common unit, such as 'people' of 'population' and then added these common units. But this 'explanation' is entirely gratuitous, as one will find if he questions the pupil about the process. It will be found that the child simply added the figures as numbers only and then interpreted the result, according to the statement of the problem, without so much mental gymnastics. The writer has questioned hundreds of students in Normal School work on this point, and he believes that the ordinary mind-movement is correctly set forth here, no matter how well one may maintain as an academic proposition that this is not logical. Many classes in the Eastern Kentucky State Normal have been given this problem to solve, and they invariably get the same result:—

'In a garden on the Summit are as many cabbage-heads as the total number of ladies and gentlemen in this class. How many cabbage-heads in the garden?'

And the blackboard solution looks like this each time:—

So, also, one may say: I have 6 times as many sheep as you have cows. If you have 5 cows, how many sheep have I? Here we would multiply the number of cows, which is 5, by 6 and call the result 30, which must be linked with the idea of sheep because the conditions imposed by the problem demand it. The mind naturally in this work separates the pure number from its situation, as in algebra, handles it[Pg 88] according to the laws governing arithmetical combinations, and labels the result as the statement of the problem demands. This is expressed in the following, which is tacitly accepted in algebra, and should be accepted equally in arithmetic:

'In all computations and operations in arithmetic, all numbers are essentially abstract and should be so treated. They are concrete only in the thought process that attends the operation and interprets the result.'"

(4) Least common multiple.—The whole set of bonds involved in learning 'least common multiple' should be left out. In adding and subtracting fractions the pupil should not find the least common multiple of their denominators but should find any common multiple that he can find quickly and correctly. No intelligent person would ever waste time in searching for the least common multiple of sixths, thirds, and halves except for the unfortunate traditions of an oversystematized arithmetic, but would think of their equivalents in sixths or twelfths or twenty-fourths or any other convenient common multiple. The process of finding the least common multiple is of such exceedingly rare application in science or business or life generally that the textbooks have to resort to purely fantastic problems to give drill in its use.

(5) Greatest common divisor.—The whole set of bonds involved in learning 'greatest common divisor' should also be left out. In reducing fractions to lowest terms the pupil should divide by anything that he sees that he can divide by, favoring large divisors, and continue doing so until he gets the fraction in terms suitable for the purpose in hand. The reader probably never has had occasion to compute a greatest common divisor since he left school. If he has computed any, the chances are that he would have saved time by solving the problem in some other way![Pg 89]

The following problems are taken at random from those given by one of the best of the textbooks that make the attempt to apply the facts of Greatest Common Divisor and Least Common Multiple to problems.[6] Most of these problems are fantastic. The others are trivial, or are better solved by trial and adaptation.

(6) Rare and unimportant words.—The bonds between rare or unimportant words and their meanings should not be formed for the mere sake of verbal variety in the problems of the textbook. A pupil should not be expected to solve a problem that he cannot read. He should not be expected in grades 2 and 3, or even in grade 4, to read words that he has rarely or never seen before. He should not be given elaborate drill in reading during the time devoted to the treatment of quantitative facts and relations.

[Pg 90]All this is so obvious that it may seem needless to relate. It is not. With many textbooks it is now necessary to give definite drill in reading the words in the printed problems intended for grades 2, 3, and 4, or to replace them by oral statements, or to leave the pupils in confusion concerning what the problems are that they are to solve. Many good teachers make a regular reading-lesson out of every page of problems before having them solved. There should be no such necessity.

To define rare and unimportant concretely, I will say that for pupils up to the middle of grade 3, such words as the following are rare and unimportant (though each of them occurs in the very first fifty pages of some well-known beginner's book in arithmetic).

[Pg 91]

(7) Misleading facts and procedures.—Bonds should not be formed between articles of commerce and grossly inaccurate prices therefor, between events and grossly improbable consequences, or causes or accompaniments thereof, nor between things, qualities, and events which have no important connections one with another in the real world. In general, things should not be put together in the pupil's mind that do not belong together.

If the reader doubts the need of this warning let him examine problems 1 to 5, all from reputable books that are in common use, or have been within a few years, and con[Pg 92]sider how addition, subtraction, and the habits belonging with each are confused by exercise 6.

