ARITHMETIC AS BASIS

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30559, 30 September 1964, Page 3

ARITHMETIC AS BASIS

(N.Z. Press' Association) AUCKLAND, Sept. 29. Tuition in decimal coinage in New Zealand schools in 1967 will be accompanied by an improved grounding in basic arithmetic. Dr. K. J. Sheen, curriculum development officer of the Education Department, told the Education Boards’ Association conference in Auckland today that the change to decimal coinage offered an educational opportunity. Time saved in teaching the simpler decimal monetary system would allow extra teaching of the numbers system the basis of arithmetic. Dr. Sheen said an officer

of the curriculum unit had already visited Australia to discuss changes that would be made in the teaching of basic arithmetic after the introduction of decimal coinage. In New Zealand, as a first step, a committee had been formed of departmental officers and teachers. Teachers had been asked to reduce the type of school exercises that involved complicated problems with the present monetary system. It was hoped by the beginning of 1967 to issue supplements to existing arithmetic text books for the teaching of the new system. Dr. Sheen said many countries were establishing cir-

riculum ' units to reassess what was being taught in schools and what should be taught. This world-wide movement had been brought about, he said, by the rapid progress of science and inventions in the last century.

There was a whole avalanche of new teaching ideas. New Zealand could not afford to overlook such aids to education as television, language laboratories, teaching machines and audio and visual aids but it was necessary, Dr. Sheen said, that these novelties should be looked at coolly and impartially.