The child's use of numbers

This paper is an attempt to answer two questions: (1) What arithmetical knowledge and power should be acquired by a child by the end of grade VI? And especially, (2) what should be the content of the arithmetic course in grades IV, V, and VI? The normal American child is the one considered--one well brought up in the middle class American home, who reaches grade VII, at about the age of twelve. The findings show that children in the elementary school grades make little use of arithmetic in their life outside of school. They like to count and to read numbers, and that is about all. But they have keen delight in the manipulation of pure numbers. Here, then, we have an opportunity to perfect them in integers and in common and decimal fractions. Then comes the Junior High School when the child awakens to the meaning of life. The arithmetic drill in grades IV, V, and VI, establishes the foundation for the mathematics of the Junior High School.