PREFACE In accordance with the opinions of leading students of pedagogy, and with the courses of study in the best schools of this country, the first two books of this series are arranged on the spiral plan, and the third book, for the seventh and eighth grades, on the topical plan. The Werner Arithmetic, Book III, of which this is a revision, was a combination of the spiral and the topical methods, with emphasis on the latter. Further experience and observation lead the author to a strictly topical arrangement of the subjects in this book. No effort whatever has been made to follow the lead of some recently published arithmetics and make the book an encyclopedia of geographical, historical, and statistical number facts. It is a pedagogical axiom that the concrete illustrations of number relations that are most helpful in giving the pupil a clear conception of the facts and processes of arithmetic are those with which the student is already somewhat familiar or those with which he feels the need of becoming familiar. The correlation of the work in arithmetic with the work in geography and history is often desirable and helpful; but this should be incidental - should be brought to the attention of the pupil in connection with the quantitative incidents of geography and history, and not forced upon him in the arithmetic class. |