(8) Trivialities and absurdities.—Bonds should not be formed between insignificant or foolish questions and the labor of answering them, nor between the general arithmetical work of the school and such insignificant or foolish questions. The following are samples from recent textbooks of excellent standing:—

(9) Useless methods.—Bonds should not be formed between a described situation and a method of treating the situation which would not be a useful one to follow in the case of the real situation. For example, "If I set 96 trees in rows, sixteen trees in a row, how many rows will I have?" forms the habit of treating by division a problem that in reality would be solved by counting the rows. So also "I wish to give 25 cents to each of a group of boys and find that it will require $2.75. How many boys are in the group?" forms the habit of answering a question by division whose answer must already have been present to give the data of the problem.

(10) Problems whose answers would, in real life, be already known.—The custom of giving problems in textbooks which could not occur in reality because the answer has to be known to frame the problem is a natural result of the lazy author's tendency to work out a problem to fit a certain process and a certain answer. Such bogus problems are very, very common. In a random sampling of a dozen pages of "General Review" problems in one of the most widely used of recent textbooks, I find that about 6 percent of the problems are of this sort. Among the problems extemporized by teachers these bogus problems are probably still more frequent. Such are:—

It may be asserted that the ideal of giving as described problems only problems that might occur and demand the same sort of process for solution with a real situation, is too exacting. If a problem is comprehensible and serves to illustrate a principle or give useful drill, that is enough, teachers may say. For really scientific teaching it is not enough. Moreover, if problems are given merely as tests of knowledge of a principle or as means to make some fact or principle clear or emphatic, and are not expected to be of direct service in the quantitative work of life, it is better to let the fact be known. For example, "I am thinking of a number. Half of this number is twice six. What is the number?" is better than "A man left his wife a certain sum of money. Half of what he left her was twice as much as he left to his son, who receives $6000. How much did he leave his wife?" The former is better because it makes no false pretenses.

(11) Needless linguistic difficulties.—It should be unnecessary to add that bonds should not be formed between the pupil's general attitude toward arithmetic and needless, useless difficulty in language or needless, useless, wrong reasoning. Our teaching is, however, still tainted by both of these unfortunate connections, which dispose the pupil to think of arithmetic as a mystery and folly.

Consider, for example, the profitless linguistic difficulty of problems 1-6, whose quantitative difficulties are simply those of:—

Arithmetically this work belongs in the first or second years of learning. But children of grades 2 and 3, save a few, would be utterly at a loss to understand the language.

We are not yet free from the follies illustrated in the lessons of pages 96 to 99, which mystified our parents.[Pg 96]

Fig. 5.

LESSON I

Fig. 6.

LESSON II

1. If we speak or write words, what do we name them, when taken together?

2. What are you commencing to study? Ans. Arithmetic.

3. What Language must you now learn?

4. What do we name this, 1? Why?

5. This figure, 1, is part of the Language of Arithmetic.

6. If I should write something to stand for Two—two girls, two kittens, or two things of any kind—what do you think we would name it?

7. A figure Two is written thus: 2. Make a figure two.

8. Why do we name this a figure two?

9. This figure two (2) is part of the Language of Arithmetic.[Pg 98]

10. In this picture one boy is sitting, playing a flageolet. What is the other boy doing? If the boy standing should sit down by the other, how many boys would be sitting together? One boy and one other boy are how many boys?

11. You see a flageolet and a violin. They are musical instruments. One musical instrument and one other musical instrument are how many?

12. I will write thus: 1 1 2. We say that 1 boy and 1 other boy, counted together, are 2 boys; or are equal to 2 boys. We will now write something to show that the first 1 and the other 1 are to be counted together.

13. We name a line drawn thus,—, a horizontal line. Draw such a line. Name it.

14. A line drawn thus, | , we name a vertical line. Draw such a line. Name it.[Pg 99]

15. Now I will put two such lines together; thus, +. What kind of a line do we name the first (—)? And what do we name the last? (|)? Are these lines long or short? Where do they cross each other?

16. Each of you write thus: —, | , +.

17. This, +, is named Plus. Plus means more; and + also means more.

18. I will write.

One and One More Equal Two.

19. Now I will write part of this in the Language of Arithmetic. I write the first One thus, 1; then the other One thus, 1. Afterward I write, for the word More, thus, +, placing the + between 1 and 1, so that the whole stands thus: 1 + 1. As I write, I say, One and One more.

