368 APPENDIX 



merited by the introduction of a large number bearing upon 

 the environment and interests of the pupils. The household, 

 the farm, the shop, the market, the trade, will furnish ma- 

 terial, and the prices and conditions should be the real ones 

 rather than the fancied ones of the books. The teacher should 

 take from the actual business world, the tax office, the bank, 

 the insurance office, the store, actual business transactions 

 and make these the basis of the problems used. The actual 

 market-price of a commodity with the actual amount bought 

 and sold by an actual person will give reality to a problem. 



In studying arithmetic the pupil should count the things at 

 hand rapidly and accurately. The trees in a certain space, 

 the rows of corn in a field, the number of shocks of wheat 

 or corn, the number of rows on an ear of corn, the number 

 of grains in a row and on the ear, the number of pupils in a 

 row of seats, the number of rows, the number of pupils in the 

 room, the number in the building — all objects at hand should 

 be used. The very fact that they are at hand, and that the 

 pupil is doing the work with them, will lend interest to the 

 study. 



The same material and data used in counting may be used 

 in teaching addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. 

 The child ought to be led to discover that these processes are 

 quicker than counting and why this is so. In a room with 

 so many rows of seats, and so many seats in a row, he 

 ought to discover shortly the way to find the whole number 

 of seats without counting them. He should be led to make 

 a map or plot of the room, of the corn field, of the wheat field 

 and its shocks; he should measure accurately the school- 

 house, the home, the field, and the farm. He should find out 

 by actual work how corn, and wheat, and potatoes, and hay 



