Abstract

Some of the changes made in the elementary and junior high school mathematics curriculum during the past twenty years have been good. Subtraction is presented as the inverse operation of addition. The words subtrahend and minuend are seldom used anymore. The words addends and sum are used for the numbers both in addition and in subtraction. It is hard to find anyone who wants to go back to teaching children the difference between a minuend and subtrahend and how to spell the words. Instead of being pure memory of isolated facts and operations, elementary mathematics has begun to evoke a friendly feeling for numbers. For example, by naming different ways to make the number five (3 + 2, 7 − 2, 5 + 0, and so on), young children get a feeling for five. They see that they can manipulate counters and write many names for a number. This type of teaching makes the number five come alive; it is not just the answer to some isolated facts.

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