20. Each of you write 1 + 1. Read what you have written.

21. This +, when written between the 1s, shows that they are to be put together, or counted together, so as to make 2.

22. Because + shows what is to be done, it is called a Sign. If we take its name, Plus, and the word Sign, and put both words together, we have Sign Plus, or Plus Sign. In speaking of this we may call it Sign Plus, or Plus Sign, or Plus.

23. 1, 2, +, are part of the Language of Arithmetic.

Write the following in the Language of Arithmetic:

24. One and one more.

25. One and two more.

26. Two and one more.

[Pg 100]

(12) Ambiguities and falsities.—Consider the ambiguities and false reasoning of these problems.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

The reader may be wearied of these special details concerning bonds now neglected that should be formed and useless or harmful bonds formed for no valid reason. Any one of them by itself is perhaps a minor matter, but when we have cured all our faults in this respect and found all the possibilities for wiser selection of bonds, we shall have enormously improved the teaching of arithmetic. The ideal is such choice of bonds (and, as will be shown later, such arrangement of them) as will most improve the functions in question at the least cost of time and effort. The guiding principles may be kept in mind in the form of seven simple but golden rules:—

1. Consider the situation the pupil faces.

2. Consider the response you wish to connect with it.

3. Form the bond; do not expect it to come by a miracle.

4. Other things being equal, form no bond that will have to be broken.

5. Other things being equal, do not form two or three bonds when one will serve.

6. Other things being equal, form bonds in the way that they are required later to act.

7. Favor, therefore, the situations which life itself will offer, and the responses which life itself will demand.

[Pg 102]

CHAPTER V

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DRILL IN ARITHMETIC: THE STRENGTH OF BONDS

An inventory of the bonds to be formed in learning arithmetic should be accompanied by a statement of how strong each bond is to be made and kept year by year. Since, however, the inventory itself has been presented here only in samples, the detailed statement of desired strength for each bond cannot be made. Only certain general facts will be noted here.

THE NEED OF STRONGER ELEMENTARY BONDS

The constituent bonds involved in the fundamental operations with numbers need to be much stronger than they now are. Inaccuracy in these operations means weakness of the constituent bonds. Inaccuracy exists, and to a degree that deprives the subject of much of its possible disciplinary value, makes the pupil's achievements of slight value for use in business or industry, and prevents the pupil from verifying his work with new processes by some previously acquired process.

The inaccuracy that exists may be seen in the measurements made by the many investigators who have used arithmetical tasks as tests of fatigue, practice, individual differences and the like, and in the special studies of arith[Pg 103]metical achievements for their own sake made by Courtis and others.

Burgerstein ['91], using such examples as

and similar long numbers to be multiplied by 2 or by 3 or by 4 or by 5 or by 6, found 851 errors in 28,267 answer-figures, or 3 per hundred answer-figures, or ³⁄₅ of an error per example. The children were 9½ to 15 years old. Laser ['94], using the same sort of addition and multiplication, found somewhat over 3 errors per hundred answer-figures in the case of boys and girls averaging 11½ years, during the period of their most accurate work. Holmes ['95], using addition of the sort just described, found 346 errors in 23,713 answer-figures or about 1½ per hundred. The children were from all grades from the third to the eighth. In Laser's work, 21, 19, 13, and 10 answer-figures were obtained per minute. Friedrich ['97] with similar examples, giving the very long time of 20 minutes for obtaining about 200 answer-figures, found from 1 to 2 per hundred wrong. King ['07] had children in grade 5 do sums, each consisting of 5 two-place numbers. In the most accurate work-period, they made 1 error per 20 columns. In multiplying a four-place by a four-place number they had less than one total answer right out of three. In New York City Courtis found ['11-'12] with his Test 7 that in 12 minutes the average achievement of fourth-grade children is 8.8 units attempted with 4.2 right. In grade 5 the facts are 10.9 attempts with 5.8 right; in grade 6, 12.5 attempts with 7.0 right; in grade 7, 15 attempts with 8.5 right; in grade 8, 15.7 attempts with 10.1 right. These results are near enough to those obtained from the country at large to serve as a text here.[Pg 104]

The following were set as official standards, in an excellent school system, Courtis Series B being used:—

