One Point of View: Mathematics for the Young Child—Not Arithmetic

For young cnildren, those in pre-school through first grade, the world is a stage complete with props and scenery, a world to be manipulated and discovered. But because of the emphasis on standardized curriculum and testing, this discovery through manipulation has been seriously curtailed in many mathematics programs for young children. Instruction is focusing on correct answers to computational problems. First graders are frequently taught material once covered in the second or third grade, and they learn through paper-and-pencil exercises and memorization that are too abstract for them. Young children are being presented with a mathematics program in which the computations of arithmetic are excluding the conceptualization of mathematics.