HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY

GIFT OF TC

AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCILLY

Sep. 8,1938

COPYRIGHT, 1902,

BY

THE SUPERIOR PRINTING CO.

(All rights reserved)

PREFACE.

FOR WHOM

P

RIMARILY this HELP is for teachers and intelligent parents. They will find in it much explanatory matter which is in accord with the best methods of to-day. The supplemen tary work is full, and will enable them to explain the actual business forms and transactions, as well as the elementary work, in a clear and concise manner. Older pupils can gain much practical knowledge from it along the lines of the work of the accountant, practical estimates, land surveying, insurance, stocks, bonds, etc. Most of these are illustrated from actual life, and these illustrations will do more to clear these matters up in the minds of pupils than will hours of explanation.

A PLACE OF ITS OWN

The number of text-books written on arithmetic in this country is legion. There has been a remarkable increase in the last few years. Each new author has felt that his book would be more practical and more satisfactory than those before. Of them all, however, there are but three or four that have become especially prominent, and that because of real merit. The author makes no attempt to compete with them, or to present any new plan of teaching the subject. The HELP has a field of its own as the most casual perusal will disclose.

WHY WRITTEN

Some years since, Col. Parker said in effect that the arithmetic of the future would contain neither rules, definitions nor

explanations. Such a condition will exist when we have the ideal school and each teacher has no absences in her room and no more pupils than can secure all the individual attention needed to suit their varying degrees of intelligence.

Many of the recent arithmetics have attempted to approach the ideal of Col. Parker and in so doing have found more or less failure. As a consequence there is more complaint, perhaps, from teachers and parents of the difficulties encountered in the study of arithmetic than ever before. This is more than suffi cient reason for this HELP.

ITS PURPOSE

Realizing, from a large experience, the difficulties that arithmetic presents to the average child, the author, at the suggestion and with the advice of many prominent schoolmen has prepared this HELP for all who find difficulty with the subject.

SCOPE OF THE "HELP"

The aim has been to cover all regular text-book work in the subject with special reference to those parts with which students have most trouble and to the parts most likely to be of practical value to the pupil in after life.

While many pupils pass to a study of higher mathematics there is a large proportion whose arithmetical knowledge of the grammar school must serve them for all purposes in practical life. To the latter much of the work in this volume will be invaluable, while the former class cannot help but be much benefited by it. The whole has been made so simple that any one of ordinary intelligence will find it practically a self-teacher.

SPECIAL VALUE TO TEACHERS

Those teachers who are away from the towns and cities and those in the cities, who know how difficult it is to procure explanatory and supplementary matter at the right time for their

arithmetic work, will especially appreciate this HELP. The articles and illustrations combine to give the phases of arithmetic that belong to actual life a clearness and virility that otherwise can only be obtained from actually sharing in the various business transactions treated.

IN THE HOME

A few of its uses as a home book are here enumerated:

1. For the pupil who is unavoidably absent for a few days the present spiral method affords no chance to learn what the teacher has given the class in his absence. To be sure, if he is unusually bright he will pick up in various ways what he missed. If he is not bright it is probable that he becomes a stumbling-block to the class for a time. With this HELP in his home he can, in most cases, make up the deficiency.

2. In the teaching of denominate numbers, practical estimates, percentage, exchange, discount, stocks, bonds, notes, insurance, and other business matters, the pupil cannot always follow the teacher's explanation. If he has a simple and truthful treatment of these subjects, well illustrated, at home he may easily inform himself, or the intelligent parent, after reading it, can give him a home talk on the subject that is not a "lesson" and which he will remember because of the place and manner in which it was given.

3. If his memory fails him in some important point either while in school or later, it is a reference work to which he may refer to renew his knowledge. He cannot always have a teacher. and no pupil can remember all he is taught and sometimes he forgets that which he afterwards needs. The arithmetics of today leave a vacancy here which the HELP fills in a way to assist in making him an independent thinker.

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

After each subject a series of problems with solutions and other explanatory matter is given. Wherever it seemed wise,

the work has also been included. This enables the pupil who could not readily follow the teacher's explanation to study it out at home.

The intention is not to do the pupil's reasoning for him, but to give him an intelligent basis on which to reason, for it is a rare pupil indeed, who, at the grammar school age, is able to reason out a process without having had a previous explanation of something similar. In the home it is to be to him in a degree what the teacher is to him at school a guide.

The problems do not embrace every difficult problem possible. That would necessitate a cyclopedic treatment. Neither do they embrace curiosities. All problems are eminently prac tical and, at best, are merely suggestive.

The solutions and work to these problems are merely models. No pupil or teacher should slavishly follow them. Original solutions, along other lines, for most of these problems, may be equally good or better. These are simply guides when better means of help is not at hand.

PRACTICE EXAMPLES AND PROBLEMS

The HELP proper contains very few problems or examples for practice. As a HELP they have no place in it. For those teachers and others who desire it, the author has prepared a manual of examples and problems on all the subjects of arithmetic. This manual accompanies the HELP.

ORDER OF SUBJECTS

The first pages of the work are planned on the spiral method. The rest of the HELP is arranged by subjects and the whole is carefully indexed so that any part of a subject may be referred to instantly. This arrangement is necessary, as the HELP is intended for no particular locality. Hardly any two city or country school systems teach corresponding parts of any subject in the same grade. The spiral plan, now so generally used, makes such diversion possible. This necessitated the arrangement