Kirby ['13, pp. 16 ff. and 55 ff.] found that, in adding columns like those printed below, children in grade 4 got on the average less than 80 percent of correct answers. Their average speed was about 2 columns per minute. In doing division of the sort printed below children of grades 3 B and 4 A got less than 95 percent of correct answers, the average speed being 4 divisions per minute. In both cases the slower computers were no more accurate than the faster ones. Practice improved the speed very rapidly, but the accuracy remained substantially unchanged. Brown ['11 and '12] found a similar low status of ability and notable improvement from a moderate amount of special practice.[Pg 105]

It is clear that numerical work as inaccurate as this has little or no commercial or industrial value. If clerks got only six answers out of ten right as in the Courtis tests, one would need to have at least four clerks make each computation and would even then have to check many of their discrepancies by the work of still other clerks, if he wanted his accounts to show less than one error per hundred accounting units of the Courtis size.

It is also clear that the "habits of ... absolute accuracy, and satisfaction in truth as a result" which arithmetic is supposed to further must be largely mythical in pupils who get right answers only from three to nine times out of ten!

EARLY MASTERY

The bonds in question clearly must be made far stronger than they now are. They should in fact be strong enough to abolish errors in computation, except for those due to[Pg 106] temporary lapses. It is much better for a child to know half of the multiplication tables, and to know that he does not know the rest, than to half-know them all; and this holds good of all the elementary bonds required for computation. Any bond should be made to work perfectly, though slowly, very soon after its formation is begun. Speed can easily be added by proper practice.

The chief reasons why this is not done now seem to be the following: (1) Certain important bonds (like the additions with higher decades) are not given enough attention when they are first used. (2) The special training necessary when a bond is used in a different connection (as when the multiplications to 9 × 9 are used in examples like

where the pupil has also to choose the right number to multiply, keep in mind what is carried, use it properly, and write the right figure in the right place, and carry a figure, or remember that he carries none) is neglected. (3) The pupil is not taught to check his work. (4) He is not made responsible for substantially accurate results. Furthermore, the requirement of (4) without the training of (1), (2), and (3) will involve either a fruitless failure on the part of many pupils, or an utterly unjust requirement of time. The common error of supposing that the task of computation with integers consists merely in learning the additions to 9 + 9, the subtractions to 18 − 9, the multiplications to 8 × 9, and the divisions to 81 ÷ 9, and in applying this knowledge in connection with the principles of decimal notation, has had a large share in permitting the gross inaccuracy of arithmetical work. The bonds involved in 'knowing the tables' do not make up one fourth of the bonds involved in real adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing (with integers alone).[Pg 107]

It should be noted that if the training mentioned in (1) and (2) is well cared for, the checking of results as recommended in (3) becomes enormously more valuable than it is under present conditions, though even now it is one of our soundest practices. If a child knows the additions to higher decades so that he can add a seen one-place number to a thought-of two-place number in three seconds or less with a correct answer 199 times out of 200, there is only an infinitesimal chance that a ten-figure column twice added (once up, once down) a few minutes apart with identical answers will be wrong. Suppose that, in long multiplication, a pupil can multiply to 9 × 9 while keeping his place and keeping track of what he is 'carrying' and of where to write the figure he writes, and can add what he carries without losing track of what he is to add it to, where he is to write the unit figure, what he is to multiply next and by what, and what he will then have to carry, in each case to a surety of 99 percent of correct responses. Then two identical answers got by multiplying one three-place number by another a few minutes apart, and with reversal of the numbers, will not be wrong more than twice in his entire school career. Checks approach proofs when the constituent bonds are strong.

If, on the contrary, the fundamental bonds are so weak that they do not work accurately, checking becomes much less trustworthy and also very much more laborious. In fact, it is possible to show that below a certain point of strength of the fundamental bonds, the time required for checking is so great that part of it might better be spent in improving the fundamental bonds.

For example, suppose that a pupil has to find the sum of five numbers like $2.49, $5.25, $6.50, $7.89, and $3.75.[Pg 108] Counting each act of holding in mind the number to be carried and each writing of a column's result as equivalent in difficulty to one addition, such a sum equals nineteen single additions. On this basis and with certain additional estimates[7] we can compute the practical consequences for a pupil's use of addition in life according to the mastery of it that he has gained in school.

I have so computed the amount of checking a pupil will have to do to reach two agreeing numbers (out of two, or three, or four, or five, or whatever the number before he gets two that are alike), according to his mastery of the elementary processes. The facts appear in Table 1.

