HOW ARITHMETIC SHOULD BE TAUGHT

Thames Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 18384, 4 July 1917, Page 6

HOW ARITHMETIC SHOULD BE TAUGHT

An indictment of tiTe methods of teaching arithmetic in some of the schools was made by Mr W. Burnside. M.A., inspector of schools, at the con. • ferenoe of inspectors and teachers on j Friday afternoon. Some 'teachers, he said, confined themcelves to numbers lie- ' low 20 and taught the subject wholly by c ncrete methods. Under these so-called modern methods they found chiJftren. who had been for eighteen months struggling with the numbers 8, ]Q» or 12. He visited a school some time ago where the first class was learning the number 8, and the teacher was dissatisfied with' the progress, made. -When he (the speaker) asked them if they could count to 10, 20, or 50, or add 6 and 5, and an on, they were literally climbing over the forms to answer. These pupils were being starved. He knew of a. number of children who before going to school could count up to 100 and add nt-tle sums suofi as two and two and five and five, yet these children after a year or more of schooling were still busy with tKe number 10, and this, despite all the aids ihat human ingenuity could Jevite in the way of beads, buttons, sticks, and etones, pictures and coloured chalk. It seemed to him that the more aids and devices they used in teaching numbwrs the slower the progress. Concrete methods; he said, were employed in teacli- ! ing savages and backward children, and were employed during the Stone Ago. In modern civilisation the 'transition from concrete to abstract came at a very early age in a child's school life, and the exclusive use of concrete mo thods merely tended to retard that transition. If no better results couia be obtained from the numerous concrete devices now in use then by all means let us leturm to the old-fashioned method of forty years ago when concrete and ab- ? Btract went hand in "hand—methods which were certainly founded on true psychological "principles. Compared with Moniessori methods the methods oi forty years ago were certainly old-fashioned, and it was the duty of all, theorists and faddists included, to endeavour to make Montessori methods suitable' to local conditions. Continuing, he expressed the ; opinion that too much time was taken in setting out the work in Standards 3 and 4. He instanced the following sum: If 8 men reap 16 acres in 3 days, working 10 h:»urs a day, how many days will 3? men take to reap 64 acr,es, working 10 2-3 hours per day." "I worked one of these sums/ he said, "by the unitary metnod r I used several sticks of chalk, filled the blackboard, and the exposition lasted, twenty minutes. toy using a tabulated form and the fractional method the sum could be done in three minutes, and- in your head \in about fifty seconds. This is the first and last; time," he concluded, amidst laugiiter. "I have used the unitary method Tor compound proportion sums." —Auckland Star. > „,