THE PUBLIC SCHOOL MENTAL ARITHMETIC BASED ON MCLELLAN AND DEWEY'S "PSYCHOLOGY OF NUMBER" BY J. A. MCLELLAN, A.M., LL.D. PRESIDENT ONTARIO NORMAL COLLEGE 99 66 AUTHOR (WITH DR. DEWEY) OF "THE PSYCHOLOGY of number, APPLIED HONOR GRADUATE IN MATHEMATICS; FORMERLY MATHEMATICAL New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 1907 All rights reserved · PREFACE Ir has recently been stated by a well-known college professor that "boys enter college or training school at eighteen, after having spent from one sixth to one fourth of their entire school life in studying mathematics. Yet they know very little mathematics. In their examination the asking of even three questions shows that they haven't the dimmest idea of what it is all about." This statement, if true, does not prove as the professor seems to think it does the justice of the Hamiltonian onslaught on mathematical study. It simply proves that the prevailing methods of teaching arithmetic are radically wrong. The serious defects in existing methods are mainly due to the fact that they take no account of the real nature of number, and of how the child's mind works in grasping the concepts of number and numerical relations. In other words, arithmetic has never been "psychologized." there is a science of education and rational methods founded upon it, there must be a psychology of arithmetic, a psychology of language, etc. The onesided theory that education is concerned only with fitting the child for existing civilization has made If |