It is obvious that a pupil whose mastery of the elements is that denoted by getting them right 96 times out of 100 will require so much time for checking that, even if he were never to use this ability for anything save a few thousand sums in addition, he would do well to improve this ability before he tried to do the sums. An ability of 199 out of 200, or 995 out of 1000, seems likely to save much more time than would be taken to acquire it, and a reasonable defense could be made for requiring 996 or 997 out of 1000.

A precision of from 995 to 997 out of 1000 being required, and ordinary sagacity being used in the teaching, speed will substantially take care of itself. Counting on the fingers or in words will not give that precision. Slow recourse to memory of serial addition tables will not give that precision. Nothing save sure memory of the facts operating under the conditions of actual examples will give it. And such memories will operate with sufficient speed.

[Pg 109]

TABLE 1

The Effect of Mastery of the Elementary Facts of Addition upon the Labor Required to Secure Two Agreeing Answers When Adding Five Three-figure Numbers

There is one intelligent objection to the special practice necessary to establish arithmetical connections so fully as to give the accuracy which both utilitarian and disciplinary aims require. It may be said that the pupils in grades 3, 4, and 5 cannot appreciate the need and that consequently the work will be dull, barren, and alien, without close personal appropriation by the pupil's nature. It is true that no vehement life-purpose is directly involved by the problem of perfecting one's power to add 7 to 28 in grade 2, or by the problem of multiplying 253 by 8 accurately in grade 3[Pg 110] or by precise subtraction in long division in grade 4. It is also true, however, that the most humanly interesting of problems—one that the pupil attacks most whole-heartedly—will not be solved correctly unless the pupil has the necessary associative mechanisms in order; and the surer he is of them, the freer he is to think out the problem as such. Further, computation is not dull if the pupil can compute. He does not himself object to its barrenness of vital meaning, so long as the barrenness of failure is prevented. We must not forget that pupils like to learn. In teaching excessively dull individuals, who has not often observed the great interest which they display in anything that they are enabled to master? There is pathos in their joy in learning to recognize parts of speech, perform algebraic simplifications, or translate Latin sentences, and in other accomplishments equally meaningless to all their interests save the universal human interest in success and recognition. Still further, it is not very hard to show to pupils the imperative need of accuracy in scoring games, in the shop, in the store, and in the office. Finally, the argument that accurate work of this sort is alien to the pupil in these grades is still stronger against inaccurate work of the same sort. If we are to teach computation with two- and three- and four-place numbers at all, it should be taught as a reliable instrument, not as a combination of vague memories and faith. The author is ready to cut computation with numbers above 10 out of the curriculum of grades 1-6 as soon as more valuable educational instruments are offered in its place, but he is convinced that nothing in child-nature makes a large variety of inaccurate computing more interesting or educative or germane to felt needs, than a smaller variety of accurate computing!

[Pg 111]

THE STRENGTH OF BONDS FOR TEMPORARY SERVICE

The second general fact is that certain bonds are of service for only a limited time and so need to be formed only to a limited and slight degree of strength. The data of problems set to illustrate a principle or improve some habit of computation are, of course, the clearest cases. The pupil needs to remember that John bought 3 loaves of bread and that they were 5-cent loaves and that he gave 25 cents to the baker only long enough to use the data to decide what change John should receive. The connections between the total described situation and the answer obtained, supposing some considerable computation to intervene, is a bond that we let expire almost as soon as it is born.

It is sometimes assumed that the bond between a certain group of features which make a problem a 'Buy a things at b per thing, find total cost' problem or a 'Buy a things at b per thing, what change from c' problem or a 'What gain on buying for a and selling for b' problem or a 'How many things at a each can I buy for b cents' problem—it is assumed that the bond between these essential defining features and the operation or operations required for solution is as temporary as the bonds with the name of the buyer or the price of the thing. It is assumed that all problems are and should be solved by some pure act of reasoning without help or hindrance from bonds with the particular verbal structure and vocabulary of the problems. Whether or not they should be, they are not. Every time that a pupil solves a 'bought-sold' problem by subtraction he strengthens the tendency to respond to any problem whatsoever that contains the words 'bought for' and 'sold for' by subtraction; and he will by no means surely stop and survey every such problem in all its elements to make sure that no[Pg 112] other feature makes inapplicable the tendency to subtract which the 'bought sold' evokes.

