Peter Clenott

Excerpt from The Psychology of Number and Its Applications to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic In presenting this book on the Psychology of dumber it is believed that a special want is supplied. There is no subject taught in the elementary schools that taxes the teacher's resources as to methods and devices to a greater extent than arithmetic. There is no subject taught that is more dangerous to the pupil in the way of deadening his mind and arresting its development, if bad methods are used. The mechanical side of training must be joined to the intellectual in such a form as to prevent the fixing of the mind in thoughtless habits. While the mere processes become mechanical, the mind should by ever-deepening insight continually increase its power to grasp details in more extensive combinations. Methods must be chosen and justified, if they can be justified at all, on psychological grounds. The concept of number will at first be grasped by the pupil imperfectly. He will see some phases of it and neglect others. Later on he will arrive at operations which demand a view of all that number implies. Each and every number is an implied ratio, but it does not express the ratio as simple number. The German language is fortunate in having terms that express the two aspects of numerical quantity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.