Criticism of Dr. Bowden's «Consumers Uses of Arithemetic»

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DR. A. O. Bowden in a dissertation on “Consumers Uses of Arithmetic”1 aims to determine those types of arithmetical knowledge “which may be universally required of all the public elementary school population.” (p. 1) His estimMe is based on questionnaires: first he submitted a questionnaire containing 345 problems of the kinds commonly found in elementary school arithmetics to 42 persons in three cities; then on the basis of these 42 returns he prepared a new questionnaire containing 123 of his original 345 problems. On the latter he received 640 returns which he considered as properly executed; thus giving him in all the 682 returns on 123 problems that form the basis of his study. Those filling out the second questionnaire were instructed that they were “not to solve the problems, but check whether you (they) have ever used the kind of arithmetic needed to solve them.” (p 67) The uses aside from business or vocational needs were to be checked either “yes” or “no” under each of the seven headings: buying at store, making change, reading of newspapers and magazines, investing of savings, letter writing, etc., income tax sheets, traveling. Then he has “arbitrarily taken for granted that less than 25 per cent use by the adult population warrants our discarding certain types of problems from elementary school textbooks.” (p. 48) And he concludes that of the original eighteen categories of problems covered by his first questionnaire only eight remain.