To prevent pupils from responding to the form of statement rather than the essential facts, we should then not teach them to forget the form of statement, but rather give them all the common forms of statement to which the response in question is an appropriate response, and only such. If a certain form of statement does in life always signify a certain arithmetical procedure, the bond between it and that procedure may properly be made very strong.

Another case of the formation of bonds to only a slight degree of strength concerns the use of so-called 'crutches' such as writing +, −, and × in copying problems like those below:—

or altering the figures when 'borrowing' in subtraction, and the like. Since it is undesirable that the pupil should regard the 'crutch' response as essential to the total procedure, or become so used to having it that he will be disturbed by its absence later, it is supposed that the bond between the situation and the crutch should not be fully formed. There is a better way out of the difficulty, in case crutches are used at all. This is to associate the crutch with a special 'set,' and its non-use with the general set which is to be the permanent one. For example, children may be taught from the start never to write the crutch sign or crutch figure unless the work is accompanied by "Write ... to help you to...."[Pg 113]

The bond evoking the use of the crutch may then be formed thoroughly enough so that there is no hesitation, insecurity, or error, without interfering to any harmful extent with the more general bond from the situation to work without the crutch.

THE STRENGTH OF BONDS WITH TECHNICAL FACTS AND TERMS

Another instructive case concerns the bonds between certain words and their meanings, and between certain situations of commerce, industry, or agriculture and useful facts about these situations. Illustrations of the former are the bonds between cube root, hectare, brokerage, commission, indorsement, vertex, adjacent, nonagon, sector, draft, bill of exchange, and their meanings. Illustrations of the latter are the bonds from "Money being lent 'with interest' at no specified rate, what rate is charged?" to "The legal rate of the state," from "$X per M as a rate for lumber" to "Means $X per thousand board feet, a board foot being 1 ft. by 1 ft. by 1 in."

It is argued by many that such bonds are valuable for a short time; namely, while arithmetical procedures in connection with which they serve are learned, but that their value is only to serve as a means for learning these procedures and that thereafter they may be forgotten. "They are formed only as accessory means to certain more purely arithmetical knowledge or discipline; after this is acquired[Pg 114] they may be forgotten. Everybody does in fact forget them, relearning them later if life requires." So runs the argument.

In some cases learning such words and facts only to use them in solving a certain sort of problems and then forget them may be profitable. The practice is, however, exceedingly risky. It is true that everybody does in fact forget many such meanings and facts, but this commonly means either that they should not have been learned at all at the time that they were learned, or that they should have been learned more permanently, or that details should have been learned with the expectation that they themselves would be forgotten but that a general fact or attitude would remain. For example, duodecagon should not be learned at all in the elementary school; indorsement should either not be learned at all there, or be learned for permanence of a year or more; the details of the metric system should be so taught as to leave for several years at least knowledge of the facts that there is a system so named that is important, whose tables go by tens, hundreds, or thousands, and a tendency (not necessarily strong) to connect meter, kilogram, and liter with measurement by the metric system and with approximate estimates of their several magnitudes.

If an arithmetical procedure seems to require accessory bonds which are to be forgotten, once the procedure is mastered, we should be suspicious of the value of the procedure itself. If pupils forget what compound interest is, we may be sure that they will usually also have forgotten how to compute it. Surely there is waste if they have learned what it is only to learn how to compute it only to forget how to compute it!

[Pg 115]

THE STRENGTH OF BONDS CONCERNING THE REASONS FOR ARITHMETICAL PROCESSES

The next case of the formation of bonds to slight strength is the problematic one of forming the bonds involved in understanding the reasons for certain processes only to forget them after the process has become a habit. Should a pupil, that is, learn why he inverts and multiplies, only to forget it as soon as he can be trusted to divide by a fraction? Should he learn why he puts the units figure of each partial product in multiplication under the figure that he multiplies by, only to forget the reason as soon as he has command of the process? Should he learn why he gets the number of square inches in a rectangle by multiplying the length by the width, both being expressed in linear inches, and forget why as soon as he is competent to make computations of the areas of rectangles?

