Mrs. Boole's lectures will help many a young teacher if he is fortunate enough to see it before he has hardened his heart against all innovations. Writers of text-books, totally ignorant of the simplest facts of psychical life, tumble their stodgy books into the classrooms, and the old-fashioned teacher works through them with the conviction that somehow or other the children will pick up sufficient arithmetic if you only keep them long enough at it. Against this tyranny and ignorance Mrs. Boole protests. Arithmetic is a ...
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Mrs. Boole's lectures will help many a young teacher if he is fortunate enough to see it before he has hardened his heart against all innovations. Writers of text-books, totally ignorant of the simplest facts of psychical life, tumble their stodgy books into the classrooms, and the old-fashioned teacher works through them with the conviction that somehow or other the children will pick up sufficient arithmetic if you only keep them long enough at it. Against this tyranny and ignorance Mrs. Boole protests. Arithmetic is a subject which must be taught intelligently, an impossible task for those who do not add to their knowledge of mathematics a knowledge of child-life. Indeed, were we to sum up in a sentence the gist of the lectures, we should say: the arithmetician qua arithmetician is of all people the least fitted for teaching arithmetic. - The Academy and Literature , Vol. 66
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