Abstract
The history of teaching arithmetic is traced back to the early-Modern Age Italian reckoning masters and their arithmetic textbooks – libri di abbaco – based on the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. After the introduction of printing, arithmetic textbooks were printed in a variety of European languages. The textbooks had standard content until the twentieth century: mainly the four arithmetic operations in whole numbers and fractions and proportions in the form of the Rule of Three. The first books were aimed at self-study, while the gradual establishment of schools changed their use, as did impacts from influential educators such as Comenius and Pestalozzi. After the mid-twentieth century, radical changes in arithmetic teaching were made in the worldwide introduction of the new math.
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- 1.
Wenn mein Leben einen Wert hat, so besteht er darin, dass ich das Quadrat zum Fundamente einer Anschauung erhob, die das Volk nie hatte.
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Bjarnadóttir, K. (2014). History of Teaching Arithmetic. In: Karp, A., Schubring, G. (eds) Handbook on the History of Mathematics Education. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-9155-2_21
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