On general psychological grounds we should be suspicious of forming bonds only to let them die of starvation later, and tend to expect that elaborate explanations learned only to be forgotten either should not be learned at all, or should be learned at such a time and in such a way that they would not be forgotten. Especially we should expect that the general principles of arithmetic, the whys and wherefores of its fundamental ways of manipulating numbers, ought to be the last bonds of all to be forgotten. Details of how you arranged numbers to multiply might vanish, but the general reasons for the placing would be expected to persist and enable one to invent the detailed manipulations that had been forgotten.

This suspicion is, I think, justified by facts. The doctrine that the customary deductive explanations of why we invert and multiply, or place the partial products as we do[Pg 116] before adding, may be allowed to be forgotten once the actual habits are in working order, has a suspicious source. It arose to meet the criticism that so much time and effort were required to keep these deductive explanations in memory. The fact was that the pupil learned to compute correctly irrespective of the deductive explanations. They were only an added burden. His inductive learning that the procedure gave the right answer really taught him. So he wisely shuffled off the extra burden of facts about the consequences of the nature of a fraction or the place values of our decimal notation. The bonds weakened because they were not used. They were not used because they were not useful in the shape and at the time that they were formed, or because the pupil was unable to understand the explanations so as to form them at all.

The criticism was valid and should have been met in part by replacing the deductive explanations by inductive verifications, and in part by using the deductive reasoning as a check after the process itself is mastered. The very same discussions of place-value which are futile as proof that you must do a certain thing before you have done it, often become instructive as an explanation of why the thing that you have learned to do and are familiar with and have verified by other tests works as well as it does. The general deductive theory of arithmetic should not be learned only to be forgotten. Much of it should, by most pupils, not be learned at all. What is learned should be learned much later than now, as a synthesis and rationale of habits, not as their creator. What is learned of such deductive theory should rank among the most rather than least permanent of a pupil's stock of arithmetical knowledge and power. There are bonds which are formed only to be lost, and bonds formed only to be lost in their first form, being[Pg 117] used in a new organization as material for bonds of a higher order; but the bonds involved in deductive explanations of why certain processes are right are not such: they are not to be formed just to be forgotten, nor as mere propædeutics to routine manipulations.

PROPÆDEUTIC BONDS

The formation of bonds to a limited strength because they are to be lost in their first form, being worked over in different ways in other bonds to which they are propædeutic or contributing is the most important case of low strength, or rather low permanence, in bonds.

The bond between four 5s in a column to be added and the response of thinking '10, 15, 20' is worth forming, but it is displaced later by the multiplication bond or direct connection of 'four 5s to be added' with '20.' Counting by 2s from 2, 3s from 3, 4s from 4, 5s from 5, etc., forms serial bonds which as series might well be left to disappear. Their separate steps are kept as permanent bonds for use in column addition, but their serial nature is changed from 2 (and 2) 4, (and 2) 6, (and 2) 8, etc., to two 2s = 4, three 2s = 6, four 2s = 8, etc.; after playing their part in producing the bonds whereby any multiple of 2 by 2 to 9, can be got, the original serial bonds are, as series, needed no longer. The verbal response of saying 'and' in adding, after helping to establish the bonds whereby the general set of the mind toward adding coöperates with the numbers seen or thought of to produce their sum, should disappear; or remain so slurred in inner speech as to offer no bar to speed.

The rule for such bonds is, of course, to form them strongly enough so that they work quickly and accurately for the time being and facilitate the bonds that are to replace them,[Pg 118] but not to overlearn them. There is a difference between learning something to be held for a short time, and the same amount of energy spent in learning for long retention. The former sort of learning is, of course, appropriate with many of these propædeutic bonds.

The bonds mentioned as illustrations are not purely propædeutic, nor formed only to be transmuted into something else. Even the saying of 'and' in addition has some genuine, intrinsic value in distinguishing the process of addition, and may perhaps be usefully reviewed for a brief space during the first steps in adding common fractions. Some such propædeutic bonds may be worth while apart from their value in preparing for other bonds. Consider, for example, exercises like those shown below which are propædeutic to long division, giving the pupil some basis in experience for his selection of the quotient figures. These multiplications are intrinsically worth doing, especially the 12s and 25s. Whatever the pupil remembers of them will be to his advantage.

Consider, from the same point of view, exercises like (3 × 4) + 2, (7 × 6) + 5, (9 × 4) + 6, given as a preparation for written multiplication. The work of

and the like is facilitated if the pupil has easy control of the process of getting a product, and keeping it in mind while he adds a one-place number to it. The practice with (3 × 4) + 2 and the like is also good practice intrinsically. So some teachers provide systematic preparatory drills of this type just before or along with the beginning of short multiplication.

In some cases the bonds are purely propædeutic or are formed only for later reconstruction. They then differ little from 'crutches.' The typical crutch forms a habit which has actually to be broken, whereas the purely propædeutic bond forms a habit which is left to rust out from disuse.

For example, as an introduction to long division, a pupil may be given exercises using one-figure divisors in the long form, as:—

[Pg 121]

The important recommendation concerning these purely propædeutic bonds, and bonds formed only for later reconstruction, is to be very critical of them, and not indulge in them when, by the exercise of enough ingenuity, some bond worthy of a permanent place in the individual's equipment can be devised which will do the work as well. Arithmetical teaching has done very well in this respect, tending to err by leaving out really valuable preparatory drills rather than by inserting uneconomical ones. It is in the teaching of reading that we find the formation of propædeutic bonds of dubious value (with letters, phonograms, diacritical marks, and the like) often carried to demonstrably wasteful extremes.

[Pg 122]

CHAPTER VI

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DRILL IN ARITHMETIC: THE AMOUNT OF PRACTICE AND THE ORGANIZATION OF ABILITIES

THE AMOUNT OF PRACTICE

It will be instructive if the reader will perform the following experiment as an introduction to the discussion of this chapter, before reading any of the discussion.

Suppose that a pupil does all the work, oral and written, computation and problem-solving, presented for grades 1 to 6 inclusive (that is, in the first two books of a three-book series) in the average textbook now used in the elementary school. How many times will he have exercised each of the various bonds involved in the four operations with integers shown below? That is, how many times will he have thought, "1 and 1 are 2," "1 and 2 are 3," etc.? Every case of the action of each bond is to be counted.

THE FUNDAMENTAL BONDS

If estimating for the entire series is too long a task, it will be sufficient to use eight or ten from each, say:—

[Pg 124]

TABLE 2

Estimates of the Amount of Practice Provided in Books I and II of the Average Three-Book Text in Arithmetic; by 50 Experienced Teachers

Having made his estimates the reader should compare them first with similar estimates made by experienced teachers (shown on page 124 f.), and then with the results of actual counts for representative textbooks in arithmetic (shown on pages 126 to 132).

It will be observed in Table 2 that even experienced teachers vary enormously in their estimates of the amount [Pg 126] of practice given by an average textbook in arithmetic, and that most of them are in serious error by overestimating the amount of practice. In general it is the fact that we use textbooks in arithmetic with very vague and erroneous ideas of what is in them, and think they give much more practice than they do.

The authors of the textbooks as a rule also probably had only very vague and erroneous ideas of what was in them. If they had known, they would almost certainly have revised their books. Surely no author would intentionally provide nearly four times as much practice on 2 + 2 as on 8 + 8, or eight times as much practice on 2 × 2 as on 9 × 8, or eleven times as much practice on 2 − 2 as on 17 − 8, or over forty times as much practice on 2 ÷ 2 as on 75 ÷ 8 and 75 ÷ 9, both together. Surely no author would have provided intentionally only twenty to thirty occurrences each of 16 − 7, 16 − 8, 16 − 9, 17 − 8, 17 − 9, and 18 − 9 for the entire course through grade 6; or have left the practice on 60 ÷ 7, 60 ÷ 8, 60 ÷ 9, 61 ÷ 7, 61 ÷ 8, 61 ÷ 9, and the like to occur only about once a year!

TABLE 3

Amount of Practice: Addition Bonds in a Recent Textbook (A) of Excellent Repute. Books I and II, All Save Four Sections of Supplementary Material, to be Used at the Teacher's Discretion

The Table reads: 2 + 2 was used 226 times, 12 + 2 was used 74 times, 22 + 2, 32 + 2, 42 + 2, and so on were used 50 times.

TABLE 4

Amount of Practice: Subtraction Bonds in a Recent Textbook (A) of Excellent Repute. Books I and II, All Save Four Sections of Supplementary Material, to be Used at the Teacher's Discretion

TABLE 5

Frequencies of Subtractions not Included in Table 4

These are cases where the pupil would, by reason of his stage of advancement, probably operate 35 − 30, 46 − 46, etc., as one bond.